Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have invented a material in powder form that adsorbs carbon dioxide with astonishing performance.
It's called COF-999, which is short for Covalent Organic Frameworks, and just 200g (a little under 0.5 lb) can suck up 44 lb (20kg) of CO2. That's the same as a tree does in a year.
This makes it suitable for direct air capture (DAC), the process of sucking existing CO2 out of the air. Given the alarming levels of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere today, this is the sort of breakthrough the world needs.
While DAC methods have previously used similar solutions in water, COF-999 is a better material for the job in many ways. For starters, you don't need to heat it up to make it work as it can capture CO2 at room temperature. It can also be reused at least 100 times without degrading or losing capacity, and it can selectively adsorb a large amount of CO2.
Plus, study leader Zihui Zhou told the LA Times that COF-999 captures carbon dioxide "at least 10 times faster" than other DAC materials.
Once the powder has captured CO2, it can be heated to 140 ºF (60 ºC) to release it. That CO2 can then be sequestered permanently in underground geological formations so it doesn't pollute the atmosphere, or used to produce materials like concrete.
The team reckons that it will be about two years before their innovation goes mainstream - and hopefully we'll see more inventions like this magical yellow powder in the near future.
A paper on the study was recently published in the journal Nature.