One of the greatest threats to the atmosphere is the unchecked emission of greenhouse gases that is caused due to the combustion of fossil fuels such as oil pumps and coal. According to a study, around 33% of total carbon dioxide emissions have power plants as their source which generates energy burning the gas. A recent solution to this severe problem came in the form of carbon capture and storage. This method employs techniques that trap the carbon dioxide emissions and collate them inside the earth before they could actually make it to the atmosphere.

Though this method is quite efficient, it needs a lot of finances to be employed in order to develop filters that can alienate CO2 from the other industrial gaseous emissions. The developing nanotechnology can be utilized to design thin film nanoscale membranes that could solve this problem.

The filtering membranes those are currently available are not fit for large scale applications because their carbon dioxide filtering capacity is quite less which is the result of the inadequate permeability they exhibit to the gas. The nanometric membranes are still in their infant stages of development but the outcomes they are displaying in the testing stages are incredible. Not only these membranes have very high permeance but also they cater to the needs of high selectivity and stability.

The research work in this work area of nanotechnology is going at a break neck pace. This development scores over the traditional ones in terms of the qualities of selectivity, permeability and stability. Also the technique is very advantageous when it comes to cost effectiveness.