Air pollution finds a home Video
Air pollution finds a home Video Transcript
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>> Hi, this is Michael Kanellos of News.com and inside this van from Carbon Sciences, we're gonna show you a process that can take CO2 emissions from a factory or a big mine or things like that and turn it into chalk or wallboard. Let's go take a look. Well, Derek, tell us about Carbon Sciences.
>> Carbon Sciences is actually in the business of transforming CO2 into useful building materials. And calcium carbonates primarily. And so, we do is we basically take CO2, which is a waste gas and under pressure and temperature create a whole new byproduct out of it. The great thing about calcium carbonate is it is a very permanent material and the byproduct...
>> It's chalk right? I mean...
>> It's chalk, exactly. And not only is a chalk, but it's wallboard, you know and it's used in plastic, it's used in fillers for roads, concrete. It's great binding material. It's a whitener for paper.
>> Let's go see how it works.
>> Sure, come on in. We'll step on inside. The key to get in what we...
>> So, what's going on here? Carbon Sciences is taking carbon dioxide, heating it, compressing it and adding mind-tailing and other chemicals to it to make calcium carbonate or chalk. Other companies are taking CO2 and turning it into sodium bicarbonate or baking soda. This company says it beats storing carbon dioxide under the ground because you end up getting a product that you can sell later. And look at here, after a couple of hours of chemical processing you got a big piece of chalk.
>> The competitive world right now is not very big, but there's -- the main competitive technology is burying it underground. The government, the United States government wants to capture CO2 and put it into old places that have been mined.
>> Is this gonna work? It does take money and energy to turn CO2 into chalk, but pretty much every government in the world right now is passing carbon regulations, so, we're gonna have to do something with CO2. The question is, solid or do you bury it underground. I'm Michael Kanellos for News.com.
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