Billion Dollar Idea

[Dan.Linehan]

Invent a trash recycling robot that parses through landfills and seperates / collects material by recyclable type.

Someone please invent this.. soon!

Clean up all these plastics.

PS - You owe me a cool million when you make your first billion.

[Zukin]

solidwastemag.com - Solid Waste & Recycling Magazine - 10/15/2007

Robots Next: Australian Inventor Develops Speed and Hone Recycling Process

[cdn2wheeler]

Create a machine or process that extracts carbon dioxide from the air and makes building materials (limestone, for instance, is hugely carbon-rich).

[Zukin]

Originally Posted by cdn2wheeler

Create a machine or process that extracts carbon dioxide from the air and makes building materials (limestone, for instance, is hugely carbon-rich).

Carbon capture and storage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Carbon sequestration by reacting naturally occurring Mg and Ca containing minerals with CO2 to form carbonates has many unique advantages. Most notably is the fact that carbonates have a lower energy state than CO2, which is why mineral carbonation is thermodynamically favorable and occurs naturally (e.g., the weathering of rock over geologic time periods). Secondly, the raw materials such as magnesium based minerals are abundant. Finally, the produced carbonates are unarguably stable and thus re-release of CO2 into the atmosphere is not an issue. However, conventional carbonation pathways are slow under ambient temperatures and pressures. The significant challenge being addressed by this effort is to identify an industrially and environmentally viable carbonation route that will allow mineral sequestration to be implemented with acceptable economics."

In this process, CO2 is exothermically reacted with abundantly available metal oxides which produces stable carbonates. This process occurs naturally over many years and is responsible for much of the surface limestone. The reaction rate can be made faster, for example by reacting at higher temperatures and/or pressures, or by pre-treatment of the minerals, although this method can require additional energy. The IPCC estimates that a power plant equipped with CCS using mineral storage will need 60-180% more energy than a power plant without CCS.

[Helena]

Robots Next: Australian Inventor Develops Speed and Hone Recycling Process
"Physicist Marcus Cook has developed a pair of Recyclable Polymer Sorters which can sort through plastic submitted for recycling and sort and identify the size, shape, and type of the plastic.

The two machines can sort 1.5 tons of plastic per hour, and by improving quality and accuracy should be able to generate cost savings of $300/hour. The machines use standard digital cameras to identify the size and shape of bottles and an infrared spectrometer to determine their makeup."

Very cool Zukin!!! I think that will be my next article for my website! "Robots Help Stop Global Warming"