̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Leverhulme Trust

Electrified charcoal ‘sponge’ can soak up CO2 directly from the air

sc604 — Wed, 05 Jun 2024 15:00:10 +0000

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge used a method similar to charging a battery to instead charge activated charcoal, which is often used in household water filters.

By charging the charcoal ‘sponge’ with ions that form reversible bonds with CO2, the researchers found the charged material could successfully capture CO2 directly from the air.

̽��ֱ��charged charcoal sponge is also potentially more energy efficient than current carbon capture approaches, since it requires much lower temperatures to remove the captured CO2 so it can be stored. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in the journal Nature.

“Capturing carbon emissions from the atmosphere is a last resort, but given the scale of the climate emergency, it’s something we need to investigate,” said Dr Alexander Forse from the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, who led the research. “ ̽��ֱ��first and most urgent thing we’ve got to do is reduce carbon emissions worldwide, but greenhouse gas removal is also thought to be necessary to achieve net zero emissions and limit the worst effects of climate change. Realistically, we’ve got to do everything we can.”

Direct air capture, which uses sponge-like materials to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, is one potential approach for carbon capture, but current approaches are expensive, require high temperatures and the use of natural gas, and lack stability.

“Some promising work has been done on using porous materials for carbon capture from the atmosphere,” said Forse. “We wanted to see if activated charcoal might be an option, since it’s cheap, stable and made at scale.”

Activated charcoal is used in many purification applications, such as water filters, but normally it can’t capture and hold CO2 from the air. Forse and his colleagues proposed that if activated charcoal could be charged, like a battery, it could be a suitable material for carbon capture.

When charging a battery, charged ions are inserted into one of the battery’s electrodes. ̽��ֱ��researchers hypothesised that charging activated charcoal with chemical compounds called hydroxides would make it suitable for carbon capture, since hydroxides form reversible bonds with CO2.

̽��ֱ��team used a battery-like charging process to charge an inexpensive activated charcoal cloth with hydroxide ions. In this process, the cloth essentially acts like an electrode in a battery, and hydroxide ions accumulate in the tiny pores of the charcoal. At the end of the charging process, the charcoal is removed from the “battery”, washed and dried.

Tests of the charged charcoal sponge showed that it could successfully capture CO2 directly from the air, thanks to the bonding mechanism of the hydroxides.

“It’s a new way to make materials, using a battery-like process,” said Forse. “And the rates of CO2 capture are already comparable to incumbent materials. But what’s even more promising is this method could be far less energy-intensive, since we don’t require high temperatures to collect the CO2 and regenerate the charcoal sponge.”

To collect the CO2 from the charcoal so it can be purified and stored, the material is heated to reverse the hydroxide-CO2 bonds. In most materials currently used for CO2 capture from air, the materials need to be heated to temperatures as high as 900°C, often using natural gas. However, the charged charcoal sponges developed by the Cambridge team only require heating to 90-100°C, temperatures that can be achieved using renewable electricity. ̽��ֱ��materials are heated through resistive heating, which essentially heats them from the inside out, making the process faster and less energy-intensive.

̽��ֱ��materials do, however, have limitations that the researchers are now working on. “We are working now to increase the quantity of carbon dioxide that can be captured, and in particular under humid conditions where our performance decreases,” said Forse.

̽��ֱ��researchers say their approach could be useful in fields beyond carbon capture, since the pores in the charcoal and the ions inserted into them can be fine-tuned to capture a range of molecules.

“This approach was a kind of crazy idea we came up with during the Covid-19 lockdowns, so it’s always exciting when these ideas actually work,” said Forse. “This approach opens a door to making all kinds of materials for different applications, in a way that’s simple and energy-efficient.”

A patent has been filed and the research is being commercialised with the support of Cambridge Enterprise, the ̽��ֱ��’s commercialisation arm.

̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the Leverhulme Trust, the Royal Society, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge.

Reference:
Huaiguang Li et al. ‘Capturing carbon dioxide from air with charged sorbents.’ Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07449-2

Researchers have developed a low-cost, energy-efficient method for making materials that can capture carbon dioxide directly from the air.

̽��ֱ��first and most urgent thing we’ve got to do is reduce carbon emissions worldwide, but greenhouse gas removal is also thought to be necessary to achieve net zero emissions and limit the worst effects of climate change. Realistically, we’ve got to do everything we can

Alex Forse

Sample of activated charcoal used to capture carbon dioxide

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

New, nature-inspired concepts for turning CO2 into clean fuels

sc604 — Mon, 28 Feb 2022 16:16:16 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers, from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, have previously shown that biological catalysts, or enzymes, can produce fuels cleanly using renewable energy sources, but at low efficiency.

