Search

Two young industrial phD students seek to reduce atmospheric CO2

The scientific potential is gradually and steadily overcoming the gender gap that had traditionally marked it. Increasingly younger women play an important and decisive role in research on issues of the first magnitude.


Original news: www.peusa.org (28/11/2021)

Anna Mas and Elizabeth Martínez
 
The scientific potential is gradually and steadily overcoming the gender gap that had traditionally marked it. Increasingly younger women play an important and decisive role in research on issues of the first magnitude. This is the case of Anna Mas and Elizabeth Martínez, two engineers who are preparing their doctoral thesis as part of the CaptaCO2 and GrafeCO2 projects, promoted by Greennova Foundation. For this reason, they are developing scientific research proposals, which seek to provide solutions to mitigate climate change effectively. Specifically, to reduce the volume of CO2 in the atmosphere. For the director of the Foundation, Sebastià Carrión, the task of the two doctoral students implies "having the total dedication of two PhD students, eager to work and identified with the purpose of the projects, who work in person in our research centers, and who collaborate with a team of teaching and research staff".

 

Science to preserve nature

The doctoral student Anna Mas is working on the CaptaCO2 project, which is developed in the facilities of the Eurecat technology center in Tarragona and in collaboration with the Rovira i Virgili University. The task in which he is involved is based on a simple and at the same time sophisticated principle: "through a series of membranes and a solution, we want to capture sufficiently relevant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert them into carbonates." And this resulting material, apply it to the generation of fuels or materials for various uses (for example, construction). Mas works, precisely, on "optimizing the efficiency of the process, so that profitable amounts of C02 can be achieved". This is the final objective of his thesis that he will present at the Rovira i Virgili University, based on the concept of Negative Technology Emissions, that is, a decisive response to the challenges of climate change and global warming.

Both young scientists optimize the efficiency of a simple and sophisticated process at the same time, to capture profitable amounts of C02 from the atmosphere
In a similar vein is the GrafeCO2 project in which another young scientist, Elizabeth Martínez (University of Barcelona), is working: her objective is also to capture the excess CO 2 from the Earth's atmosphere Martínez explains that "for the time being, there are no effective measures to capture CO2 and it is only viable in some cases in the industry in which it is captured directly from chimneys" . The system it applies is to bind graphene oxide, rich in carbon molecules, and Metal-organic Framework (MOF), a type of synthetic material with a very well-defined porous three-dimensional structure. The union between the two elements generates an extremely porous new one, capable of capturing CO2 from the atmosphere. "It's like we have a dry sponge: if we dip it in the water, it will suck a part of it. This result does exactly the same thing, but with the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere." As in the previous case, the ultimate goal is to achieve the balance that allows, with less amount of graphene oxide and MOF, the maximum possible CO2 can be captured.

[...] You can continue reading the original news published in www.peusa.org