CARBON VACUUM CLEANER

Strange idea, but so was jet travel...

Giant carbon vacuums could cool Earth; Tall metal structures would scrub the greenhouse gas from the air
Moises Velasquez-Manoff, April 18, 2007 (Christian Science Monitor)

WHO
Columbia University physicist Klaus Lackner, Allen Wright, president of Global Research Technologies, LLC

WHAT
A 9-foot tall prototype of a device to scrub carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere at the rate of 50 grams/day.

WHEN
Except for the small scale prototype, the concept is entirely hypothetical.

WHERE
Experimentation with the prototype will be at Global Research Technologies home office in Tuscon, Arizona.

WHY
- CO2 emissions cause global warming. Even if clean coal technologies were instantly available, transportation-sourced emissions would still burden the climate. If the greenhouse gases could be taken out of the air, it would salvage the environment and allow the continued burning of fossil fuels—until they run out.
- Cost is the biggest drawback. It would require 250,000 of the devices and an area the size of Arizona to scrub all 90,000 annual tons of CO2 emissions. Hypothetically, this process would cost $30/ton, or 25 cents/gallon of gasoline. Sodium hydroxide (lye) is proposed as the scrubbing agent, though something less caustic is possible. Temperatures of 900 degrees C. will be required to separate out the CO2, requiring more energy and generating more emissions. A competing idea for the long run is to develop plants’ natural photosynthetic capacity to digest CO2 instead of constructing such energy and cost intensive artificial process.

QUOTES
- Lackner: "Fossil fuels will run out not because of limited resources but because of the environmental impact…If I can solve that impact, I have basically increased the resource base by a vast amount."
- Robert Williams, Princeton University research scientist: "Mother Nature knows how to take the carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere…We can put it underground."
- Gary Rochelle, University of Texas, Austin, professor of chemical engineering: "There are other lower hanging fruit alternatives to deal with the carbon dioxide problem that we need to do now…"