Their latest research has improved fuel production efficiency by 18 times in a laboratory setting, demonstrating that polluting carbon emissions can be turned into green fuels efficiently without any wasted energy. ̽��ֱ��results are reported in two related papers in Nature Chemistry and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Most methods for converting CO2 into fuel also produce unwanted by-products such as hydrogen. Scientists can alter the chemical conditions to minimise hydrogen production, but this also reduces the performance for CO2 conversion: so cleaner fuel can be produced, but at the cost of efficiency.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge-developed proof of concept relies on enzymes isolated from bacteria to power the chemical reactions which convert CO2 into fuel, a process called electrolysis. Enzymes are more efficient than other catalysts, such as gold, but they are highly sensitive to their local chemical environment. If the local environment isn’t exactly right, the enzymes fall apart and the chemical reactions are slow.

̽��ֱ��Cambridge researchers, working with a team from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal, have developed a method to improve the efficiency of electrolysis by fine-tuning the solution conditions to alter the local environment of the enzymes.

“Enzymes have evolved over millions of years to be extremely efficient and selective, and they’re great for fuel-production because there aren’t any unwanted by-products,” said Dr Esther Edwardes Moore from Cambridge’s Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, first author of the PNAS paper. “However, enzyme sensitivity throws up a different set of challenges. Our method accounts for this sensitivity, so that the local environment is adjusted to match the enzyme’s ideal working conditions.”

̽��ֱ��researchers used computational methods to design a system to improve the electrolysis of CO2. Using the enzyme-based system, the level of fuel production increased by 18 times compared to the current benchmark solution.

To improve the local environment further, the team showed how two enzymes can work together, one producing fuel and the other controlling the environment. They found that by adding another enzyme, it sped up the reactions, both increasing efficiency and reducing unwanted by-products.

“We ended up with just the fuel we wanted, with no side-products and only marginal energy losses, producing clean fuels at maximum efficiency,” said Dr Sam Cobb, first author of the Nature Chemistry paper. “By taking our inspiration from biology, it will help us develop better synthetic catalyst systems, which is what we’ll need if we’re going to deploy CO2 electrolysis at a large scale.”

“Electrolysis has a big part to play in reducing carbon emissions,” said Professor Erwin Reisner, who led the research. “Instead of capturing and storing CO2, which is incredibly energy-intensive, we have demonstrated a new concept to capture carbon and make something useful from it in an energy-efficient way.”

̽��ֱ��researchers say that the secret to more efficient CO2 electrolysis lies in the catalysts. There have been big improvements in the development of synthetic catalysts in recent years, but they still fall short of the enzymes used in this work.

“Once you manage to make better catalysts, many of the problems with CO2 electrolysis just disappear,” said Cobb. “We’re showing the scientific community that once we can produce catalysts of the future, we’ll be able to do away with many of the compromises currently being made, since what we learn from enzymes can be transferred to synthetic catalysts.”

“Once we designed the concept, the improvement in performance was startling,” said Edwardes Moore. “I was worried we’d spend years trying to understand what was going on at the molecular level, but once we truly appreciated the influence of the local environment, it evolved really quickly.”

“In future we want to use what we have learned to tackle some challenging problems that the current state-of-the-art catalysts struggle with, such as using CO2 straight from air as these are conditions where the properties of enzymes as ideal catalysts can really shine,” said Cobb.

Erwin Reisner is a Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge. Sam Cobb is a Research Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. Esther Edwardes Moore completed her PhD with Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. ̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the European Research Council, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Reference:
Samuel J Cobb et al. ‘Fast CO2 hydration kinetics impair heterogeneous but improve enzymatic CO2 reduction catalysis.’ Nature Chemistry (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41557-021-00880-2

Esther Edwardes Moore et al. ‘Understanding the Local Chemical Environment of Bioelectrocatalysis.’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2114097119

Researchers have developed an efficient concept to turn carbon dioxide into clean, sustainable fuels, without any unwanted by-products or waste.

Instead of capturing and storing CO2, which is incredibly energy-intensive, we have demonstrated a new concept to capture carbon and make something useful from it in an energy-efficient way

Erwin Reisner

Esther Edwardes Moore

Computer-generated image of enzyme

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Earliest human remains in eastern Africa dated to more than 230,000 years ago

sc604 — Wed, 12 Jan 2022 15:28:02 +0000

̽��ֱ��age of the oldest fossils in eastern Africa widely recognised as representing our species, Homo sapiens, has long been uncertain. Now, dating of a massive volcanic eruption in Ethiopia reveals they are much older than previously thought.

