Issue 250 Clean car/Carbon capture January 15, 2014

Well ladies and gentlemen; it is time for another of my zany ideas. In this case it is retrofitting cars with different forms of carbon capture technology.

The idea: In recent years, scientists have found ways to capture carbon from the atmosphere (though why they cannot use the same tech to make cheap materials from that carbon yet is beyond me). As such, why not hook something up to the muffler of a car to capture all that raw carbon and remove it before it enters the air. Also, the military was looking into making water from burned fuels as well (one of the byproducts of burning certain fuels like gasoline is water). As such, the system the military was experimenting with provides drinkable water at the end of the process. But the one with the most potential is the ones used on some power plants out in the western United States. Here, algae is placed tanks near a power plant. The smoke stack is capped and redirected into the tanks for the algae to eat. That is right, the things that come out of the smoke stacks (water, sulfur, carbon dioxide etc) is healthy for plant growth (though the algae turns black as a result, though it is later used as fuel for the power plant as well). So we can cap that muffler and cut a cars emissions to zero.

How it works: Basically, we cap the muffler or even remove the exhaust system all together and redirect it into a system that captures raw materials from the smoke produced and makes it into a disposable or recyclable material. Water can be easily dumped (unless you want a feature that collects it for survival purposes) and the rest held in a holding tank. This byproduct can then be removed and dumped later as soot (like a chimneys). Other more advanced models would be able to separate carbon atoms and other raw materials that can be used as fertilizers, or raw materials that can be picked up for industrial uses (like butane, sulfur and the like). Basically, we need a technology that harvests what is useful from the burned fuel or makes some useful solids out of it.

Conclusion: Again, I give you one of my ideas hoping beyond hope that someone can take it somewhere beyond a concept. I will take no compensation, and I invite anyone to use the idea. Fact is that we are wasting some very useful materials when we burn fuels. Some of the fuel being burned is not burned completely and some gases produced are burnable as well. Compounds can be produced from burnt fuel which is the reason we can get drinkable water from burnt fuels when the right technology is installed. So the sky is the limit. We can make cars zero emission vehicles even without changing the fuel source. We just have start trying to do things in different and more innovative ways.