Materials challenges in carbon-mitigation technologies

Given the increasing size of CO2-generating industries and the mounting awareness of their environmental impact, carbon-management technologies are expected to play an important role in curtailing environmental emissions in coming years. A major challenge in carbon management is the development of cost-effective, technologically compatible, and efficient CO2 capture and storage technologies. The development of energy-efficient solvent, solid-sorbent, and membrane materials to capture CO2 from industrial exhaust streams can take improvements in process efficiency one step further. Also, the permanent storage of CO2 in geologic formations is critical to the success of carbon-management technologies and requires better understanding of interactions of CO2 with underground materials. These and other materials challenges must be solved to make carbon capture and storage an economically viable and reliable technology to be adopted by the power and product manufacturing industries.