If this works as described, it’s a really beautiful technology. The MIT Technology Review describes an Indian coal-fired power plant that captures the carbon dioxide and turns it into baking soda:
In the southern Indian city of Tuticorin, locals are unlikely to suffer from a poorly risen cake. That’s because a coal-fired thermal power station in the area captures carbon dioxide and turns it into baking soda.
Carbon capture schemes are nothing new. Typically, they use a solvent, such as amine, to catch carbon dioxide and prevent it from escaping into the atmosphere. From there, the CO2 can either be stored away or used.
But the Guardian reports that a system installed in the Tuticorin plant uses a new proprietary solvent developed by the company Carbon Clean Solutions. The solvent is reportedly just slightly more efficient than those used conventionally, requiring a little less energy and smaller apparatus to run. The collected CO2 is used to create baking soda, and it claims that as much as 66,000 tons of the gas could be captured at the plant each year.
Its operators say that the marginal gain in efficiency is just enough to make it feasible to run the plant without a subsidy. In fact, it’s claimed to be the first example of an unsubsidized industrial plant capturing CO2 for use.
Presumably, the baking soda can be sold, too.
I expect that we’ll see a lot more solutions like this coming out of India. They have a lot of clever, educated people, probably as many engineers per 100,000 population as anywhere in the world and they don’t have a lot of money to mess around with diseconomic schemes.
And little, if any, regulatory burdens I assume.
I don’t know what things are like in India but in China there are two different situations: the laws as written and the laws as enforced. Does India have the civil infrastructure to enforce the regulations? I don’t know.
Indians were, however, puzzled that their nan now had a strange hint of both tarragon and petroleum distillate.
Meanwhile………you guys could spend a couple hours in worse ways than going to see the movie Lion.
Baking soda has uses other than in food. Leather, textiles, rubber and plastic just to name a few.
So more pancakes, less Naan?
This is actually a serious question. When heated baking soda releases CO2. One wonders what uses will not suffer this.
Baking? I thought they were just going to keep making bigger and bigger science project volcanoes with all of that baking soda.
Nah, but that’s probably an idea that would appeal to the Russians. Bigger is always better for them.
It might sound like they are making fun of it a little but if they have the technology to create baking soda, they may be able to do something similar with other substances. And as you say, it’s not just for cooking so overall a positive development I think.