Recycling carbon emissions could be key climate solution but won't be easy, report to Congress says
Source: https://phys.org/news/2022-12-recycling-carbon-emissions-key-climate.html
Author: Steven Schultz
The committee, formed by the Energy Department at Congress's instruction, found significant barriers to realizing a goal of recycling industrial and atmospheric carbon emissions into new products. The committee, run by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, delivered a series of recommendations to address those challenges. "Though it is still a nascent industry, carbon dioxide utilization can participate meaningfully in the transition away from fossil carbon by providing pathways for sustainable synthesis of many carbon-based chemicals and materials that society needs," said Car, Princeton's Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and senior strategic advisor for sustainability science at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. The committee looked specifically at how to use carbon - captured from industry or directly from the environment - to make useful products. The goal is to move toward a "circular economy," which reuses materials that would otherwise become harmful waste. The committee identified five broad classes of products that could be made from waste carbon: construction materials such as concrete; chemicals and fuels such as jet fuel; the ingredients for plastics; elemental carbon and engineered products such as carbon fiber; and other niche products.