For the past few decades, research has gone towards devising more efficient and lower pollution transportation. This seminar covers the shift in focus from a hydrogen economy towards carbon reduction and the similar challenges that both pose for adsorption. The mechanism for hydrogen spillover is analyzed and presented, with an emphasis on the practicality of the technology and newly defined maximum storage capacity. In contrast, carbon dioxide capture from the atmosphere is analyzed and presented for zeolite type X, designed to produce >90% purity CO2 during a single cycle, using a two bed system in tandem. Additionally, new amine based adsorbents will be presented as an option to optimize binding energies of carbon dioxide while keeping the high selectivity of traditional amine adsorbents. The culmination of the research is in new adsorbents that incorporate metal nanoparticles to act as gates, selectively allowing some gases into the adsorbent, while rejecting others. Hopefully this can lead to new designs in separations that fully integrate both membranes and adsorbents into one process.