What if there were a way to suck carbon dioxide right out of the air and turn it into useful products? It might seem fantastic but scientists have actually proved it’s possible. One of the challenges with making it a viable process, however, is manufacturing products that are valuable enough to cover the high costs of extracting the carbon dioxide.
Some excellent new research has raised the possibility of a breakthrough in this area by using CO2 directly captured from the air to produce a type of graphene, the two-dimensional form of carbon often described as a “wonder material.“ But reported claims that this amounts to producing ”diamonds from the sky“ are somewhat misleading.
There is already a significant market for CO2 and products made from it, most obviously fertilizer and fuels. This process of treating the gas as a feedstock rather than a waste product is known as carbon dioxide utilization (CDU) and usually starts by capturing CO2 from industrial flue gases—exhaust from furnaces or fuel-powered generators.
Drop in the Ocean
In 2012, carbon dioxide utilization accounted for 180 megatons of CO2 that would otherwise have gone into the atmosphere, and this has been forecast to rise to 256 megatons in 2016. But total global greenhouse gas emissions are around 35 gigatons and rising, meaning other emission-reduction strategies such as energy efficiency and renewable power currently play a much larger role.
