What if we could take carbon dioxide from a power plant’s chimney stack and turn it into a useful fuel? That would be a great boxing day present!
Our climate is changing due to man made products such as carbon dioxide. The idea of capturing carbon emissions and storing back underground has bee around for a while. This is called carbon sequestration. This is not an answer that is viable as it will push the pollution from carbon dioxide underground and threaten our drinking water supplies. What we really need is a magical box that we can put CO2 in and change it into something more useful, like say Methane.
*Waves magic wand* Presto! I give you the MAN re-gasification project. MAN is taking CO2 from a power plants exhaust stack mixing it with Hydrogen produced using renewable energy and creating Methane. The methane is stored on the gas grid in Germany for later use.
The design idea of creating synthetic methanation is not new but the method is. Taking excess renewable energy and using it to make Hydrogen is not new either. Combining the two concepts to make more fuel out of pollution and renewable energy is brilliant!
Audi calls this e-Gas and will use it to power a new line of cars that run on methane. Germany sure has some great ideas. Oh, they are using British Designs and engineering expertise too. I wonder why we are not doing this too?
This is a step in the right direction. Mr Cameron? Are you listening? maybe we should let our MP’s know what we think.