Green Daily

Pretty much everyone agrees that we've got too much CO2 in the atmosphere, but what do we do with all of it?

Entrepreneurs all over the world are in a race to develop a profitable way to store all the extra heat-trapping gas floating around the atmosphere. Some are trying to bury it in a well, others are sucking through a giant air filter, and yet another group is hoping to grab the free floating gas and sell it to Arm & Hammer, or Arm & Hatchet as the case may be. Right now, a company called Skyonic is testing a way to turn our CO2 emissions into baking soda.

Using a process called Skymine, innovators are hoping to be able to trap the unwanted CO2 pouring out of the world's smokestacks and process it into something that will deodorize you fridge. By placing a Skymine system on the smokestack of a power plant or factory, Skyonic can remove 90% of the CO2 from the emissions. Using the waste heat from the smokestack, Skyonic's process mixes CO2 with sodium hydroxide to make sodium bicarbonate(baking soda) that's reportedly "cleaner than food grade."

A pilot version of this system has already been in place at an electric plant in Fairfield, TX and Skyonic hopes to install another larger scale model on a high-output power plant in 2009. If the system is a success, it could both neutralize emissions and eliminate the need to mine for baking soda -- another carbon reducing benefit.