| Carbon Scrubbing Ceramic Tubes |
| Written by Hank Green | |
| Tuesday, 18 September 2007 | |
 While it'd be great if we could switch over to 100% solar power right now, we can't. We're stuck with burning fossil fuels...for a while at least. So lets start thinking of ways to keep fossil fuels from releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. Well, we can simply use that CO2 for a variety of applications, like feeding algea to produce biofuels. Yeah, that one sounds good. Bad news though, the fumes from coal power plants contain a lot more than CO2. The nitrogen oxides in the fumes would outright kill the algea. So nix on that idea right? Wel...not so fast. Two researchers, at the University of Newcastle Ian Metcalfe and Alan Thursfield are thinking about using a new kind of ceramic material to control the burning environment of the coal. These ceramic tubes can actually pull pure oxygen from the air. So they plan to burn coal in pure oxygen. If there's no nitrogen in the combustion chamber, then no nitrogen oxides will be emitted. And, voila, there you have an ultra-efficient, ultra-clean burning coal fired power station. And the only thing leaving the smoke stack is pure CO2 and ash. The ash is scrubbed out like it always has been, and the pure CO2 can be used to help create biofuels. Sounds pretty promising, and we'll keep an eye on the technology as it attempts to leave the lab. Via Inhabitat and The Unviersity of Newcastle Comments
(3)
uhm
written by jaykayess , September 19, 2007
Call me naive, but it's that CO2 eventually emitted anyway when the biofuels are burnt?
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written by plv , September 21, 2007
Yes but it's used twice. Basically bulk power generation would become carbon neutral and the only release of CO2 would be for transportation. see the link below for a company making kit to grow algae rich in oil. The nutrients used to grow the algae are commonly found in sewage.
The futures here the futures green http://www.algaelink.com/algae...eactor.htm | |
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What's new about this is the ability to use them on solid fuels. I'm guessing one would want to keep some water cycling into the combustion chamber.