UCLA graduate student Hexian Deng and biochemistry professor Omar M. Yaghi, have developed synthetic crystals that can be used to trap carbon dioxide. Their “designer crystal” approach opens the door for low cost, scalable applications, such as trapping carbon dioxide from factories or vehicle exhaust pipes.

The new synthetic crystals can code information, just as DNA does, but in a more simple form based on the sequence of pores in the material. The result is a material with a sponge-like ability to trap gasses with a high degree of selectivity that results in highly efficient carbon capture. The researchers claim that they were able to achieve a 400% improvement in carbon dioxide capture by manipulating the sequence.

Professor Yaghi said that "What we think this will be important for is potentially getting to a viable carbon dioxide–capture material with ultra-high selectivity… I am optimistic that is within our reach. Potentially, we could create a material that can convert carbon dioxide into a fuel, or a material that can separate carbon dioxide with greater efficiency."

Other researchers are studying different carbon-capturing crystals such as zeolite, which is being investigated by Australia’’s CO2CRC.

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EU member states have approved a plan to share out €4 billion ($au6.3 billion) to develop carbon capture and storage and fund some other high tech renewables projects.

At least eight carbon capture and storage projects will receive funding. Ocean thermal energy conversion technologies and systems to convert cellulose from plant waste into biofuels, biogas or electricity will also be considered.

Specific proposals for projects to be up and running by 2015 must be submitted this year. The European Investment Bank will assess the proposals and determine which projects will receive funding during 2011. It is expected that most of the funding will go to the carbon capture and storage projects.

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The World Future Energy Summit on renewable energy, carbon capture and smart energy technologies is currently underway in Abu Dhabi. It has attracted 600 exhibitors and 9,000 delegates on its first day.

Time magazine has summed up the feeling among conference-goers as "the politicians might have failed to act on climate change, but everybody else is going to push on regardless".

The magazine points out that total investment in clean energy dropped from $155 billion in 2008 to $130 billion last year but spending has already bounced back and may reach as much as $200 billion by the end of 2010.

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Enhanced or "hot rock" geothermal power production usually works by pumping water into fissures in hot rocks deep underground, A shaft is drilled into the fissures and some ot the resulting super-heated water comes to the surface where it is used to drive a turbine.

One problem with this technique is the amount of water needed since much of it remains underground.

In 2000, a Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist, Donald Brown, proposed replacing water with supercritical carbon dioxide, a pressurized form that is part gas, part liquid. Subsequent modelling at the Lawrence Berkeley laboratory has shown that using carbon dioxide would produce 50% more heat than using water because the carbon dioxide will flow more freely than water through cracks in the rock.

As well as being more efficient, using carbon dioxide would sequester much of the gas.

A Salt Lake City-based geothermal developer, GreenFire Energy, has now announced plans to build a two-megawatt carbon dioxide-based demonstration plant near the Arizona-New Mexico border. The company proposes to commence drilling in 2010 and says that the location could yield enough heat to generate up to 800 megawatts of power and, in the process, could absorb much of the carbon dioxide generated by the six large coal-fired power plants in the region.

(Adapted from sources including Technology Review)

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Australian clean coal technology specialist Linc Energy  has signed a major new partnerhip with British fuel cell firm AFC Energy for a demonstration project that the two companies believe could revolutionise the coal industry.

The firms believe that combining underground coal gasification techniques with hydrogen fuel cell technologies will provide a significantly cleaner and cheaper way of generating energy from coal.

Underground coal gasification is an established energy generation technique, which involves burning coal underground to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can then be used to power gas turbines. However, under the plans proposed by Linc Energy and AFC, the resulting gases would be mixed with steam to produce carbon dioxide and hydrogen. The hydrogen would then be used to power fuel cells, while the CO2 will be captured and injected back underground.

The fuel cells would use the hydrogen to produce electricity and heat, with distilled water the only by-product from the process - a 1,000 megawatt power station would produce over 2.5 billion litres of clean water a year.

Advocates of the technique argue that it is cheaper and less environmentally damaging than mining, transporting and burning coal in a standard coal-fired power plant and then capturing the carbon dioxide emissions afterwards. Linc Energy also argues that underground coal gasification can reach coal fields that would be too expensive to mine traditionally.

"The future of this concept is simply staggering," said Peter Bond, chief executive of Linc Energy. "It could easily be the ultimate answer for clean coal power many of us are looking for, and it’s only one or two years away from reality."

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The United States and China have agreed on a plan for future co-operation on renewable energy.

