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Exhaust Capture

Store car's CO2 emissions
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There should be a Zero-emissions gasoline car. It would be "Clean Gasoline," and instead of a tailpipe, exhaust would be filtered, absorbed by a medium (maybe MOF-177), and then stored into a large tank in the trunk of the car. Naturally the tank would get full, (and quickly, too, I'm thinking), so at every fill-up you would empty your C02 tank at the gas station. A hose would be connected and the CO2 would be transferred to the gas station's truck, all while you filled up on gas. The best part--the gas station would PAY YOU for your CO2 (per pound, and the payment would most likey be deducted from your gas-bill.) How could THEY PAY YOU? Well, CO2 pumped under oil fields can help extract more oil from the field. This would be very lucreative for the oil company. And with the C02 under the ground, it would never see the light of day, and therefore couldn't pollute the environment. That way, before we come up with an alternative to oil burning gasoline can be clean.

NOTE: I realize the danger of an over-loaded exhaust tank. If this were to occur, the tank would let out a little exhaust as was needed to releave the pressure, perhaps 10% of the tank's capacity.

Cam1234, Jan 06 2007

Carbon Dioxide + Oil Fields http://www.abc.net....publish_1153909.htm
A brief article on the merits/problems of carbon dioxide sequestration in oil fields. [jurist, Jan 07 2007]

MOF 177--A good capture medium! http://www.greencar...etalorganic_fr.html
If you've never heard of MOF 177, you might want to read about it first. It can soak-up 140% of its weight of CO2. And with hybrid and already low emissions vehicals, it could be quite possible to capture a car's emissions. Read up on MOF 177. [Cam1234, Jan 08 2007]

CO2 under oil fields--not too crazy. http://www.climatea...e.aspx?linkid=41349
Another thing you might want to investigate--CO2 sequestration. This is the idea the President plans to use for clean coal technology. It seems like it could be quite viable. [Cam1234, Jan 08 2007]

[link]






       You've written this idea to extract CO2, but I think you mean CO, carbon MONoxide. From what I can find on Google, no small-scale process exists to remove CO from an emission stream. It's a good thought, but looks impractical using today's technology. In other words, a perfect halfbakery plan! Bun.
gardnertoo, Jan 06 2007
  

       How could you ever possibly fit a tank in a car big enough to store any significant amount of CO2? It's a good concept, however any reasonably sized tank would quickly get filled to capacity. Second, the increase in exhaust backpressure on the engine and the weight of carrying the tank would both translate into increased fuel consumption which means more CO2 emissions anyway. Also, It doesn't matter if you let the CO2 flow out the exhaust pipe or bottle it to be released latter; emissions are still emissions any way you slice it.
acurafan07, Jan 06 2007
  

       I welcome your thinking about this, but this is not the solution.   

       As you rightly point out, the CO2 that your car produces would be far more than you'd be able to put into a tank. The only way you could collect it properly is to compress it to a liquid. On the plus side, you could use this cool store as a way of providing air cooling for your air con ... but the negative is clear : it'd cost you a lot of energy to compress it and chill it.   

       The piece of this idea that I really don't get is the idea that oil companies would want this CO2. Shipping this CO2 from petrol (gas) stations to the oilfields is hellishly expensive. Why do it when many have water in close proximity which can easily be used to extract the oil?   

       And finally, what would happen to the CO2 if you pumped it down there? Answer, it'd come straight up again and into the atmosphere adding to the enivronmental concerns. It wouldn't be possible to cap it downthere whilst still wishing to get the oil out.   

       The answer is to stop using geofuels, switch to bio.
jonthegeologist, Jan 06 2007
  

       Should I replace the lawn on my truck's roof with algae?
BunsenHoneydew, Jan 12 2007
  

       Carbon sequestration in oil fields, deep oceans, peat bogs, or landfills is a viable technology. Unfortunately for it to work, a simple way to capture and transport the CO2 that doesn't produce even more carbon than is sequestered is required. This is much more practical for huge point sources (power plants) or high volume operations (decaying vegetable matter on farms). I suspect cars would be impractical.
I also do not believe there would be any practical use for the CO2, so you would not be paid for returning it, except possible through government incentives and fees (as in bottle deposits found in the north-east US).
MechE, Apr 01 2007
  

       [+]   

       Guys, do not limit your visions to direct gaseous compression alone. Cam mentioned MOFs in his post, yet everybody seemed to ignore them in annotations. (Note that these are not the same as, say, algae. They are not alive, and do not create more carbon that needs to be dealt with.)   

       Chemical storage can allow gas that would take up the whole volume of your trunk at thousands of PSI to instead occupy on kilo or two of solid chemical, at 1 atmosphere. E.g. metal hydrides for hydrogen. Without the need to reclaim it super quickly, and with the added benefit of having exhaust waste heat to push the reaction in the storage direction for you, it's quite feasible to believe that this can be done with almost no additional energy, and that it can be developed more easily than its hydrogen parallel.   

       If the right compund could be found, the hardware would be nothing more than a low profile, twisty tailpipe with some little solid crystals or special paint sitting in it, the CO2 to be removed with nothing more than a tiny injection of some catalyst and a 10 minute wait at the gas station.
Smurfsahoy, Apr 01 2007
  
      
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