Bicarb will keep every fridge on the planet smelling sweetly, and we'll have plenty left over for scones and other baked goods.

And it does scrub up a bath nicely.

the CO2 needs to be sequestered, i.e. not used for anything, given baking sodas chemical reactivity with water its probably not a good sequestration medium.

About time you guys realized that Chemistry is the central science.

"A US firm has come up with a plan to turn the carbon dioxide emitted by coal-burning power plants into bicarbonate of soda."

Obviously they're rising to the challenge of CO2 emissions then ...

We call it baking soda over here too!

I'd question whether this is a serious idea. Baking Soda works because the CO2 is loosely bound and is easily released in baking. Any scheme based on it would have to arrange for long term storage of the sodium bicarbonate in controlled conditions.

Mars because it would work fine there!

So... How is this helping? Did NaHCO3 become a valuable resource or nutrient? If only there was some kind of self-replicating solar powered machine that could separate the carbon and oxygen atoms from CO2.

http://skyonic.com/whatWeDo.php

says that:

"Our feed chemical for the reaction to remove the carbon is sodium hydroxide, which is produced on site as a part of the SkyMine™ process. This reaction to produce sodium hydroxide also produces hydrogen and chlorine as byproducts. These can be sold to market at a profit, not only defraying the cost of CO2 removal, but even generating a profit for the SkyMine™ operators."

It produces Sodium Hydroxide, Hydrogen and Chlorine. Sounds suspiciously like a salt-based reaction... The chloralkali process, mayhaps?

Is the super new technologically advanced "SkyMine™ process" on-site electrolysis of sea-water (cheaper at a power-station -- no transmission losses) followed by "scrubbing"? Followed by the disposal of half a million tons of water-soluble waste?

When I read this bit of the article I thought this was a mistake:

"Some googling, and little more serious research later,"

I thought it was supposed to be "*a* little more", but it doesn't take much serious research to come up with this (apparently) poorly thought-out system.

Big Brown Steam Power Station? Oh, it's STEAM power! Who said anything about coal? If they're into euphemisms, they should really have called it the Little Green Steam Energy Farm- that sounds even better.

I should go into marketing.

From a news release:

"Called the SkyMine process, Skyonic has created a new method that captures carbon dioxide and other pollutants and converts them to commercial-grade chemicals that are less harmful, such as hydrogen and certain forms of chlorine."

Now, wait a minute...

It "converts" Carbon Dioxide to "hydrogen and certain forms of chlorine."? There's only one "form" of chlorine -- unless you're counting isotopes.

And, how does it "convert" them? Do they wheel up a fusion reactor to the plant exhaust?

I smell a SCAM!

with 166666 KiloJubs of baking soda!

Simple, dump it all in the oceans so the dolphins can bake things for us instead of invading and killing us all.

"Time was, a "pollutant" was SO2, or NOx, or a VOC."

Nope, not so. You're simply being over-specific about the definition of pollutant. The dictionary calls it a waste material, something that renders a natural resource harmful or unusable: that seems a pretty reasonable term to describe CO2 to me. It describes "pollute" as to make impure with waste matter; again, a perfectly reasonable term to describe the excess CO2 emitted as a useless byproduct of industrial processes. Take a look at dictionary.com if you don't believe me.

"Now, it's something people exhale."

Umm, yes, that's exactly what a pollutant is: a useless byproduct.

"Something that plants call "food"."

That doesn't make it not a pollutant. Hell, some beetles eat shit. I'd still call it a pollutant if I found it in my sandwich; you can't just ignore the context like that.

Of course, you never actually say what you're getting at in your post.

Funny, that.

You suggest that someone has changed the meaning of the word - which as I show above has not happened at all - therefore implying that they have some ulterior motive; presumably the "Orwellian" reference is an attempt to suggest that it's some kind of propaganda or mind control exercise. But you stop short of coming right out and saying what you think it would be for, or about. My guess would be that you think CO2 is somehow not a pollutant, and that you believe that not because you've looked at the definition of the word pollutant and found it doesn't match, but because you have a hidden agenda which, in order for your point of view to be true, would have to mean that CO2 was not a pollutant, and you're reasoning backward from your assumption that you must be right about everything to what-would-have-to-be-the-case in order for you to be right about everything without any reference to facts, evidence, or even a dictionary.

Go on, tell us how you really feel.

be fine burying in an old mine.....

till some numpty forgets abouts a rocks PH, and we have the worlds largest baking powder submarine!

Saves me time putting the cadmium in there myself... What a greatly convincing idea.

So indeed you save some effort in distilling the soda you need, but that's a pinch of that stack. You could maybe store it underground, where it will slowly react with water and release itself in the environment anyways.

Sorry, I just realized the titel might be considered a pun; not intentional.

Anyway... The State of Nevada is mostly desert (arguably, including Las Vegas, in a cultural sense). Burying the stuff in tunnels under the desert would lock up the CO2 for the foreseeable future, but make it accessible if it's ever needed (I can't imagine why it might be needed, but that's why you have "contingency plans" - for things you can't foresee).

And it would make large parts of Nevada, outside of Groom Lake, useful.

