Georgia Tech reports improved carbon capture from a treated commercial resin

Georgia Tech reported on September 30, 2026, that researchers working with CarbonCapture Inc. had modified a commercial resin used in direct-air-capture research. In laboratory tests in Georgia, the treated material captured about 75% more carbon dioxide than the untreated resin under dry, air-like conditions, according to the university. The result matters because the team started with an existing material, although the tests do not establish how long the treatment would last in an outdoor capture system.

The material is Lewatit VP OC 1065, an amine resin used as a benchmark in direct-air-capture research. Its amine groups bind CO₂. The researchers soaked the resin in azetidine and a small amount of acid, then heated it for two days to grow branched polymer chains from existing amine sites, Georgia Tech reported. The work asks whether changing a familiar material can improve its performance under conditions relevant to capturing CO₂ from air.

How the treated resin performed in laboratory tests

The university reported the roughly 75% increase in uptake under dry conditions with approximately 400 parts per million of CO₂, a concentration intended to resemble air. Under simulated industrial flue-gas conditions, where CO₂ is more concentrated, the treated resin captured more than 50% more than the untreated material. These are comparisons between resin samples under specified test conditions; Georgia Tech did not report a measured reduction in the cost of removing a tonne of CO₂ in an operating plant.

The team also varied humidity and tested temperatures from 25°C down to −20°C. According to Georgia Tech, the treated resin outperformed the original in humid air at every temperature tested. In very cold, dry conditions, however, its advantage disappeared. The accessible announcement did not give a precise temperature and humidity threshold for that change, limiting how directly the finding can guide a choice of operating location or conditions.

Why humidity and resin stability matter

Separate work on commercial amine resins shows why the operating conditions deserve attention. A December 2025 working paper by Katia Piscina, Mijndert van der Spek, John Young and Susana Garcia examined humidity-driven swelling and the movement of water and CO₂ through beads of Lewatit VP OC 1065 and Purolite A110. Its authors found that swelling could slow water transport toward the centre of a bead, particularly at higher humidity. The host identifies the paper as an early research output that had not been peer-reviewed by Cambridge University Press when posted.

That work examines the behaviour of the resins, not Georgia Tech’s new treatment. It offers context for a practical issue: measured CO₂ uptake can depend on moisture and on how gases and water move through a bead, not just on the number of sites able to bind CO₂. Georgia Tech’s report says its team also applied the treatment to Purolite A110, but the reported gains for Lewatit should not be read as a quantified performance result for every commercial resin.

A 2026 review of direct-air-capture adsorbents identifies oxygen-related degradation and moisture effects as continuing stability concerns for amine-based materials. That context makes the reported reduction in oxidative degradation relevant, while leaving open whether the improvement persists through extended outdoor cycling. A shorter laboratory comparison and long service life in a working system answer different engineering questions.

What remains before use at scale

Georgia Tech says the researchers have filed a provisional patent and are working to extend the method to other amine materials and beyond laboratory quantities. Lead author Arkaprabha Giri described improvement of existing commercial resins as a possible way to speed deployment if the gains can be made useful at scale. That is a prospective benefit, rather than evidence that this treatment has already been manufactured or deployed at industrial scale.

CarbonCapture Inc. collaborated on the work; study co-author Omid Ghaffari Nik is the company’s vice president of materials science and process, according to Georgia Tech. The university’s account is the available source for the new study’s numerical results. The cited study itself could not be accessed for this report, so the experimental details and results should be understood as the university describes them.

The next practical tests would need to establish performance over prolonged outdoor direct-air operation, assess whether the treatment works consistently beyond laboratory quantities, and measure the effect in a complete capture process. The available results establish a laboratory comparison across several conditions, including a clear cold, dry exception. They do not establish outdoor service life, commercial manufacturing performance or a system-level cost per tonne of CO₂ removed.