Since carbon dioxide being one of the major constituent of green house gasses ultimately contributing to Global warming.Therefore It becomes necessary to reduce carbon footprint in atmosphere .
Well capturing the carbon directly from the atmosphere is one of the solution .In Carbon Capture ,what they do is directly trap the carbon from atmosphere and turn it down into its constituent composition i.e. Carbon and Hydrogen. The obtained carbon can be used to utilise many substances like graphene , graphite etc. And the hydrogen can be utilised as a fuel with very high calorific value.
Basically there happens to be two types to capture carbon
- Pre combustion carbon capture ,where CO2 is captured before diluted by other flue gasses .The fossil fuel is heated in pure oxygen , resulting as mixture of carbon monoxide(CO) and Hydrogen(H2) . The CO is then heated with water and the carbon is along with hydrogen is separated. The carbon and hydrogen can be utilised as fuel .
- Post combustion carbon capture , where carbon is captured after the burning of fossil fuel. In this method CO2 is separated from the flue gas along with water vapor , SO2 and N2O . Now bubbling the gas through an absorber column packed with liquid solvents such as ammonia. Once the chemical in the column becomes saturated , a superheated steam around 120 °C is passed through it . This releases the trapped CO2 , now it can be transported to storage below the rock gaps.
Pre and post carbon capture can prevent 80 -90 % of CO2 from power plants.
What about captured carbon ?
Well one method to store captured carbon is to penetrate it deep below rock gaps , where it will remain in supercritical conditions until access to 31°C and 73 atm pressure.
