Klaus S. Lackner is the Founding Director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions (CNCE) and a professor in School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at

Arizona State University Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public university, public research university in Tempe, Arizona, United States. Founded in 1885 as Territorial Normal School by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, the university is o ...

. He is scientific advisor to Carbon Collect Limited (name changed from Silicon Kingdom Holdings Limited in April 2021), and senior science advisor to Aircela Inc. He is a pioneer in carbon management and is the first to suggest capturing carbon dioxide from air in the context of addressing climate change. His works include demonstrating and improving passive methods to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, integrating air capture technology with applications for using carbon dioxide, exploring safe and permanent disposal options for carbon dioxide, and identifying opportunities for automation and scaling. his publications have been cited 12771 times and his

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with success indicators such as winning t ...

is 53. Previously, he was the director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy at the

Earth Institute {{Infobox organization , name = The Earth Institute , image = Ei blue1.gif , map_size = , map_alt = , map_caption = , map2 = , type = , tax_id ...

. and Faculty in the Earth and Environmental Engineering department at Columbia University from 2001-2014. Along with CNCE executive director Allen Wright, he co-founded one of the first privately held air capture companies—Global Research Technologies (GRT)—in

Tucson Tucson (; ; ) is a city in Pima County, Arizona, United States, and its county seat. It is the second-most populous city in Arizona, behind Phoenix, Arizona, Phoenix, with a population of 542,630 in the 2020 United States census. The Tucson ...

Arizona Arizona is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States, sharing the Four Corners region of the western United States with Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. It also borders Nevada to the nort ...

where they demonstrated the moisture swing. Prior to his academic work he held appointments at the theoretical division of

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development Laboratory, laboratories of the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy ...

for nearly 17 years. His idea of the self-replicating machines along with his colleague, Christopher Wendt, was featured in 1995 by

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as "One of the 7 Ideas that can Change the World." He has also invented the Mechanical Tree which is designed to soak up passively the carbon dioxide from the air.

Mechanical trees

Klaus designed the prototype Mechanical Tree (also referred to as a ''Synthetic Tree'' or ''Fake Tree'',) which was on display at the 'Our Future Planet' temporary exhibition at the Science Museum, London from May 2021 until September 2022. The technology consists of sorbent tiles which cyclically are extended into the air and then retracted for regeneration. The sorbent tiles passively soak up the

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalent bond, covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in a gas state at room temperature and at norma ...

from the air using 'passive direct air capture' (PDAC) technology and are claimed to be 1,000 times more efficient than natural trees that use

photosynthesis Photosynthesis ( ) is a system of biological processes by which photosynthetic organisms, such as most plants, algae, and cyanobacteria, convert light energy, typically from sunlight, into the chemical energy necessary to fuel their metabo ...

. Subsequently the

captured can be either sequestered in underground geological formations or sold for industrial use. The PDAC and Mechanical Tree technology has been licensed to Carbon Collect Limited by CNCE.

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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lackner, Klaus S. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Arizona State University faculty Columbia University faculty Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science faculty Heidelberg University alumni

Mechanical trees

See also

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References