A solution to all the excess carbon dioxide

Plants and trees can only take in so much carbon dioxide. The rest remains in the atmosphere to haunt us through global warming. Scientists realize that carbon dioxide has added to global warming and ever since, have been trying to get rid of it somehow. There have been many ideas and hypothesises, however, now scientists are finally testing one of them out. Klaus Lackner and his colleague, Allen Wright, are trying to create an "artificial tree". The artificial trees will suck in carbon dioxide at 1000 times the rate of regular trees and then store them for later use or transportation. Such technology already exists in submarines and space shuttles where carbon dioxide has to be recycled. However, those methods take up large amounts of energy and are smale scale. Lackner wants to create something bigger and clean the air.

The idea is to trap carbon dioxide and then dispose of it. But that creates two simple problems, how do we trap the carbon dioxide and then dispose of it? Lackner found out that by injecting sodium carbonate into a special type of plastic, it would attract carbon dioxide from the air. The sodium carbonate would take the carbons and then become sodium bicarbonate, or something we know as baking soda. So Lackner created a contraption to put this idea to use. Filters were made out of this special plastic and then placed in a wheel. The wheel is spun as the wind pushes it. As the wind pushes the wheel, the filters also trap carbon dioxide. Once one of the filters (there are many filters on the wheel) are filled, it is dropped down into a contraption underneath where water is run through the filter. The water flushes out the carbon dioxide that had been trapped and the filter returns to the wheel. The water is then seperated from the carbon dioxide for recycled use and the carbon dioxide is stored safely in one of three locations. The carbon dioxide can be used to flush out extra oil in reservoirs and then the carbon dioxide could stay in the empty oil reservoirs once used. Another possible location is in saline aquifers, deep under the Earth's surface so that the gas cannot escape due to the pressure. The last possible location to store the gas is underneath the ocean floor, in an area called the volcanic basalt.

Many people have long thought, "why can't we just suck out carbon dioxide out of the air and call it a day?" I'll admit, I thought the same thing once. But I know it isn't that simple because there's no way to get rid of it, only store it. One of Lackner's machines can process a ton of carbon dioxide a day. That averages out to the exhaust of 75 U.S cars a day. Not only that, these machines aren't that big. They are designed to be able to fit in shipping containers meaning they can be put in places where land is scarce. This could be at airports, crowded cities, etc. Carbon dioxide travels around the world so getting rid of it anywhere would greatly help the world and make the air better for us to breath.

National Geographic Volume 218, Number 2. 2010