Cambridge launches new Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 15:11:51 +0000

̽��ֱ��Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe will bring together an international team of scientists and philosophers, led by 2019 Nobel Laureate Professor Didier Queloz.

Thanks to simultaneous revolutions in exoplanet discoveries, prebiotic chemistry and solar system exploration, scientists can now investigate whether the Earth and the processes that made life possible are unique in the Universe.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� has recently launched the Initiative for Planetary Science and Life in the Universe (IPLU) to enable cross-disciplinary research on planetology and life in the Universe.

Building on IPLU’s activities, the new Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe will support fundamental cross-disciplinary research over the next 10 years to tackle one of the great interdisciplinary challenges of our time: to understand how life emerged on Earth, whether the Universe is full of life, and ask what the nature of life is.

̽��ֱ��Centre will include researchers from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, Department of Earth Sciences, Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Institute of Astronomy, Department of Zoology, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Faculty of Divinity, and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

“ ̽��ֱ��Centre will act as a catalyst for the development of our vision to understanding life in the Universe through a long-term research programme that will be the driving force for international coordination of research and education,” said Queloz, Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Cavendish Laboratory and Director of the Centre.

Research within the Centre will focus on four themes: identifying the chemical pathways to the origins of life; characterising the environments on Earth and other planets that could act as the cradle of prebiotic chemistry and life; discovering and characterising habitable exoplanets and signatures of geological and biological evolution; and refining our understanding of life through philosophical and mathematical concepts.

̽��ֱ��Centre will collaborate with researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Colorado Boulder (USA), ̽��ֱ�� College London, ETH Zurich (Switzerland), Harvard ̽��ֱ�� (USA) and the Centre of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey (USA).

“Understanding the reactions that predisposed the first cells to form on Earth is the greatest unsolved mystery in science,” said programme collaborator Matthew Powner from ̽��ֱ�� College London. “Critical challenges of increasing complexity must be addressed in this field, but these challenges represent one of the most exciting frontiers in science.”

Carol Cleland, Director of the Center for the Study of Origins and Professor of Philosophy at the ̽��ֱ�� of Colorado Boulder, also collaborator on the programme said: “ ̽��ֱ��new Centre is unique in the breadth of its interdisciplinarity, bringing together scientists and philosophers to address central questions about the nature and extent of life in the universe.

“Characteristics that scientists currently take as fundamental to life reflect our experience with a single example of life, familiar Earth life. These characteristics may represent little more than chemical and physical contingencies unique to the conditions under which life arose on Earth. If this is the case, our concepts for theorising about life will be misleading. Philosophers of science are especially well trained to help scientists 'think outside the box' by identifying and exploring the conceptual foundations of contemporary scientific theorising about life with an emphasis on developing strategies for searching for truly novel forms of life on other worlds.”

Didier Queloz is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

With a £10 million grant awarded by the Leverhulme Trust, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is to establish a new research centre dedicated to exploring the nature and extent of life in the Universe.

̽��ֱ��Centre will act as a catalyst for the development of our vision to understanding life in the Universe through a long-term research programme that will be the driving force for international coordination of research and education

Didier Queloz

ESO/M Kornmesser

Artists’s impression of the rocky super-Earth HD 85512 b

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

Cambridge professor appointed Director of the Leverhulme Trust

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Sep 2020 10:19:56 +0000

Professor Vignoles is a highly distinguished academic whose research has focused on issues of equity and value in education – in particular the relationship between educational achievement and social mobility and the role played by education and skills attainment in the economy and society. Much of her work focuses on how we can improve students’ academic achievements and help them to develop skills that they will need in the labour market. She has published widely on these and many other themes.

Her work consistently links research with policy and practice and she has advised numerous government departments, including the Department for Education, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, and HM Treasury. She has also acted as a Trustee of the Nuffield Foundation, Member of Council of the Economic and Social Research Council, and Member of the Advisory Board of the Sutton Trust. Professor Vignoles was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2017 and awarded a CBE in 2019 for services to social sciences. She is a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge.

Head of the Faculty of Education Professor Susan Robertson said: “This is not only a wonderful opportunity for Anna but a superb appointment that will benefit research and education in the UK and beyond. She will be an outstanding Director of the Leverhulme Trust and I know that she will relish and excel in the opportunity it brings to enable and support meaningful, change-making academic research.”

