Biomass-based carbon capture spotlighted in newly released global climate webinar recording
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Harnessing Nature’s Carbon Engine: Biomass as a Pillar of Climate Mitigation
view moreCredit: Dato’ Dr. Agamutu Pariatamby FASc
As countries around the world grapple with the challenge of achieving net-zero emissions, a newly released online webinar recording is drawing attention to one of the most promising and underappreciated climate solutions: biomass-based carbon capture. The full recording of the international seminar, held online on December 17, 2025, is now freely available on YouTube, offering researchers, policymakers, and the public an accessible deep dive into how nature’s carbon cycle can be harnessed for large-scale climate mitigation.
The webinar, titled Harnessing Nature’s Carbon Engine: Biomass as a Pillar of Climate Mitigation, features a keynote presentation by Prof. Dato’ Dr. Agamutu Pariatamby FASc, Senior Professor at the Jeffrey Sachs Center on Sustainable Development at Sunway University in Malaysia. The session was hosted by Prof. Siming You of the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom and attracted an international audience interested in practical, science-based pathways toward decarbonization.
In the talk, Prof. Pariatamby outlines how bio-based carbon capture approaches could collectively deliver up to 6.7 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in annual mitigation potential by 2050, based on estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. These approaches include bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, biochar soil amendments, composting of organic waste, agroforestry, and regenerative agricultural practices.
“Biomass is often viewed simply as a renewable fuel, but its real power lies in its ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it in soils and long-lived systems,” said Prof. Pariatamby during the webinar. “When designed correctly, these solutions are scalable, cost-effective, and particularly relevant for developing regions.”
The recording explains how different biomass pathways contribute to climate mitigation. Bioenergy with carbon capture could sequester between 3.5 and 5.0 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, while biochar application has the potential to lock away 1.1 to 3.3 gigatonnes annually, depending on soil and management conditions. Composting organic residues such as food waste and manure can further reduce emissions by avoiding methane release and enhancing soil carbon storage.
Beyond climate benefits, the webinar emphasizes the broader co-benefits of biomass-based systems. Long-term application of compost and biochar can increase soil organic carbon by 10 to 40 percent, improving soil fertility, water retention, and resilience to drought. Decentralized biomass solutions can also reduce landfill waste, generate renewable energy for rural communities, and create local green jobs.
By making the full webinar recording publicly available on YouTube, the organizers aim to extend the impact of the discussion well beyond the live event. The recording serves as a resource for scientists, students, decision-makers, and sustainability practitioners seeking evidence-based insights into nature-positive climate strategies.
The webinar recording is now available for on-demand viewing on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ojXxNI9AjcI?si=wg9s1OhBLUF7zb4r
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About Carbon Research
The journal Carbon Research is an international multidisciplinary platform for communicating advances in fundamental and applied research on natural and engineered carbonaceous materials that are associated with ecological and environmental functions, energy generation, and global change. It is a fully Open Access (OA) journal and the Article Publishing Charges (APC) are waived until Dec 31, 2025. It is dedicated to serving as an innovative, efficient and professional platform for researchers in the field of carbon functions around the world to deliver findings from this rapidly expanding field of science. The journal is currently indexed by Scopus and Ei Compendex, and as of June 2025, the dynamic CiteScore value is 15.4.
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About Biochar
Biochar is the first journal dedicated exclusively to biochar research, spanning agronomy, environmental science, and materials science. It publishes original studies on biochar production, processing, and applications—such as bioenergy, environmental remediation, soil enhancement, climate mitigation, water treatment, and sustainability analysis. The journal serves as an innovative and professional platform for global researchers to share advances in this rapidly expanding field.
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Predictive “mismatch” leads to carbon capture breakthrough
Work revealing how water impacts carbon dioxide capture from air named Journal of the American Chemical Society “Editor’s Choice”
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Hilal Daglar, a former postdoctoral researcher in the lab of UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and Chemistry Department Prof. Laura Gagliardi, is first author of a new paper with Gagliardi and Nobel Laureate Omar Yaghi that outlined a new method for excluding water when using covalent organic frameworks (COFs) to build carbon capture materials
view moreCredit: Photo provided by Hilal Daglar
When experimental results don’t match scientists’ predictions, it’s usually assumed the predictions were wrong. But new research into materials that pull carbon dioxide directly from the air shows how such mismatches can instead be powerful clues, leading to discoveries that reshape how future materials are designed.
