UC Berkley chemists create cheap, easy, energy-efficient way to capture CO2 from smokestacks

In California, using an inexpensive polymer called melamine — the main component of Formica — UC Berkley chemists have created a cheap, easy and energy-efficient way to capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks, a key goal for the United States and other nations as they seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The process for synthesizing the melamine material, published this week in the journal Science Advances, could potentially be scaled down to capture emissions from vehicle exhaust or other movable sources of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning makes up about 75% of all greenhouse gases produced in the U.S.

The new material is simple to make, requiring primarily off-the-shelf melamine powder — which today costs about $40 per ton — along with formaldehyde and cyanuric acid, a chemical that, among other uses, is added with chlorine to swimming pools.