The significance of carbon dioxide for plants to survive has unremittingly been known – right from the time we realized the significance of oxygen generation through plants. Since oxygen is inhaled and carbon dioxide exhaled by humans to continue their life cycle, it’s very important to ascertain the transparency and purity of the same. While ‘go green’ has world widely been considered an effective way to trim down adverse affects on our environmental sustainability, excessive carbon dioxide emissions can result into serious global warming and imbalanced ecology.
However, the concern here arises – what exactly contributes to the increasing global warming? If we go by the reports and the environmental statistics, electric power plants that are fired by fossil fuels such as oil, coal, natural gas and others play a significant role in inducing about a third of the man-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the United States. Nonetheless, there are certain methods (while some of them are under the developmental phase) that zero in on minimizing the problem of increasing carbon dioxide emissions. One such prominent method that exists is – nanotechnology which has been gaining a momentum for converting carbon dioxide into useful products and reduced environmental pollution.
To provide an insight, nanotechnology is a highly effective, cost-concerned method that helps trim down carbon dioxide emissions in a seamless manner. Although there are other good reasons as well (as far as incorporating nanotechnology is concerned), the method would basically ensure unprecedented efficiency and reveal a high possibility of improving upon a conventional technique known as scrubbers. In fact, there are certain reports of a company which has been benefiting its largest from genetic engineering to develop an enzyme – that is more influential in taking off the carbon dioxide gas from the exhaust than components or materials that are presently in use.
Although environmentalists have been endeavoring to derive maximum benefits from nanotechnology, it may be a bit too early to completely bank on the technique. However, there is a consortium known as ‘NanoGlowa’ which is currently zeroing in on 5 unique styles of nano-structured membranes. Funded by the European Commission, the consortium anticipates to effectively eliminating carbon dioxide from power plant exhaust. In fact, the consortium has been endeavoring to enable these membranes to get seamlessly installed in the exhaust stream at a considerably reduced cost structure than scrubber systems
While these aforementioned nano-structured membranes are currently in development, pilot tests in power plants will apparently take a lot of time and will (reportedly) not commence on these for approximately five years. Along the same lines (pretty impressively though), a team of researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia is working on a distinct carbon nano-tube membrane that could segregate carbon dioxide natural gas from power plant exhaust. However, this approach may consume a longer time span and eventually show up in ten or fifteen years from now.
Well, although there are several methods to curb excessive carbon dioxide emissions, nanotechnology certainly hopes to bring a positive impact on the elimination as whole. While nanotechnology may take some time to fully convince the government regulations, the method nonetheless looks forward to offering a solution that is cheap as well as effective for power plant owners.