Capturing Carbon

September 16th, 2009 Alex

Back in April, President Obama announced that the Department of Energy will fund two UC Berkeley professors $30 million to research carbno capturing technology. The goal will be to find a way of storing underground the carbon dioxide released from fossil fuel and power plants. My friend is actually helping take part in the research to find the solution. The entire world emits about 6 million tons of carbon dioxide every year and the United States contributes 20% of that. Finding a way to capture that output and store it underground to prevent it from going into the atmosphere would be pretty cool. If we could find a way of reusing the carbon dioxide produced from power plants, that would be nice as well. There are a lot of ways that carbon dioxide gets used and reusing the stored carbon dioxide would be a huge resource. Here are some interesting facts about how carbon dioxide is used. 

• It is used to produce carbonated soft drinks.
• Liquid carbon dioxide is a gold solvent for organic compounds and is used to remove caffeine from coffee.
• carbon dioxide extinguishes flames so fire extinguishers contain pressurized liquid carbon dioxide.
• Pop Rocks is pressurized with carbon dioxide.
• Plants require carbon dioxide to conduct photosynthesis and greenhouses may add additional CO2 into the atmosphere.
• Solid carbon dioxide is also known as dry ice and it is crucial as a refrigerant in the food industry for the transportation of frozen foods and ice cream.
• Dry ice is also used in wine making to cool down grapes after picking to prevent spontaneous fermenting.

 references:

Daily Cal

Wikipedia

Entry Filed under: Environment