Some interesting new research has just been released by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Researchers have found an effective new method for removing carbon dioxide from the ocean. It is reckoned it could be implemented by ships that would process seawater as they travel, or at offshore drilling platforms or aquaculture fish farms.
Initially, the system can use existing or planned infrastructure that already processes seawater, such as desalination plants, but the system is scalable.
The ocean is the world’s number one “sink” for carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It soaks up about a third of all of the gas produced by human activities.
There has been some commercial interest and activity around removing carbon dioxide directly from ocean water, but now the team of researchers at MIT says they may have found the key to what might be a truly efficient and inexpensive removal mechanism. The findings were reported this week in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, in a paper by MIT professors T. Alan Hatton and Kripa Varanasi, postdoc Seoni Kim, and graduate students Michael Nitzsche, Simon Rufer, and Jack Lake.
... to continue reading you must be subscribed
