Baking Soda: The Cure for Global Warming?

In recent months, PopSci has covered various scientists' plans to curb global warming through carbon sequestration, mainly by feeding it to algae to make biofuel, or burying it underground.

Today, a company called Skyonic announced a novel new system, Skymine, which uses the carbon dioxide emitted from smokestacks to make baking soda. According to Skyonic CEO Joe David Jones, the system will be powered by waste heat from factories, and will produce food-grade baking soda.

Last year, the utility company Luminant installed a pilot version of the system at its Big Brown Steam Electric Station in Fairfield, Texas. There's still quite a bit of work to be done to make the current system viable on a large scale, but the baking soda idea offers solutions to some of the economic problems posed by other carbon sequestration methods. For starters, according to Jones, the stuff can be sold for home or industrial use or buried harmlessly in landfields or abandoned mines.

Jones apparently got the idea for the SkyMine system while watching a Discovery Channel show with his kids. He pulled out an old college science textbook and immediately turned to a passage about converting C02 to baking soda. He'd found it interesting years ago and highlighted it for future reference. -Megan Miller

Comments

[Biofuelsimon]

Er doesn't baking soda work by releasing carbon dioxide in the oven when it gets hot... that's why cakes rise. I don't see how moving the carbon dioxide from the smokestack to the nation's ovens (generating more carbon dioxide emissions as its trucked across the nation)will help cut carbon dioxide emissions. This looks like a bad idea to me.

[Ralph Beatty]

There are other uses for baking soda. The fact that it is inert unless acted on by an acid makes it ideal for sequestering co2. Salt domes would be the perfect place for putting it because they are dry. Where the soda is stored would have to stay dry otherwise it would make the groundwater alkaline. We may even be able to use it to balance ground water that we have made acidic by our industrial processes. I wonder if using a non-polluting energy source tied to baking soda production would be a viable way to reduce total CO2 in the atmosphere. How much would it cost/what would be the carbon footprint of gathering the other materials needed for the process?

[mike d.]

The conversion of the carbon dioxide to baking soda is creative, but when used in cakes, etc. it secretes carbon dioxide. This conversion is not to fully eliminate carbon dioxide emissions but to diminish the emissions. It is a step toward a greener world. If some places tend to have acid rain, we might somehow be able to place the soda in the air to neutralize the rain.

[Steve K.]

Even if we use the baking soda to offset acid rain or acidic rivers, we'd still be releasing CO2 in the air. Remember what happens when baking soda and vinagar are mixed? The final product is water, salt, and CO2.

[Marc Lamothe]

We currently make cakes and other baked goods using baking soda derived from other sources. If we are replacing any non-renewable resource with a renewable one, we are significantly reducing the amount of NEW CO2 released into the atmosphere.

Also, in terms of sequestration, it much better to sequester a solid or a liquid than a gas. Even if we just start pumping molasses or other carbon dense by-products into dry oil wells or coal mines, we will start going a long way towards removing carbon from the biosphere and the atmosphere.

[Eric H]

Well, here's another problem: Where do you get the millions billions?) of tons of Na for the NaHC03? From NaCl? Then you have
NaCl + H20 + energy -> NaOH + HCl, and
NaOH + CO2 = NaHCO3.
Industry uses a lot of HCl, but to sequester enough CO2 to make a difference, you'd get a whole lot more HCl than that. Just don't dump the excess in the same hole an the NAHCO3! So, this might be an improvement over the existing process, but that's a different point.

[faris]

A home remedy that a lot of people use to relieve heartburn is Baking soda. Could baking soda actually be harming or helping you.

[Barry]

What I want to know is what is wrong with CO2. It has already been dis-proven as a contributor to global warming.