How to cut CO2? Add 'dry water'

It’s an oxymoron, but not an impossible one: “Dry water.”

In fact, the powdery version of Earth’s most abundant liquid could potentially hold the key to reversing global warming, harnessing natural gas energy and driving new, more energy-efficient ways to produce food ingredients, medicines and other consumer products.

Researchers from the University of Liverpool detailed the promises of dry water at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society taking place this week in Boston.

Dry water is actually 95 per cent water with a bit of modified silica thrown in. The silica coats individual droplets of water, preventing them from coalescing into a liquid and producing a fine granular material that looks and pours like powdered sugar. First discovered in 1968, it was rediscovered by scientists at the University of Hull in 2006. A research team at the University of Liverpool is now exploring a host of applications for this unique material.

“There’s nothing else quite like it,” said researcher Ben Carter, a member of study leader Andrew Cooper’s team at Liverpool. “Hopefully, we may see ‘dry water’ making waves in the future.”

One of the team’s discoveries shows that dry water can absorb more than three times as much carbon dioxide as an ordinary mix of water and silica. That talent could in theory be exploited to soak up large volumes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or power plant emissions, trapping the greenhouse gas in the form of a hydrate (a compound formed when water is added to certain types of molecules).

Cooper’s team has also shown that dry water can act as a storage vehicle for methane — natural gas. That could make it possible to store and transport natural gas supplies in powder form, which could make it easier to store methane for natural gas-powered vehicles and harness the energy of the vast amount of methane hydrates found beneath the oceans … one day, anyway.

“A great deal of work remains to be done before we could reach that stage,” Carter said.

Dry water also has the potential to speed up the catalysing reactions used in manufacturing a number of different consumer products. Many food ingredients, drugs and other products today are made using succinic acid, which is produced through a reaction with hydrogen gas and maleic acid. Activating that reaction, however, typically involved a lot of stirring … which means a lot of energy input. By instead using dry water that contains maleic acid, manufacturers could produce succinic acid without the stirring, Cooper’s team has shown.