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Sunday, 1 February 2026

South Korean researchers create electrode that captures carbon from exhaust and converts it to valuable chemical in one step

 South Korean researchers create a three-layer electrode for direct carbon capture and conversion.

It captures CO2 from mixed industrial exhaust or air without needing costly purification.

The device converts the captured CO2 into valuable formic acid in a single step.

This process turns carbon capture from a cost into a potential revenue stream.

It works efficiently with both flue gas and ordinary air, a historic breakthrough.

A team of South Korean researchers has unveiled a novel three-layer electrode that directly captures carbon dioxide from industrial exhaust and even ordinary air, converting it into a useful industrial chemical. This advancement, reported in the journal ACS Energy Letters, moves carbon capture technology from a costly theoretical exercise into the realm of practical, economically viable deployment. The device works efficiently under the messy, mixed-gas conditions of real-world emissions, a historic hurdle that has long stalled scalable solutions.

For years, the promise of carbon capture has been hampered by a fundamental problem: most systems require pure, concentrated streams of CO2 to function. In reality, the flue gas from power plants or factories is a cocktail of nitrogen, oxygen, and other gases. Purifying the CO2 first is an energy-intensive and expensive step, making the entire process inefficient and costly. Furthermore, many technologies merely capture the gas for underground storage, a service with no economic return....<<<Read More>>>...