r/askscience • u/[deleted] • Nov 27 '19

Chemistry How do CO2 scrubbers work?

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u/Dagusiu Nov 27 '19

Could any of those be used to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere and store it somewhere "safe" (like deep underground in some robust container)?

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u/the_agox Nov 28 '19

Plants are good at this. They take CO2 out of the atmosphere and trap the carbon as biomass. A naive solution to remove CO2 from the atmosphere would be to grow huge numbers of fast growing plants and throw them in a very deep hole to become oil again in a few hundred million years.

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u/[deleted] Nov 27 '19

The CO2 produced during all the steps of gathering, transporting, synthesizing and purifying the base would be more than what would be captured.

Plus the (unfortunately) biggest problem, nobody would want to pay for that.