Green chimney could save the planet

[jpak]

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2006/11/01/8391416/

Fremont, Ohio (FSB Magazine) -- "This is my sandbox, where I play," says Tom Kiser, pulling his big Chrysler sedan into the parking lot of Professional Supply Inc. We're in Fremont, Ohio, population 17,000. There's a sauerkraut factory across the street, a fitting neighbor to Kiser's dreary, plywood-paneled headquarters.
Selling green beer to Mormons

Kiser was born and raised in Fremont. He founded PSI here in 1979 with an $80,000 SBA loan backed in part by his wife's wedding ring, and he's done well enough that he now owns a seven-passenger company jet. But that's not the story. The story is how a small-town heating and ventilation engineer with no illusions about his customers' true priorities ("What makes me go is, Can I make you money? If I can't, don't hire me") suddenly finds himself on the front lines of the fight to halt global warming.

His weapon? A new experimental technology he calls a liquid chimney that captures the greenhouse gas escaping from coal and natural-gas furnaces and turns it into a harmless material that could be used in construction or even dropped into the ocean to rebuild coral reefs. The impact could be huge, considering that half the greenhouse gas that America generates comes from burning coal and natural gas.

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HOW IT WORKS

A. A natural-gas boiler sends its exhaust, laden with the greenhouse gas CO2, through a pipe to Kiser's liquid chimney.
B. As the exhaust rises through a layer of plastic or stainless-steel rings, it is mixed with treated water (the ingredients are secret) in a process that captures most of the CO2.
C. The result: hot water (which is recycled to save energy) and calcium carbonate, which can be fashioned into building blocks, deposited in the ocean to replenish coral reefs, or returned to the earth.

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