Capturing greenhouse gases

But earlier this month, an ambitious project to build a system that could capture 90 percent of the carbon dioxide from a coal-fueled plant in West Virginia was put on hold by one of the largest electric utilities in the United States because of the uncertain state of climate policy and the weak economy.

The announcement that American Electric Power was halting the initiative, which had been supported by the federal government, was a serious blow to this particular effort to fight global warming. But it was only one of a slew of efforts being devised with that approach, which are still moving forward.

At start-up companies and in research laboratories, scientists are devising materials and technologies that could help remove or store carbon dioxide. The approaches span the gamut from basic science research in the laboratory to a company that is using carbon dioxide as a raw material to manufacture everyday plastics or chemicals - a technology that could enable the making of greenhouse-gas-based house paint or plastic bottles.

“If we’re really going to address this problem realistically, we have to have a variety of opportunities,’’ said T. Alan Hatton, a chemical engineering professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

For Hatton, the problem of separating and capturing carbon dioxide is, in some ways, a return to themes from earlier in his life.

Hatton grew up in South Africa, where his father commissioned and ran large power plants, and as a young scientist he wrote his master’s thesis about a method for absorbing carbon dioxide. His interest at the time was an industrial, not an environmental application.