woensdag 28 maart 2012

Tomatoes from exhaust gas? A bit weird don’t you think?



While reading this title you all probably thought there’s no way tomatoes can grow in exhaust gas. Well, guess again. It all started when British Sugar, which produces about half of the UK's quota of sugar, decided to produce their own energy by means of an enormous gas turbine. A gas turbine relies on the combustion of gas to produce energy. We all know this technology from a jet’s engine, but here the energy released by the turbine isn’t used to propel a plane but to produce sugar.


So far, nothing green about their investment, but here it comes. The first ecological measure they took when using the gas turbine was recovering the heat that’s lost while producing the energy. People can’t imagine how much energy is lost by the inefficiency of machines of all kind. The second and most important step towards a green innovative way of producing energy was to use its exhaust gases. At about 2.5 km of the company, the largest greenhouse in Europe resides where they grow tomatoes. By chance, tomatoes happen to take up C02 in order to grow and release O2. They even noticed that the tomatoes grew much faster in air with a high CO2 concentration! The perfect invention isn’t it? Not only do they increase the efficiency of the turbine, they also use the exhaust for the growth of food until the greenhouse gas is neutralized.

Like the speaker stresses in the movie below: “It’s a good example of tens of thousands of companies that are moving from one sector to another.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fob4lal4Ro

Mathieu Biemans

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