Progress in carbon dioxide capture materials for deep decarbonization

The bigger pictureTwo ways to make net emission reductions are to (1) reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emitted from an activity and (2) make use of decarbonization technology to capture CO2 emissions. Until now, this has been achieved by minimizing energy waste or by introducing the use of renewable energy sources. However, to achieve net reductions, deep decarbonization technologies need to be applied to capture CO2 emissions from hard-to-decarbonize sources such as iron and cement production, transportation, and so on. Therefore, decarbonization is a central technology for ambitious climate change mitigation. Enabling material technologies such as liquid and solid sorbents, MOFs, and membranes to capture CO2 in a selective way, with high capacity and stability, with fast kinetics during capture, with low cost and abundant scalable production, and with lowered corrosivity and environmentally friendly production, is required for the successful expansion of these decarbonization technology implementations.SummaryTo prevent runaway climate change, the goal of carbon neutrality calls for an aggressive use of decarbonization technologies such as carbon capture from flue gas and direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. Both of these techniques rely on carbon dioxide (CO2) sorbents or diffusion membranes, which can take many forms. To inform about various forms of CO2 capture processes, here, we have reviewed a collection of the latest developments with liquid sorbents, solid sorbents, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), and diffusion membranes. Their potential capture capacities and reaction kinetics, stability, and reusability are presented and compared. In addition, we discussed potential alternatives to the conventional method of regenerating the sorbent capacity. Such a comprehensive summary of progress in this field can facilitate essential research, describe enabling technology innovations, and promote industrial implementations of carbon capture technologies for deep decarbonization.Graphical abstract