̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge

Thinking the Unthinkable at COP29

plc32 — Thu, 21 Nov 2024 17:01:07 +0000

Engineer Dr Shaun Fitzgerald reports from COP29 on his discussions about climate repair as a looming necessity.

Buying time: can science save the Great Barrier Reef?

sc604 — Wed, 16 Oct 2024 04:18:14 +0000

If we don’t stop global temperatures – both on land and at sea – from rising, the Great Barrier Reef could become a coral graveyard. A team of scientists has decided to do something about it.

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

Farm to factories

plc32 — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 16:51:02 +0000

Cambridge Zero collaborates with Cambridge Global Food Security Interdisciplinary Research Centre (IRC) and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Decarbonisation Network for two research events in March 2024 that look at industry decarbonisation and food security.

Cambridge heads to COP28

plc32 — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 17:43:08 +0000

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge heads to COP28 in Dubai, UAE, with a film premiere and a host of higher education and research events.

Social media posts around solar geoengineering ‘spill over’ into conspiracy theories

sc604 — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 16:00:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��researchers analysed tweets 2009 and 2021 tagged with #geoengineering. They used a combination of natural language processing, deep learning and network analysis to explore how public emotions, perceptions and attitudes have changed over a 13-year period.

̽��ֱ��researchers found that there is a large amount of ‘spillover’ between geoengineering and conspiracy theories, especially around ‘chemtrails’, a conspiracy theory dating back to the 1990s. ̽��ֱ��researchers suggest that negative emotions related to geoengineering have a contagion effect, transcending regional boundaries and engaging with wider conspiracies. Their results are reported in the journal iScience.

As the climate crisis worsens, the search for solutions has accelerated. Some potential, albeit untested and controversial, solutions involve geoengineering, where various technologies could be used to alter weather or climate. Solar radiation management (SRM) is one hypothetical geoengineering solution where temperature rise might be addressed by reflecting some sunlight back into space. Possible forms this technology could take include cirrus cloud thinning or spraying aerosols into the stratosphere. But there are few, if any, opportunities for researchers to test these potential solutions.

“ ̽��ֱ��amount of funding that’s been made available for geoengineering research, and especially outdoor experiments, is tiny,” said first author Dr Ramit Debnath, Cambridge Zero Fellow at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. “When you ask funders why this is, the reason often given is that the research is too controversial.”

“There are significant and well-founded concerns around geoengineering, but fundamentally we’re interested in furthering knowledge in this area,” said senior author Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, Director of the Centre for Climate Repair in Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. “In order to do that, we need to have more informed discussions. We don’t want to dismiss any concerns expressed on social media, but we do want to put them into context.”

“ ̽��ֱ��views expressed on social media don’t necessarily translate directly into wider public views, but there is still a lot we can learn by studying conversations that are happening,” said Debnath. “We wanted to know whether people who were tweeting about geoengineering were in fact, a vocal minority, and if so, what else are these people talking about?”

̽��ֱ��researchers analysed a large dataset of more than 800,000 English-language tweets sent in the 13-year period between 2009 and 2021. ̽��ֱ��researchers used natural language processing techniques to analyse the emotions expressed in the tweets and assigned each tweet a ‘toxicity score’. ̽��ֱ��researchers then conducted a network analysis to determine how tweets about geoengineering interact with other hashtag networks and conspiracy theories.

“ ̽��ֱ��chemtrail conspiracy theory is particularly popular among conspiracy theorists based in the United States, and our analysis found that tweets about chemtrails are the common link between geoengineering and conspiracies,” said Debnath. “Most of these tweets are sent by American users, but they spill over across regional and national boundaries.”

̽��ֱ��‘chemtrail’ conspiracy theory dates back to the 1990s. Believers in this patently false conspiracy allege that condensational trails (contrails) from aircraft are intentionally seeded with various chemical or biological compounds for nefarious purposes including population control or military testing. Those who believe the chemtrails conspiracy theory also allege that aircraft could be used for intentional weather and climate modification.

̽��ֱ��researchers say that the common link between the chemtrails conspiracy and conspiracy theories around geoengineering is the idea that bad actors are ‘weaponising’ the weather with chemicals.

Their analysis also showed that positive emotions rose on global and country scales following events related to SRM governance, and negative emotions increased following the announcement of SRM projects or experiments.

̽��ֱ��researchers say their work could help inform future discussions around SRM and other forms of geoengineering by putting social media discussions in context. “It’s a small echo chamber, but it’s quite a noisy one,” said Debnath.

