Cat Litter May Be The Answer To Fighting A Gas Blamed In Climate Change

Image ID 171324823 © Chernetskaya | Dreamstime.com

Many innovations have been devised as of late with the aim of removing carbon dioxide, or CO2, from our atmosphere in a bid to reduce greenhouse gases. 

However, carbon dioxide isn’t the only culprit for the climate crisis. There’s another threat in our midst, and that is methane. 

Researchers at MIT are coming up with a new way of extracting this gas, which can be up to 80 times more potent than CO2, through a surprisingly common and relatively accessible tool: a bag of cat litter. 

In a study published in the journal ACS Environmental Au, zeolite—a clay used in litter—was the star of the show.

When treated with a small amount of copper, the clay was capable of converting a stream of heated methane into CO2, even if the former is in very low concentrations. 

CO2 isn’t all that great either, and the researchers are aware of this. “When people hear that, they say, ‘Yikes, that’s not good—I know CO2 is bad for the environment,’” Desiree Plata, study co-author, explains to The Optimist Daily. 

But because methane is so much more harmful to the environment, converting it to CO2 will help to “bring immediate climate benefit into the Earth system and actually change global warming rates in our lifetime,” she details.

A news release from MIT explains that converting even just half of the atmosphere’s methane to CO2 would barely increase the latter’s presence by “less than one part per million,” or around 0.2% of today’s atmospheric CO2.

But this microscopic change could then lead to saving around 16% of total radiative warming. Fast Company also points out that this CO2 could be used by other various startups to create things like perfume. 

The mix of zeolite and copper is a relatively affordable setup, and can be implemented in places where methane emissions are high, like dairy farms. The next challenge, though, is to create a system that doesn’t involve the rest of the cat litter. 

“Pushing air through cat litter is not easy,” Plata tells Fast Company. “You can imagine all of the technical challenges that would result—blowing powder around, and then heating that is a challenge as well.”

“So one of the things that we need to do is get the catalyst structured in a way that lots of air can come by it relatively quickly, but still give you a good reaction.”

[via Fast Company and The Optimist Daily, image ID 171324823 © Chernetskaya | Dreamstime.com]