Biomimetic Sorbents for CO2 Capture

A multidisciplinary team of Stanford researchers have developed a new class of tunable zinc-based sorbents that use catalytic carbonate chemistry to efficiently capture carbon in the presence of water vapor. This biomimetic sorbent simulates the function of carbonic anhydrase a natural enzyme for hydrating and dehydrating carbon. The functionalized substrate is designed to capture carbon from flue gas 6-8 orders of magnitude faster than conventional amine scrubbing technologies without the energetic expense of heating water. Also because the carbon capture is a chemical mechanism (compared with zeolite or metal-organic framework-based sorbents with a physical adsorption mechanism) they do not require an additional step to separate water from CO2. These scalable biomimetic materials are particularly well-suited to capture carbon in coal-fired or natural gas power plants with significant water vapor in the flue gas. Stage of Research: The inventors have synthesized and tested several functionalized sorbents for proof-of-principle studies.