SDSC Assists in Generating Clean Tech Breakthrough
SDSC's Trestles Used to Develop New Tools for Cleaner Air and Energy Production. Using the Trestles supercomputer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, chemists at the University of South Florida (USF) and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have discovered a more efficient, less expensive, and reusable material for carbon dioxide (CO2) capture and separation than is currently used to prevent the greenhouse gas from entering the atmosphere. The breakthrough could have implications for a new generation of clean-air technologies, and offers new tools for confronting the world's challenges in controlling carbon. In the findings hexafluorosilicate - also known as SIFSIX-1-Cu - that offers a highly efficient mechanism for capturing CO'. Trestles , as part of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), helped to confirm experimental results suggesting the sorption properties (the physical and chemical process by which substances attach to each other) of the material. The discovery represents more than an improvement over existing materials in terms of carbon capture, said USF Chemistry Professor Mike Zaworotko, noting that the material also is highly-effective at carbon capture even in the presence of water vapor, a standard that other materials have not been able to meet. This makes it a promising candidate for real-world applications. Water normally interferes with CO?