In a paper published Dec. 21 in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS), a team led by Prof. Laura Gagliardi of the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (UChicago PME) and Department of Chemistry and Nobel laureate Prof. Omar Yaghi of the University of California, Berkeley outlined a new method for excluding water when using covalent organic frameworks (COFs) to build carbon capture materials.
In recognition of the scientific importance and real-world impact of this research, JACS selected the paper as its “Editor’s Choice.”
“Mismatches between simulations and experiments are not failures, but opportunities,” said first author Hilal Daglar, who conducted the work as a postdoctoral researcher in Gagliardi’s lab and is now with UL Research Institutes. “In this project, those discrepancies guided us toward residual water and subtle structural features that were not obvious at first glance.”
The work came from The Center for Advanced Materials for Environmental Solutions (CAMES), which Gagliardi co-directs as part of the University of Chicago Institute for Climate & Sustainable Growth. By outlining a design strategy where researchers introduce hydrophobic pore environments to exclude retained water, the research will allow scientists to create more effective and efficient solutions for air pollution.
“We think of CAMES as a bridge between materials discovered in the lab and real-world environmental impact,” said CAMES Co-Director Doug Weinberg. “Our role isn’t just to support breakthrough science. It’s to help ensure those breakthroughs matter beyond the lab. Hilal’s work is a great example of that mission in action.”
Exploring the mystery
Gagliardi has studied the power and potential of COFs and reticular chemistry for the last ten years, but COFs were thrust into the public eye this year after Gagliardi’s longtime collaborator Yaghi won the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry alongside Susumu Kitagawa and Richard Robson.
“These materials are known as reticular frameworks, meaning they are built from well-defined molecular building blocks that are connected through strong chemical bonds into extended crystalline networks,” Gagliardi said. “Because the connectivity is designed at the molecular level, these frameworks contain uniform, nanoscale pores, giving them exceptionally large internal surface areas that can be deliberately functionalized for specific applications.”
By using those large cavities to capture and store airborne pollutants like carbon dioxide and methane, Gagliardi and her team hope to use these materials’ unique properties for this major environmental issue.
Harnessing Gagliardi’s theoretical modeling expertise, Daglar and Gagliardi performed complex computer simulations predicting the structure of COF-999-NH2, the precursor of COF-999, a promising material for CO2 capture from air. But there was a disconnect between their predictions and the results produced by the experimentalists on Yaghi’s team.
Rather than assume failure of the computations, the theorists and experimentalists dove into this mystery together, coming up with new, unexpected insights.
“In this back and forth between experiment and theory, we started to hypothesize that there were some residual water molecules in the synthesized material, which we initially did not include in our model because the experimentalists thought that the material had been completely dehydrated,” Gagliardi said.
New insights, new rule
This investigation led not only to new insights into the cause of this predictive mismatch, but a path to better, more effective carbon capture in the future. They created a simple, actionable design rule for future researchers: controlling the pore hydrophobicity during the polymerization of COF-999 avoids water retention.
“This prevents adsorption site blockage and undesired side reactions, enabling more effective carbon capture,” Daglar said.
Beyond this core finding, the research also revealed previously unknown insights about COFs, including that the stacking heterogeneity, buckling and lattice contraction they were seeing were features, not bugs, intrinsic to their precursor chemical.
Gagliardi said the emergence of these important results from predictions that conflicted with experiment underscores the central role of computational modeling in enabling the research.
“To advance these discoveries, computations and simulations are indispensable,” she said. “On the computer, you can try things that maybe your chemical intuition might not suggest right away. The computer can give you some useful answers that allow you to think in a different way.”
Citation: “Discovery of Stacking Heterogeneity Layer Buckling and Residual Water in COF-999-NH2 and Implications on CO2 Capture,” Daglar et al, Journal of the American Chemical Society, December 21, 2025. DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5c18608
Journal
Journal of the American Chemical Society
Article Title
Discovery of Stacking Heterogeneity, Layer Buckling, and Residual Water in COF-999-NH2 and Implications on CO2 Capture
Article Publication Date
21-Dec-2025
