If there was one thing Cameron Halliday SM ’19, MBA ’22, PhD ’22 was exceptional at during the early days of his PhD at MIT, it was producing the same graph over and over again.
If there was one thing Cameron Halliday SM ’19, MBA ’22, PhD ’22 was exceptional at during the early days of his PhD at MIT, it was producing the same graph over and over again. Unfortunately for Halliday, the graph measured various materials’ ability to absorb CO2 at high temperatures over time — and it always pointed down and to the right. That meant the materials lost their ability to capture the molecules responsible for warming our climate.
At least Halliday wasn’t alone: For many years, researchers have tried and mostly failed to find materials that could reliably absorb CO2 at the super-high temperatures of industrial furnaces, kilns, and boilers. Halliday’s goal was to find something that lasted a little longer.
Then in 2019, he put a type of molten salt called lithium-sodium ortho-borate through his tests. The salts absorbed more than 95 percent of the CO2. And for the first time, the graph showed almost no degradation over 50 cycles. The same was true after 100 cycles. Then 1,000.
Read more at: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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