The issue of global warming threatens humanity, the habitat of wildlife and could define the 21st century. Consequently, in 2019, I began a project to encapsulate carbon dioxide absorbing fluids in a novel polymeric capsule.
It is intended that these capsules be placed in a structure through which industrial emissions exit to absorb the carbon dioxide component of the effluent gas. Although there are established carbon dioxide absorbents, they face several challenges. Most prominently, in the carbon dioxide capture process, some absorbents release toxic products which contribute to environmental pollution. It was the aim to generate these capsules to be used as the definitive method to uptake carbon dioxide without any environmental drawbacks. This project was targeted at combating global warming, inevitably supporting the United Kingdom’s pledge to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emission by 2050.
In the past year, these capsules were fabricated and their uniformity, stability, carbon dioxide uptake efficiency and complete encapsulation of the core fluid were ascertained. These capsules were generated through the use of microfluidics as this method of encapsulation allowed precise control over the capsule size and the generation of monodispersed capsules. From the study, it was concluded that the novel polymeric capsules are ideal for industrial application.