Artificial "Tree" Captures Carbon Like Real Tree

Columbia University's artificial tree project is developing something that doesn't look at all like a tree. But it acts like a tree—it captures carbon from the air at a rate of one ton per day, counteracting the emissions of 20 cars. The university's Klaus Lackner believes carbon dioxide is concentrated enough in the atmosphere to make the carbon capture possible, and the result would be stored as liquid CO2.

Lackner claims his project is more effective size-wise than a wind turbine when it comes to keeping CO2 out of the atmosphere, and at a cost equivalent to that of an average car. The primary advantage to the "tree" is that it captures carbon that would otherwise be very hard to keep out of the atmosphere, such as CO2 from cars or airplanes. It also does it in a fairly small space. The pseudo plant uses 50 kilojoules of energy per mole [unit] of CO2, as compared to 230 kilojoules per mole produced in the average US power plant.

The CO2 collector isn't as cost-effective as the technology put into new, less polluting coal-fired power plants, says Lackner, but it is better than the cost involved in retrofitting an existing, older plant. And since the technology is designed as a way to combat emissions already in the atmosphere, rather than new greenhouse gases being released (as in the case of carbon capture and storage power plants), the technology has a great deal of viability.

While the artificial tree is still in the development stages, it has gained the interest of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, which is perhaps a first step on the way to success for the project.