Magic Box Could Soak Up Greenhouse Emissions As You Drive

Think of it as a water filter, a bathtub sponge, or the lint screen for your clothes dryer: A small group of chemists and engineers have come up with a potential solution for greenhouse gas emissions caused by automobiles in the form of a small box they call the Greenbox. The idea: The box replaces your muffler and traps 95 percent of greenhouse gases that come through the tailpipe, including CO2. When the box fills up, you exchange it for an empty one (while filling your tank with gasoline, presumably). The trapped gases are later converted into biofuel, courtesy of a bioreactor packed with algae.

While the odds of the Greenbox ever seeing commercial reality are slim (consumers already hate paying for gas, now they'd have to pay for a Greenbox, too?), it's just the kind of thing that the auto industry needs to jolt it into a sobering reality about what it will take to make the oil economy less damaging to the environment. The box can even be adapted for industrial use at power plants and manufacturing facilities.

Still, it's hard to see this as anything other than a wonderful step in the right direction when it comes to combating greenhouse emissions. The thoughts of giant algae farms, enormous mechanical CO2 scrubbers, and even solar sunshades designed to block a small portion of the rays of the sun fall somewhere between impractical to impossible. And while devices like the Greenbox can't reverse the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, they certainly sound like they can't do anything but help.

LINK: From Wales, a box to make biofuel from car fumes