Engineers have developed a new way to pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere using a process similar to charging and discharging a battery—an advance that could help address the planet’s excess CO₂ problem.

A new collaborative study between scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Toyota focuses on direct air capture, a technology designed to reduce new emissions and remove CO₂ that has already accumulated in the atmosphere. Instead of using heat to absorb and release CO₂, as many carbon capture methods do, the new method uses electricity and water-based chemistry within an electrochemical device.

The results of the study by mechanical engineering and science professor Kyle Smith, Illinois graduate students Paul Rozzi and JeongA Lee, and Chip Roberts and Tim Arthur from the Toyota Research Institute of North America are published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.