Direct Air Capture & The Future of Climate Change

Global climate change is one of the most important challenges of our time, and chemists and chemical engineers are at the forefront of this effort. One especially promising technology is through Direct Air Capture.

Direct Air Capture makes use of amines, which capture carbon dioxide out of the air through specific chemical bonding. The carbon dioxide is then sequestered by storing it underground so that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air is reduced every year. Though repurposing is helpful, it is not a solution. Reducing the amount of carbon dioxide every year through sequestration is the only real remedy.

Chemists and chemical engineers are working to scale up this technology to remove 10s of gigatons of carbon dioxide. Key challenges that lay ahead are to find ways to both reduce the cost of this procedure and make it more efficient.

In this film, experts from academia and industry discuss the science of Direct Air Capture and the opportunities it provides.