Thursday, July 26, 2007

Passing Gas

This is kind of interesting. If this is true and pans out we could have a viable replacement for fuels like liquefied coal and ethanol that won't pollute.

Three Welsh inventors are touting their Greenbox system that would replace car exhaust systems with an emissions capture system. It uses algae to absorb the emitted gases and hold them inertly so that the boxes can be easily transported for centralised processing of the car wastes.
The three [...] have set up a company called Maes Anturio Limited, which translates from Welsh as Field Adventure.

Through a chemical reaction, the captured gases from the box would be fed to algae, which would then be crushed to produce a bio-oil. This extract can be converted to produce a biodiesel almost identical to normal diesel.

This biodiesel can be fed back into a diesel engine, the emptied Greenbox can be affixed to the car and the cycle can begin again.

The process also yields methane gas and fertiliser, both of which can be captured separately. The algae required to capture all of Britain’s auto emissions would take up around 400 hectares.

hat tip to Wadard at the Global Warming Watch

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