Using technology that "is similar to what is used to collect carbon from flue stacks at coal-fired power plants," Fast Company reports on a synthetic tree that captures carbon up to 1,000 times faster than real trees.
It could potentially be most useful at gathering carbon from small, distributed sources like gasoline in cars and jet fuel from planes--places where carbon is otherwise impossible to collect.
The synthetic tree works by collecting CO2 on a sorbent, cleaning and pressurizing the gas, and releasing it. [Professor of geophysics at Columbia University Klaus] Lackner's tree (which looks nothing like a tree) is flexible in size and could fit in the design of industrial facilities or enclosed in barn-like structures in rural locations.
Lackner and his company, Global Research Technologies, have been working on the technology since 1998, and now they have an early model to show for it.
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