CO2 captured as baking soda

http://www.news.com/Can-baking-soda-curb-global-warming/2100-13838_3-6220127.html

Here's something that is allegedly cheap (relative to what's already required) and could just give us the breathing room we need to implement alternatives to fossil fuel.



90% reduction in CO2 emissions while simultaneously removing the acid rain causing components of coal powered plants. Almost sounds too good to be true, but I'll be watching this experiment to see how it ends up.

Ain't THAT something!

If the system removes 97 percent of the heavy metals, I must assume it leaves it behind in the baking soda. How much heavy metal does the average can of baking soda have in it?

A 500 megawatt plant creates 642200 tons of baking soda. That is a lot of biscuits.

But it does sound like a good idea.

Time to look at the 'food grade' label.

'Mostly pure baking soda . . . mostly'

& requires electricity that probably generates more CO2.

(which can be used in fuel cells) along with the NaOH for making NaCO2.

And salt water is the feed stock (no shortage of that these days). So if we can power the process with solar or wind we have really got something good.

What happens to all that chlorine?

Sorry, but the "obvious" elementary chemistry approaches all have the same drawback of basically shifting the problem elsewhere, not solving it.

And if your cat pissed on your mattress, it's a gift from the gods.

... you can either choke the bastard or brain it (if you buy in bulk)!

:evilgrin:

Welcome to DU! :hi:

This whole experiment illustrates the problems facing us as global warming advances. Namely:

1) There is no magic bullet to our need for energy, and...
2) There are waste products caused by every solution to our needs for energy (see #1)

In this case, the reaction is something like the following.
Production of NaOH:
2NaCl + 2H2O + energy --> 2NaOH + H2 + Cl2

This reaction requires energy (electricity) to cause this reaction to be driven forward. I'm not going to go into details of the math behind how much energy would be required, as any freshman college Chemistry book has that information in it. (For those interested, just sum up the energy of bonds broken then subtract the sum of the energy in the bonds formed to determine how much energy per reaction cycle is needed.)

That energy would come from some electrical source (wind, solar, nuclear, hydrocarbon, hydro, etc.) In the case of that energy coming from a hydrocarbon source, the CO2 emissions would be greatly reduced by the following reaction-

NaOH + CO2 + energy --> NaHCO3

Now, looking at the big picture. The H2 can be used as energy (hydrogen cars, hydrogen power plants, hydrogen fuel cells, etc) and the Cl2 can be used in many industrial processes. A large amount of Cl2 is produced worldwide for many uses due to its high reactivity and its ability to catalyze many reactions. (A sophomore Organic Chemistry text will give a few ideas of its uses.)

So overall, the production of the NaOH for this scheme yields two useful products (H2 and Cl2) and the conversion of waste CO2 to NaHCO3 produces another useful product (baking soda) while removing a large amount of CO2, a global warming contributor, from the atmosphere
Obviously, it is impossible to circumvent the Second Law of Thermodynamics, so this whole reaction cycle will require a net input of energy. The question is this: Will it result in a net reduction of CO2?

That's the million dollar question: Will this actually result in a net positive effect on the environment?

In other words, how much waste CO2 will be produced by creating this product vs how much CO2 will be sequestered?

A 700 MW coal plant produces over 5 million tonnes of CO2 a year. Since the proposed reaction requires an equivalent amount of NaOH (CO2 and NaOH have similar molecular weights) it would need 5 million tonnes of sodium hydroxide to treat its exhaust. That 5 million tonnes is a tenth of the world's current 50 million tonne production, just to treat the exhaust gas from one power plant.

If we doubled the world's production of sodium hydroxide we could treat the exhaust gases of the ten coal plants that China will bring on line in the next three weeks.

This may be a nice investment opportunity, but it's not a solution to global warming.

The article states that a 500 MW plant produces 338,000 tons of carbon dioxide.

You say a 700 MW plant produces over 5 million tons of carbon dioxide.

Who's right?

Here's my source:

http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/01/carbon_seq/p4.pdf

The example the DOE gives on page 2 of this paper is a 600 MW plant that produces 4.2 million tonnes of CO2 per year. That means a 700 MW plant would generate 4.9 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year. My original source for the 700 MW number was a news story which got it right, but this source is the DOE which should be totally trustworthy (at least as far as measurements are concerned - their record with forecasts is another story altogether).

The 338,000 tonnes quoted in this news story would approximate the monthly output of the 500 MW plant they describe, rather than the annual output as stated in the story. The reporter screwed up.

But for future reference I'm going to have to remember that you consider the DOE a trustworthy source... :)

energy. You can probably do the numbers on that far better than I can. I'm thinking electrolysis is pretty endothermic by nature.

the trona back to the trona mine for environmental restoration.......

that is the source for all our (and possibly the world's) Na bicarb (which is easier to type than your correct alphabet soup, lol).

or in contact with mild acids. So turning CO2 into baking soda isn't really a long-term solution to our greenhouse gas problem

> So turning CO2 into baking soda isn't really a long-term solution to
> our greenhouse gas problem

Maybe not but it's a damn good way for his company to provide the solution
to his own problem: how to make enough money quickly to afford to move to
a safer area ...

(PS: This is YAGS - Yet Another Greenwash Scam - only good for diverting
money and distracting the masses ...)

CO2 - The you eat it and out it comes, one way or another. If it gets buried or finds its way to the sea, same result I suppose...

Toxic Metal Content in Coal

parts ----tons per -----tons per ---- pounds
per million --- million tons -- year * ---per year
------ of coal ------------ in ash or emissions
Mercury 0.2 0.2 0.4 800
Lead 14 14 28 56000
Arsenic 15 15 30 60000
Cadmium 8 8 16 32000
Aluminum 17000 17000 34000 68000000
Barium 2600 2600 5200 10400000
Berylium 3 3 6 12000
Chromium 23 23 46 92000
Copper 16 16 32 64000
Manganese 80 80 160 320000
Nickel 18 18 36 72000
Selenium 3 3 6 12000
Thallium 25 25 50 100000
Thorium 3.1 3.1 6.2 12400
Uranium 1.8 1.8 3.6 7200
Vanadium 5.7 5.7 11.4 22800
Zinc 0.8 0.8 1.6 3200
0
Total 19,817 39633.2 79,266,400

* 765 MW coal plant

source: Radian Corporation, "Estimating Air Toxics Emissions from Coal Sources",
U.S. EPA, 1989, NTIS PB89-194229