Tuesday, January 20, 2009
CO2: They Should Bottle That Stuff
There's no word for the sound you hear upon opening a can of soda. But the tchk-ptoop-fshchss! of a top being popped is distinctive, immediately recognizable. It is the sound of carbonation — or CO2 — rushing from the can. And it's a sound that brings to mind a technology, much overlooked in the popular press, that could safely recapture and store much of that emitted carbon, and has the potential to prevent an impending climate catastrophe.
The CO2 in carbonated drinks is the same CO2 that is spewed from tailpipes and power plants and causes global warming. In fact, the CO2 that makes the bubbles in your soda comes from those same power plants. Instead of being released into the atmosphere as a global-warming gas, the CO2 is captured from power plant exhaust, purified and sold to the nation's bottlers and soft drink fountain suppliers. When you pop the tab, however, the CO2 escapes into the atmosphere anyway.
See full Article.