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In my previous post on “Management of Carbon Emissions in Industries”, I have briefly mentioned about carbon capture and storage. In this post, I am going discuss various technologies used for carbon capture. Carbon dioxide has been captured from industries for more than 80 years. It is captured for industrial uses such as urea and ammonia production, carbonated beverage production, breweries. Capture technologies have three categories, depending on what stage of the process carbon dioxide is removed. These are:- Pre-Combustion Capture Post Combustion Capture Oxy-Fuel Combustion Capture Figure 1: Capture Technologies 1. Pre-Combustion Capture Here, carbon dioxide is separated from the fuel before combustion. It is done at very high temperature by splitting hydrocarbons into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide is removed before combustion and the carbon dioxide undergoes combustion to form water. The hydrocarbons can be split by processes like gasification

Plastics are versatile materials. They are used to manufacture many useful products like bags, buckets, cups, mugs, food wraps, product packaging etc. Plastics are long carbon chain polymers and are mostly produced from petrochemicals. In spite of their benefits, they have been bad for the environment. Hardly few of them are recycled and most of them end up in landfills. They are not biodegradable and cannot be composted. If they are carelessly disposed off in water bodies, they can cause damage to aquatic life as fishes and whales may accidentally consume them. Even burning of plastics is not a good solution as they emit toxic chemicals such as dioxins. Because of environmental concerns of using conventional plastics, the biodegradable plastics are gaining focus around the world. Biodegradable plastics are those plastics that can be degraded by the action of micro-organisms. All biodegradable plastics cannot be composted. Those that can be composted are known as compostable plastic

Lubricants are used in engine and machine parts to reduce wear and tear and ensure smooth functioning of the machinery. Lubricants are mostly of petroleum origin. Lubricants consist of 70% petroleum based oil and the rest 30% are additives which modify the general properties of base oil to meet the requirements. The main problem with petroleum based lubricant is that it is non-biodegradable and may cause stormwater pollution from leaks in engine, hydraulic systems and brake line. Because of environmental pollution by petroleum based lubricants, the scientists and researchers are promoting the use of environment friendly bio-based lubricants. Biolubricants are the liquid oils derived from renewable or biomass based feedstocks. Biolubricants are formed either by pyrolysis of biomass or by using two step transesterification of vegetable oils. The bio-crude oil is further refined into biolubricant and various other bio-oil derivatives. Although, vegetable fat and animal fat based oils h

       Carbon dioxide is released in the air from various industries, power plants and vehicles. CO 2  emission is the leading cause of global warming. The ways to curb carbon emissions have always puzzled scientists from all over the world. A novel method has been recently developed which aims to curb carbon dioxide released from the industries and convert into methanol. Researchers from University of Southern California have demonstrated that the captured carbon dioxide can be converted into methanol in the presence of molecular hydrogen with the help of homogeneous catalyst. The production of methanol is attractive because of its potential for use as an alternative fuel and for hydrogen storage. These reactions require high temperatures (around 150℃) and unfortunately heat often causes the decomposition of the catalyst[1]. In another study, the researchers have developed a stable catalyst based on metal ruthenium which does not decompose at high temperature. With this ca