Curbing Global Warming - By Making Baking Soda?

OK, it's not about the Dresden Files, but I couldn't believe this when I read it! Could something so comparatively simple actually help clean up one of the country's leading sources of pollution??

According to Joe David Jones, founder and CEO of Skyonic, it can!

Mr. Jones has created a process he calls SkyMine that, according to CNet News:

"...captures 90 percent of the carbon dioxide coming out
of smoke stacks and mixes it with sodium hydroxide to make sodium
bicarbonate, or baking soda."

That's right - baking soda. The same stuff we put in our refrigerators to soak up odors. The same stuff we use as scouring powder and to de-doggify the pups. The same stuff that is now being added to laundry detergents, deodorants, and toothpaste - THAT baking soda!

Plus, SkyMine's solution creates usable products and, according to Jones,

"...also removes 97 percent of the heavy metals, as well as most of the sulfur and nitrogen compounds..."

and

"...the byproducts of the different reactions--chlorine, baking soda, hydrogen (a byproduct from making the sodium hydroxide that gets
mixed with the carbon dioxide), and chlorine--can be sold to industrial
users."

Even better: All this is done using the waste heat from the factory - no additional energy needs to be used!

Besides, did you know that the food-grade baking soda we use today is mined?? This created baking soda is cleaner than the baking soda we buy today and NO mining - which saves energy and prevents land destruction!

SkyMine is being tested on a small scale right now, but Skyonic hopes to install and test a large scale version in 2009. If this proves successful, maybe we can at least stop adding to the mess we've already made of the environment and maybe even start to reverse some of the damage.