Tuesday, January 13, 2009

The Solution to Global Warming: A Simple Machine?

Is it possible that Global Warming can be solved by a simple machine? That's what Climate Change Scientist David Keith, Canada Research Chair in Energy and Environment, and also director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy's (ISEEE) Energy and Environmental Systems Group and a professor of chemical and petroleum engineering. and his fellow Team members have been able to prove. After much research conducted, it showed it is possible to reduce the amount of Carbon Dioxide by using a simple machine to capture the trace amount of CO2 present in the air at any place on the planet.
For those of you who don't know, Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is the main greenhouse gas contributing to global warming. Global warming is another way of saying the earth is warming up because of the greenhouse gases that are being trapped inside by the clouds. So you can see obviously that it’s not good and that if there were some way to reduce these greenhouse gases, we would be better off. The point of this simple machine is too do just that.
In order to capture CO2 it require air capture technology, in which Keith stated that “ air capture might only be a bit harder the capturing CO2 from power plants.” Also air capture is the only way to capture CO2 emissions from aircrafts and motor vehicles, which represent more then half the greenhouse gases emitted on Earth. He also said, “it's also vital to start thinking about radical new ideas and approaches to solving this problem." There are many things’ already being done right now, but he’s right for us to be thinking of more ways because global warming is becoming A bigger issue nowadays
Air capture and Carbon capture require two different types of storage technology. For example, air capture uses technology that can capture the CO2 that is present in the air everywhere. Carbon capture requires equipment such as coal-fired power plants were carbon is released by the burning coal into pipelines which lead to permanent underground storage areas.
Keith and his team’s custom built tower was able to capture the equivalent of about 20 tonnes per year of CO2 on a single square metre of scrubbing material – the average amount of emissions that one person produces each year in the North American wide economy.
Unfortunately this idea of a simple machine to extract carbon dioxide from the air is still only in the early stages of development. Keith states "It now looks like we could capture CO2 from the air with an energy demand comparable to that needed for CO2 capture from conventional power plants, although costs will certainly be higher and there are many pitfalls along the path to commercialization."
Keith and his team surely have opened many new doors of ideas for scientists, including themselves. It’s little ideas that have the will have the biggest impact on our earth, and hopefully in the near future this simple machine will have made a difference.

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