Engineering Solutions for Limiting the Increase of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

The article describes possible engineering solutions that can reduce the carbon dioxide (CO₂) content of the air. To demonstrate the point fossil fuel power plants will be taken as a model for the source of CO₂. The global mass balance shows that the oceans play a major role in storing CO₂. The hypothesis presented states that the real problem is not the absolute CO₂ content, rather its change. Consequently, present emissions should be stored for future release. Under the current worldwide measures to reduce power consumption CO₂ emissions are unlikely to decrease. A number of strategies for the maritime sequestration of CO₂ are reported in the contribution. One proposal for sequestration is the use of shallow waters which form a thermohaline current: the dissolved gas will travel for hundreds of years in deep sea currents. In the latter case, CO₂ injection is easily achieved. Several scenarios are considered for the fate of this CO₂‐enriched current. The environmental impact is briefly reported. The article will describe current research requirements, demonstrating that similar research in the US and Japan is presently more advanced in comparison to that in Europe. The sequestration of carbon dioxide on land will be the subject of a second publication. It is obvious that the sequestration of CO₂ is the method after all rational chances to save energy.     

Theoretical study of sequential centrifugal partition chromatography

Sequential centrifugal partition chromatography (sCPC) is a novel cyclic liquid–liquid chromatographic process. Each cycle comprises two steps, which differ by the liquid phase used as a mobile phase (upper or lower phase) and its flow direction. The feed is continuously separated into two product streams, which are collected alternately. The process includes six (four flow rates and two‐step durations) interconnected operating parameters. In this work, by imposing a complete separation of a binary feed mixture and using the assumption of instantaneous solutes partition equilibrium, a set of constraints on the sCPC unit operating parameters is derived. Using these constraints, a region of complete separation, composed of a set of combinations of the two‐step times, can be defined for a preselected feed and mobile phase flow rates. The approach is validated by simulation of a binary mixture separation in a sCPC using the cell model. © 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 59: 241–249, 2013