Monday, November 5, 2007

These are Some Fly-Ash Bricks

We already know that JEA spews a lot of mercury into the air. But with no known plans to improve its emissions technology or reduce its dependency on coal (which by itself would be a good idea, since coal prices have more than doubled over the past four years and coal faces deteriorating grades and rising costs according to today's Wall Street Journal), how can JEA mitigate all these mercury emissions? Well, check out this innovation, reported in Time magazine:

Kicking Ash

Each year coal-fired power plants dump millions of tons of mercury-laced ash into landfills. Henry Liu has found a way to compress this waste into fly-ash bricks that are eco-friendlier than their clay counterparts. The bricks conserve energy (they're made at room temperature), and tests suggest they may even suck mercury out of the surrounding air.
Available 2009
JEA should license this technology and produce its own bricks for the area's booming construction industry. Not only are there public health benefits for such a move, but it would be a new revenue stream for rate-increase happy JEA.

Photo by heyu1021

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