Thermal power plants emit tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually. Needless to say, this is a greenhouse gas and has certain adverse effects on the environment.

While scientists are busy searching for renewable energy sources, A research group from Nagoya University has developed a new system in which the exhaust carbon dioxide fumes from power plants could be reused to generate more electricity. Their research is published in a recent study.

However, this does not completely eliminate the risk of adding carbon content to the atmosphere and is nowhere near as sustainable as renewable energy sources themselves, but it is definitely a step towards a healthier planet.

What this system does is that it collects carbon dioxide gas from the exhaust pipes, combines it with hydrogen to form another combustible fuel, such as methane and gasoline. This fuel is then fed back to the power plant to generate more electricity when required. And the cycle keeps on repeating itself.

Scientists have put forward this idea of reusing exhaust carbon dioxide several times before. However, the methods that were suggested initially required extremely high temperatures. This way, those earlier methods required a lot of energy and neither were they cost-efficient. This recently suggested method could work at lower temperatures as well, making it more energy and cost-efficient.

The study, “Energy-Saving CO2 Capture by H2 Gas Stripping for Integrating CO2 Separation and Conversion Processes”, was authored by Hiroshi Machida, Takehiro Esaki, Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi, and Koyo Norinaga