For the past decade, environmentalist scientists have been trying to find solutions for two big problems: How to store solar energy for later use, and what to do with CO2 that’s been captured and sequestered from coal plants? Now scientists from General Electric believe they have an innovative way to solve both issue at once. The idea is to use CO2 as a giant “battery” to hold excess renewable energy that can be used when the sun goes down. How it works is scientists would heat salt through a concentrated solar powered mirror array and use it to warm excess CO2 into a “supercritical” state between a gas and solid. In that state, the CO2 can be funneled into purpose built turbines(from GE, naturally) which can rapidly generate power.
GE wants to use CO2 pollution to make huge solar batteries
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