Finally, Sinking Beers Might Fight Climate Change.
Even the sternest of climate deniers may inadvertently join the climate fight...
In an event that Australians will surely dominate in like the 2000 Olympics, researchers may have found a way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and use it in golden, frothy beers.
Carbon dioxide is a key greenhouse gas that drives global climate change and continues to rise.
Through trapped heat from the sun, carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases have made Earth habitable.
Until manmade climate change - with the addition of excess carbon dioxide - has tilted the delicate balance of our atmosphere too far and now our planet is trapping too much heat.
Airthena by the guys at the CSIRO is a unit that sucks carbon dioxide straight out of the atmosphere, with the potential to create beer.
A type of microscopic mesh filters out unwanted substrates and only lets the carbon dioxide through to be captured even in cases where concentrations are low.
Tech similar to Airthena has been offered 10 years ago to store carbon dioxide emissions underground.
However, it was losing momentum with the ever-competitive gains in renewable costs that are rendering fossil fuels obsolete.
Unless that is, we can make beer from it.
Dr Aaron Thornton, CSIRO
Carbon dioxide is a by-product of making beverages fizzy and industrial cleaning, a well as feeding CO2 to plants in hydroponic settings.
Methane is mined in Australia with the process proving to be harmful to the atmosphere as high levels of carbon dioxide emissions escape in the process.
Airthena can close the gap in emission capture that has previously been labelled as "cost-ineffective", as transportation of mass levels of carbon dioxide is costly.
However, Airthena can provide on-site solutions in places such as methane mines which spill high volumes of methane into the atmosphere.
The captured carbon dioxide can then be used as an ingredient in beer.
Who knows, maybe soon every mine in Australia might have a microbrewery?
Airthena is more suited to smaller settings for the time being, but we remain cautiously optimistic the unit will exceed expectations.
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