This work is motivated by the need for inexpensive carboncapture technology for combustion-based power plants. Such power plants produce electricity by converting coal or natural gas to carbon dioxide (CO2), which is normally vented as an 11%-12% component of flue gas that contains a balance of nitrogen and other minor components. Separating CO2 from such a flue-gas mixture poses no special technical problems for the known absorption, pressure-swing adsorption (PSA), and membrane technologies. However, these technologies have a tendency to be expensive for two principal reasons: the hot flue gas is produced at low pressure and the separated component (CO2) is highly dilute with an inert component (nitrogen).