The main elements of the agreement are:

• Establishment of a US-China Clean Energy Research Centre to facilitate joint research and development of clean energy technologies by teams of scientists and engineers from the United States and China, as well as to serve as a clearinghouse to help researchers in both countries.
• Establishment of a  US-China Electric Vehicles Initiative including joint standards development, demonstration projects in more than a dozen cities, technical roadmapping and public education projects.
• Development of a new US-China Energy Efficiency Action Plan under which the two countries will work together to improve the energy efficiency of buildings, industrial facilities, and consumer appliances including working together to develop energy efficient building codes and rating systems, benchmark industrial energy efficiency, train building inspectors and energy efficiency auditors for industrial facilities, harmonize test procedures and performance metrics for energy efficient consumer products and exchange best practices in energy efficient labeling systems.
• Development of a US-China Renewable Energy Partnership which will develop roadmaps for wide-spread renewable energy deployment in both countries and provide technical and analytical resources to support renewable energy deployment and facilitate partnerships to share experience and best practices.
• Co-operation on cleaner uses of coal, including large-scale carbon capture and storage demonstration projects. 
• Launching a new US-China Shale Gas Resource Initiative under which the U.S. and China will use experience gained in the United States to assess China’s shale gas potential, promote environmentally-sustainable development of shale gas resources, conduct joint technical studies to accelerate development of shale gas resources in China, and promote shale gas investment in China.
• Establishment of a US-China Energy Cooperation Program which will leverage private sector resources for project development work in China across a broad array of clean energy projects. The program will include collaborative projects on renewable energy, smart grid, clean transportation, green building, clean coal, combined heat and power, and energy efficiency.
  

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Aurora Biofuels, a California company, says it has cultivated a strain of algae that doubles the production of biodiesel by absorbing more than twice as much carbon dioxide as conventional strains.

Normally, algae absorb more carbon dioxide in low light and decrease the amount absorbed as the light gets brighter during the day. By a process of screening and selection, Aurora has bred a strain of algae that can ingest carbon dioxide regardless of the intensity of sunlight.

Aurora’s process uses salt water in open ponds. The algae feed on carbon dioxide and Aurora says that its algae will sequester 90 percent of the CO2 fed into their environment. It is therefore aiming to convert the carbon dioxide waste from producers, such as power utilities and cement plants, into the feedstock for biodiesel. It says that it can be price competitive with oil when it is around $US60 to $US100 a barrel.

In terms of land space, Aurora says that its algae are 25 times more productive than sugar-based fuels and 70 to 100 time more productive than agricultural crops, such as soy. In addition, algae can be grown on land which is not suitable for  crops.

The company is scaling its technology for industrial production and expects to complete an 8-hectare (20-acre) demonstration plant in 2010 and achieve full commercial production in 2012.

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According to scientists at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden, attempting to tackle global warming by capturing carbon dioxide or switching to nuclear power will not work because a large part of the warming results from the heat produced by industrial processes rather than the greenhouse effect.

In a paper published in the International Journal of Global Warming, Bo Nordell and Bruno Gervet  have calculated the total energy emissions from the start of large-scale industrialisation in the 1880s to the modern day  They point out that net heat emissions during that time account for almost three quarters of the global warming during that period - the greenhouse effect accounts for the remaining 26%.

The implication of their findings are  that those processes which produce heat, such as burning fossil fuels and using nuclear power, would continue to cause global warming even if all of the carbon dioxide which they emit is captured. On the other hand, those sources of energy which ultimately use the sun’s heat, including wind and marine power as well as solar, do not contribute to global warming.

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Chemical engineer, Dr Andrew Harris amd his research team at Sydney University’s Institute for Sustainable Solutions have been awarded a research grant from the European Energy Company, E.ON, to investigate materials like silicon carbide and alumina for building synthetic sponges, which would be grafted with calcium oxide to absorb carbon dioxide.

Dr Harris is using a group of marine creatures known as echinoderms, which includes starfish, sea urchins and sea cucumbers, as his source of inspiration. He says that these creatures have an "awesome" calcium carbonate skeleton, ideal for absorbing C02. He hopes to mimic the structure of their skeletons to produce a synthetic sponge.

Dr Harris hopes that the technology will be used to absorb CO2 released during the manufacture of hydrogen. Currently, most hydrogen is made from fossil fuels but Dr Harris believes that, in the future, it will be sourced from biomass, such as crop waste.

"We did an experiment a couple of years back and found that if all the forest waste, left over crops and wood waste sent to landfill in Australia was converted into hydrogen there would be enough energy to run every bus in every city for a year on the waste," he said.

Several members of the team are working on ways of re-using the CO2 captured by the synthetic sponges.

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Researchers from the University of Tasmania are developing a chemistry process which could help tackle climate change by converting the polluting chemicals into environmentally friendly ones.

The head of the University’s School of Chemistry, Brian Yates, said that the experiments attempt to break the strong molecular bonds of pollutants such as carbon dioxide to produce less toxic compounds.

"It’s not looking at limiting the carbon emissions, which of course we’re very aware of, but taking what’s there in the atmosphere already," he said. "At the moment it’s turning it into an ester.  Esters are natural compounds that occur as flavourings and fragrances."

The research team is collaborating with chemists from California who will test the process.

Professor Yates says any practical application is still at least five years away.

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