“At the same time this is bittersweet news for the Faculty because Anna is not simply a great scholar, but a generous colleague and friend. We will miss her a great deal in the Faculty and across the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.”

̽��ֱ��Leverhulme Trust provides funding across a range of academic disciplines, including arts, sciences, engineering and social sciences, with the aim of supporting talented individuals to realise their potential vision in research and professional training. Professor Vignoles will replace the outgoing Director, Gordon Marshall.

Professor Vignoles said: “ ̽��ֱ��Leverhulme Trust plays a unique role in the funding landscape and its commitment to fund curiosity-driven research has never been more vital. I look forward to working with the Leverhulme team to support research that is genuinely ground-breaking and pushes disciplinary boundaries.”

“I am so grateful for the many opportunities that I have had at Cambridge and for the wonderful support that I have had from my brilliant colleagues in the Faculty and at Jesus College. I shall miss them all greatly.”

Niall FitzGerald, Chairman of the Leverhulme Trust, said: “ ̽��ֱ��challenge for the Trustees has been to find an exceptional academic leader and talent to succeed Gordon. We are fortunate that Anna Vignoles stood out in a very strong field of candidates, including several serving Vice-Chancellors. She brings all the requisite experience and skills but also values closely aligned with the special ethos of the Leverhulme Trust. I very much look forward to welcoming Anna and supporting her in what will be challenging years for academic research in the UK.”

Anna Vignoles, who is Professor of Education at the ̽��ֱ��, has been appointed as Director of the Leverhulme Trust: one of the largest, all-subject providers of research funding in the UK. She will take up her new post in January, 2021.

We are fortunate that Anna Vignoles stood out in a very strong field of candidates, including several serving Vice-Chancellors

Niall FitzGerald, Chairman of the Leverhulme Trust

Lloyd Mann, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge

Professor Anna Vignoles

Yes

Green energy and better crops: tinted solar panels could boost farm incomes

jg533 — Tue, 04 Aug 2020 08:37:54 +0000

By allowing farmers to diversify their portfolio, this novel system could offer financial protection from fluctuations in market prices or changes in demand, and mitigate risks associated with an unreliable climate. On a larger scale it could vastly increase capacity for solar-powered electricity generation without compromising agricultural production.

This is not the first time that crops and electricity have been produced simultaneously using semi-transparent solar panels – a technique called ‘agrivoltaics’. But in a novel adaptation, the researchers used orange-tinted panels to make best use of the wavelengths - or colours - of light that could pass through them.

̽��ֱ��tinted solar panels absorb blue and green wavelengths to generate electricity. Orange and red wavelengths pass through, allowing plants underneath to grow. While the crop receives less than half the total amount of light it would get if grown in a standard agricultural system, the colours passing through the panels are the ones most suitable for its growth.

“For high value crops like basil, the value of the electricity generated just compensates for the loss in biomass production caused by the tinted solar panels. But when the value of the crop was lower, like spinach, there was a significant financial advantage to this novel agrivoltaic technique,” said Dr Paolo Bombelli, a researcher in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Biochemistry, who led the study.

̽��ֱ��combined value of the spinach and electricity produced using the tinted agrivoltaic system was 35% higher than growing spinach alone under normal growing conditions. By contrast, the gross financial gain for basil grown in this way was only 2.5%. ̽��ֱ��calculations used current market prices: basil sells for around five times more than spinach. ̽��ֱ��value of the electricity produced was calculated by assuming it would be sold to the Italian national grid, where the study was conducted.

“Our calculations are a fairly conservative estimate of the overall financial value of this system. In reality if a farmer were buying electricity from the national grid to run their premises then the benefit would be much greater,” said Professor Christopher Howe in the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s Department of Biochemistry, who was also involved in the research.

̽��ֱ��study found the saleable yield of basil grown under the tinted solar panels reduced by 15%, and spinach reduced by around 26%, compared to under normal growing conditions. However, the spinach roots grew far less than their stems and leaves: with less light available, the plants were putting their energy into growing their ‘biological solar panels’ to capture the light.

Laboratory analysis of the spinach and basil leaves grown under the panels revealed both had a higher concentration of protein. ̽��ֱ��researchers think the plants could be producing extra protein to boost their ability to photosynthesise under reduced light conditions. In an additional adaptation to the reduced light, longer stems produced by spinach could make harvesting easier by lifting the leaves further from the soil.