Some terrorist would pilot a plane full of vinegar into the mound, which would be pretty spectacular a scene if there were red dye mixed into the vinegar and the hill sized pile of sodium bicarbonate was thinly protected with a waterproof covering.

Science club here we come.

O.K. Well, all the good responses were already done above so.....

I'm waiting for the guy who figures out how to take the carbon and using natural forces creates diamonds from them.

" Assuming an average 500-megawatt power plant produces 338,000 tons of CO2 a year, we'd be left with a pile of bicarb roughly twice as large."

Wnat the article is saying is that an average 500-MW station outputs a certain amount of CO2 per year, and that if all that CO2 was combined with sodium and hydrogen and even more oxygen (in order to make bicarb) it would end up weighing twice as much as the original CO2 did before you added the extra ingredients to capture it.

Blimey, a straight answer to a straight question. I'll get me coat.

Our old friend AC has hit the nail on the head with regard to paying close attention to the 'total energy/pollution balance' considerations of the process; something that easily excited politicians hardly ever do.

The Skymine sites http://www.skyonic.com/whatWeDo.php and also the pdf at http://www.ostp.gov/PCAST/agenda_9_20_05_files/Jones_Skyonic_PCAST_20Sep05.pdf give a good top-level view of how they achieve it.

Essentially they use a small percentage of the power station output to electrolise sodium chloride hence producing sodium hydroxide (used as a scrubber) and also hydrogen and chlorine as 'valuable' byproducts. (That was my understanding, please read it yourself since I may have misunderstood).

How they manage to produce 'better than food grade baking soda' is a mystery to me given the toxic metals that need stripping out but is probably related to the ''Patent IP chemistry' they use. (How you can patent a chemical reaction is a separate issue of course, unless they use a specially developed catalyst?)

My main concern would be potential involvement of Durga The Hutt so this outfit needs to be watched carefully and all financial flows carefully accounted for. See http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Orko_SkyMine for an explanation of why.

Nice idea but too little, too late, I fear. I seem to remember seeing a chart way back in science class saying that we'd probably run out of coal by around 2010 or something. How much do we really have left?

"This reaction to produce sodium hydroxide also produces hydrogen and chlorine as byproducts"

So this is sounding a lot like hydrochloric acid - the dolphins would love that too. In fact, it seems as though they are producing chemicals that absolutely love to react with each other in a nice endothermic kind of way. I can't see this ending any way other than messily.

What's wrong with the old sinking the carbon dioxide to the bottom of the sea, or ejecting it into space on a carbon nanotube escalator?

...plant a massive great big pile of f***ing trees?

How come no ones thought of that?

we genetically engineer a creature that can excrete a covering from a stable compound like CaCO3 and have it live in the ocean so it won't get in the way and while were at it we can make it filter the water of heavy metal pollutants and consume potentially harmful algae then after many generations we could harvest the coverings and use them as aggregate in concrete to further sequester them. It just needs a catchy title.

Yes, not a bad idea. I think it's called a "rainforest" ;-) Unfortunately the Indonesians are destroying those to make way for planting alledgedly environmentally-friendly Palm Oil plantations to manufacture Biofuels......

Ah, I understand now, "large" has become a description of weight, not size. Who says that standards of English aren't dropping? Of course, if you were to use the language properly, the pile of baking soda would be many times smaller than the "pile" of CO2, one being a solid and the other being a gas at more or less standard temperature and pressure after it comes out of a power station.

Shesh!

So the Bicarbonate is unstable when water is around, what we need to do is further process the bicard. This is not a solution in itself but as a method of catching the emissions at the point of production it sounds good.

@Desalination Plant, bad idea you don't say where all that chlorine ends up, we still have to think about the ozone layer.

CO2 is a pollutant. yes I know we all breathe it out but we all pass urine as well. If I piss in the loo then no harm done, if I piss in the local swimming pool then that pollution, same goes for CO2 it depends what you do with it.

"Ah, I understand now, "large" has become a description of weight, not size. Who says that standards of English aren't dropping? Of course, if you were to use the language properly, the pile of baking soda would be many times smaller than the "pile" of CO2, one being a solid and the other being a gas at more or less standard temperature and pressure after it comes out of a power station.

Shesh!"

Spot on - give the man a cee-gar!

This reminded me of the carbon recycling scheme used in the South of France:

The only reason the Med isn't more polluted than it already is, is that huge mussel beds grow around the sewage outlets, filtering all the crap out of the water. These mussels are then harvested and fed to the tourists, thus removing two problems at the same time.

"Hell, some beetles eat shit. I'd still call it a pollutant if I found it in my sandwich; you can't just ignore the context like that."

hahaha, best thing i've heard so far today!

The pile of CO2 in question will be the same size as a herd of cats. I'll leave the actual herding of cats and measurement of resulting herd size as an exercise for the reader.

All Steve is saying is that one persons trash is another persons treasure, in this case we exhale CO2 which we do not need, but trees do.

So stop moaning at other peoples opinions and thoughts.

Yes CO2 is a pollutant to us, but it doesn't mean it is to other sources of life.

Oxygen is a pollutant from a trees point of view, i may be wrong, but ah well.

Tree consume CO2 from photosynthisis and produce 02, at night they reverse the process produce CO2 and consume O2.