Ceramic Tubes Could Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Greenhouse gas emissions from power stations could be cut to almost zero by controlling the combustion process with tiny tubes made from an advanced ceramic material, claimed engineers today.

Conventional gas-fired power stations burn methane in a stream of air, producing a mixture of nitrogen and greenhouse gases which include carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides, which of course as we all know are emitted into the atmosphere causing the ozone layer to gradually be depleted. The separation of these gases is not practical because of the large cost and high amount of energy required.
However, the LSCF tubes would allow only the oxygen component of air to reach the CH4 gas resulting in the production of almost pure CO2 and steam, which can effortlessly be separated by condensing out the steam as water. The consequential stream of CO2 could be piped to a processing plant for conversion into chemicals such as methanol-useful in industry.
When air is blown around the outside of the tubes, oxygen is able to pass through the wall of the tube to the inside, where it combusts with CH4 gas that is being pumped into the tubes.
The oxygen-depleted air, which consists essentially of N, can be returned to the atmosphere with no harmful effects on the environment, while the CO2 can be collected separately from the inside of the tubes after combustion.

www.sciencedaily.com...

THIS is the type of research we should back further. Fossil fuels are not going away for a long time coming.

Amazing.

Simply amazing.


People scream and cry about global this, global that.

Amazing advances like this, which could virtually eliminate emissions from a lot of sources, GO UNNOTICED.

Is it simple ignorance?
Lack of attention?

Or something altogether more sinister?

This idea has been around for a while and the only thing holding it back so far to date is the cost of O2. It takes a lot of energy to cool and compress it into a liquid. Solve that problem and you can possibly solve 9/10ths of all airborn pollutants. I don't think ceramic is the way to go though, it's just too pricey atm.

Also I think we need to setup a closed loop system as there is only so much O2 in the atmosphere lol. We need to reprocess the waste gasses and seperate. Perhaps some sort of passive biosystem can do the trick without using electricity as I think it would be too costly to seperate The o2 from CO2 the conventional way so let the plants(or algea) do it!

www.boston.com...

[edit on 8-8-2007 by sardion2000]