While the controversy around geoengineering will continue on social media, the team says what they really need is quality data and research. “There are risks associated with geoengineering, but how do these compare with the risks of letting climate change continue unabated?” said Fitzgerald. “I worry that knowledge hasn’t progressed in this area. What happens if some rogue entity decides to go for a huge deployment of SRM, and people end up suffering because of it? This is why it’s so important to have informed discussions backed up by quality research.”

̽��ֱ��researchers say their study provides a data-driven glimpse into the structure of online climate misinformation that has a strong contagion effect, leading to strengthening of conspiracy theories in the public domain. Understanding such links with respect to climate action is critical for the design of counteraction strategies.

̽��ֱ��research was supported in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Cambridge Centre for Climate Repair, Cambridge Zero and Quadrature Climate Foundation, and the Google Cloud Climate Innovation Challenge Award. This study is part of an ongoing project co-led by Dr Ramit Debnath with Cambridge Zero on improving public understanding of climate change.

Ramit Debnath will be speaking about climate change misinformation at the Cambridge Festival on 30th March.

Reference:
Ramit Debnath et al. ‘Conspiracy spillovers and geoengineering.’ iScience (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106166

Researchers from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge have analysed more than 800,000 tweets and found that negative emotions expressed about geoengineering – the idea that the climate can be altered using technology – can easily fall into conspiracy.

Milamai via Getty Images

Person using a smartphone

̽��ֱ��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

Refreeze the Arctic Foundation funds marine cloud brightening research

plc32 — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 00:30:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Centre will work in close cooperation with RAF and Delft ̽��ֱ�� of Technology Climate Institute (TUDCI) in the Netherlands on research to create methods for marine cloud brightening, a process that generates white cloud cover to increase the reflection of sunlight over the Arctic during the summer months and slow the melting of Arctic sea ice.

“We all know that cutting emissions is a non-negotiable requirement if we are to have a long-term climate that can sustain life as we know it. ̽��ֱ��problem is that we are moving too slowly and we are at serious risk of losing the Arctic summer sea ice, glaciers and other ecosystems which support cooler temperatures on Earth. Marine Cloud Brightening could potentially provide a means of safeguarding our climate whilst we get our greenhouse gas levels down,” said Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, Director of Research at the Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge.

Cambridge engineers are hoping to mimic the way nature makes clouds. Storms at sea with crashing waves generate droplets of water which dry out to form salt crystals. Air currents carry the tiniest of these crystals high up to where the air is cool and moist, providing the nuclei around which white clouds can form.

“Maybe we can help nature to make whiter clouds by creating our own spray of sea water. If we can fine-tune the droplet size then we can make the clouds brighter and longer lasting," said Professor Hugh Hunt (Engineering Dynamics and Vibration at Cambridge).

Simultaneously TUDCI will offer its cloud physics, modelling and remote sensing expertise to derive the optimum combination of droplet size and number concentration needed for achieving the desired brightening effect.

RAF is confident that the cooperation between CCRC and TUDCI, where each research centre contributes following its fields of expertise, will accelerate the delivery of a Proof of Concept for Marine Cloud Brightening.

“We are extremely happy we can make this donation. Today is the start of a multi-year highly synergistic collaboration between two top universities. We realise our challenge is enormous and hope to expand this initiative into a global network,” RAF said.

̽��ֱ��Refreeze the Arctic Foundation is able to do its work thanks to a donation in memory of Hanns Walter Salzer Levi: linguist, historian, global citizen and philanthropist. ̽��ֱ��Foundation aims to develop emergency measures to combat global warming. It specifically supports research to make clouds whiter to reflect sunlight.

Marine Cloud Brightening is just one piece of research dedicated to tackling climate change at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, which created its Cambridge Zero climate initiative in 2019 to focus the power of one of the world’s top five global research universities on finding solutions to humanity’s most pressing problem.

̽��ֱ��Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge and Refreeze the Arctic Foundation (RAF) signed a multi-year agreement to fund research methods for brightening clouds to combat climate change.

Marine Cloud Brightening could potentially provide a means of safeguarding our climate whilst we get our greenhouse gas levels down

Dr Shaun Fitzgerald

Dr M. Antoinette Nestor

Team members from Centre for Climate Repair at Cambridge, RAF and TUDCI Photos show: Front row from left to right: Dr Isabelle Steinke (TUDCI), Dr Shaun Fitzgerald (CCRC), Sir David King (CCRC), Professo

Yes

Rapid transition to a net zero world

cg605 — Thu, 28 Oct 2021 11:32:49 +0000

̽��ֱ��opportunity to make real and lasting change has never been greater. But we all need to act, and act now.