Algae will Save the Day

To battle the looming carbon dioxide threat from mushrooming industries, Orissa is turning to the sea.

To battle the looming carbon dioxide threat from mushrooming industries, Orissa is turning to the sea. Because CO2 levels have risen to unforeseen proportions, the state government has launched a project to capture CO2 using algae clusters. The pilot venture, which will cost Rs 95 lakh, will be introduced this month at Nalco’s thermal power plant in Angul. The effort will be supervised by a Canada-based researcher, Ranjan Pradhan, who worked on a similar assignment in Toronto. As part of the project, algae will be harvested in ponds and there will be an apparatus through which the carbon dioxide produced from the thermal power plant will be introduced into the same water body. Carbon dioxide, being soluble, will then be absorbed by the algae. Pradhan believes that algae will be 50 times as effective after it is harvested. According to a spokesperson for the Orissa Pollution Control Board, few countries outside the US, China, Canada and Israel use the technology to capture CO2. “Even then, it hasn’t been used for commercial purposes so far,” the official says. “We are the first ones to do so.”

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