A new battery-like technology developed by University of Illinois and Toyota engineers pulls carbon dioxide straight out of open air using electricity instead of heat.
A new battery-like device can now pull carbon dioxide straight out of the air. Engineers built it by borrowing tricks from rechargeable battery technology. The approach could make direct air capture cheaper and easier to scale.
Researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign built the device with Toyota. Their findings appear in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. The team says its method could outperform existing direct air capture (DAC) systems.
Mechanical engineering professor Kyle Smith led the Illinois side of the project. Graduate students Paul Rozzi and JeongA Lee also contributed to the design and testing. Toyota researchers Chip Roberts and Tim Arthur rounded out the collaborative team.
Cutting emissions alone likely will not meet global climate targets. Scientists say some carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere must also be removed. Doing it directly from open air, though, remains technically difficult and costly.
Fossil fuel use keeps climbing worldwide, even as renewable energy expands rapidly. That trend makes atmospheric carbon removal an increasingly urgent complement to emissions cuts. A cheaper battery-like device could help close that gap faster.
Most carbon capture technology targets concentrated sources like factory smokestacks. Open air contains far less carbon dioxide per breath than smokestack exhaust. Current DAC systems rely on giant fans and costly materials to make up the difference.
Smith and his colleagues describe this diluted atmospheric carbon as a legacy problem. Decades of past emissions remain mixed into the air at very low concentrations. Addressing that backlog requires tools built specifically for open-air conditions, not smokestacks.
Battery-like technology designed for open-air conditions rather than factory smokestacks addresses what researchers call a legacy problem, targeting the decades of past emissions now diluted across the atmosphere at concentrations too low for conventional direct air capture systems to handle cost-effectively. Photo by Nikita Belokhonov on Pexels.
Those materials also need heating once they have soaked up enough carbon dioxide. That step releases the gas for storage or reuse elsewhere. Heating adds significant energy costs to the whole process.
The new battery-like technology skips heat altogether. It relies on an electrochemical cell built from specialized manganese dioxide electrodes. A saltwater solution flows through the cell during operation.
Running current in one direction makes the solution more alkaline. That alkaline solution readily absorbs carbon dioxide from the surrounding air. Reversing the current makes the solution less alkaline, releasing pure carbon dioxide for capture.
This alkaline shift allows carbon dioxide to dissolve far more readily than in neutral water. Researchers describe the setup as a cation-compensated cell built around proton-intercalation electrodes. That design keeps the whole cycle reversible, much like charging and discharging a battery.
Similar electrode materials already appear in some rechargeable battery designs. Applying that same chemistry to carbon capture is part of what makes this approach unusual. It also helps explain why the team compares the device’s operation to a battery.
Early lab results already look encouraging for the new method. Researchers still need to prevent the device’s two liquid streams from mixing. Solving that problem should improve both energy use and overall capture efficiency.
Toyota Motor North America helped fund the research alongside university grants. The University of Illinois has filed patent applications, with Toyota holding joint rights. Toyota describes the work as part of its broader push toward long-term decarbonization.
Additional support came from the university’s Campus Research Board and Grainger College of Engineering. That mix of industry and academic funding is common for early-stage climate technology. Researchers say continued support will be needed to move the device beyond the lab.
Full details of the study appear in a University of Illinois news release describing the project. Battery-like technology like this one add a new option to a still-young field. Some direct air capture methods use heat, while others use chemical filters instead.
Electricity-driven designs like this one could offer a cheaper path toward pulling old carbon back out of the sky. Wider testing outside the lab will show whether that promise holds up at scale. For now, the results mark a hopeful early step for a technology the world will likely need.
