Heat up to catch carbon

Carbon capture and sequestration can help limit carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and maintain the annual global temperature increase to below 1.5? to 2°C above preindustrial levels, a goal set by the 2015 Paris Agreement (1). Sorbents—porous materials that capture a specific liquid or gas—play a role in achieving this. However, the existing technology only adsorbs CO₂ at low temperatures and is not suitable for removing CO₂ from hot gas streams emitted by industrial plants. Given that industrial processes produce more than 50% of the total global CO₂ emissions (2), it is critical to develop sorbents that separate carbon at high temperatures. On page 814 of this issue, Rohde et al. (3) report a metal-organic framework (MOF)–based solid sorbent that reversibly captures CO₂ at low concentrations and at temperatures up to 300°C. This could potentially be scaled for use in industrial exhaust systems.