“From a farmer’s perspective, it’s beneficial if your leafy greens grow larger leaves - this is the edible part of the plant that can be sold. And as global demand for protein continues to grow, techniques that can increase the amount of protein from plant crops will also be very beneficial,” said Bombelli.

“With so many crops currently grown under transparent covers of some sort, there is no loss of land to the extra energy production using tinted solar panels,” said Dr Elinor Thompson at the ̽��ֱ�� of Greenwich, and lead author of the study.

All green plants use the process of photosynthesis to convert light from the sun into chemical energy that fuels their growth. ̽��ֱ��experiments were carried out in Italy using two trial crops. Spinach (Spinacia oleracea) represented a winter season crop: it can grow with fewer daylight hours and can tolerate colder weather. Basil (Ocimum basilicum) represented a summer season crop, requiring lots of light and higher temperatures.

̽��ֱ��researchers are currently discussing further trials of the system to understand how well it would work for other crops, and how growth under predominantly red and orange light affects the crops at the molecular level.

This research was conducted in partnership with Polysolar Ltd. It was funded by the Leverhulme Trust and the Italian Ministry of ̽��ֱ�� and Research.

Reference
Thompson, E. et al: Tinted Semi-Transparent Solar Panels allow Concurrent Production of Crops and Electricity on the Same Cropland. Advanced Energy Materials, 2 Aug 2020. DOI: 10.1002/aenm.202001189

Researchers have demonstrated the use of tinted, semi-transparent solar panels to generate electricity and produce nutritionally-superior crops simultaneously, bringing the prospect of higher incomes for farmers and maximising use of agricultural land.

Our calculations are a fairly conservative estimate of the overall financial value of this system. In reality if a farmer were buying electricity from the national grid to run their premises then the benefit would be much greater

Christopher Howe

Paolo Bombelli ( ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge)

Greenhouse with tinted solar panels

Yes

̽��ֱ��curious tale of the cancer ‘parasite’ that sailed the seas

cjb250 — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 18:48:46 +0000

A contagious canine cancer that conquered the world by spreading between dogs during mating likely arose around 6,000 years ago in Asia and spread around the globe through maritime activities.

AI: Life in the age of intelligent machines

lw355 — Fri, 22 Feb 2019 14:00:18 +0000

We are said to be standing on the brink of a fourth industrial revolution – one that will see new forms of artificial intelligence (AI) underpinning almost every aspect of our lives. ̽��ֱ��new technologies will help us to tackle some of the greatest challenges that face our world.

In fact AI is already very much part of our daily lives, says Dr Mateja Jamnik, one of the experts who appear in the film. “Clever algorithms are being executed in clever ways all around us... and we are only a decade away from a future where we are able to converse across multiple languages, where doctors will be able to diagnose better, where drivers will be able to drive more safely.”

Ideas around AI “are being dreamt up by thousands of people all over the world – imaginative young people who see a problem and think about how they can solve it using AI… whether it’s recommending a song you’ll like or curing us of cancer,” says Professor Stephen Cave.

Much of the excitement relates to being able to leverage the power of Big Data, says Professor Zoubin Ghahramani. Without AI, how else could we make sense of the vastly complex interconnected systems we now have at our fingertips?

But what do we think about AI and the future it promises? Our perceptions are shaped by our cultural prehistory, stretching right back to Homer, says Dr Sarah Dillon. How we feel about the dawning of a new technology is linked to centuries-old thinking about robotics, automatons and intelligence beyond our own.

And what happens when we come to rely on the tools we are empowering to do these amazing things? Professor Lord Martin Rees reflects on the transition to a future of AI-aided jobs: what will this look like? How will we ensure that the wealth created by AI will benefit wider society and avoid worsening inequality?

Our researchers are asking fundamental questions about the ethics, trust and humanity of AI system design. “It can’t simply be enough for the leading scientists as brilliant as they are to be pushing ahead as quickly as possible,” says Dr Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh. “We also need there to be ongoing conversations and collaborations with the people who are thinking about the ethical impacts of the technology.

“ ̽��ֱ��idea that AI can help us understand ourselves and the universe at a much deeper level is about as far reaching a goal for AI as could be.”

Inset image: read more about our AI research in the ̽��ֱ��'s research magazine; download a pdf; view on Issuu.

In a new film, leading Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� researchers discuss the far-reaching advances offered by artificial intelligence – and consider the consequences of developing systems that think far beyond human abilities.

̽��ֱ��idea that AI can help us understand ourselves and the universe at a much deeper level is about as far reaching a goal for AI as could be

Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh

AI: Humanity's Last Invention?

Yes