Energy from thin air!

At Huber we have always had an eye to the environment. Long ago we left behind harmful refrigerants and our machines are designed to frugally consume resources to generate power through efficiencies in power conversion and transfer. Our manufacturing plant has been awarded as an environmentally conscious production facility. The use of highly efficient insulation to conserve energy in the facility, low water consumption, the use of recyclable materials and solar power generation are integrated into the factory and offices. To this end, a piloting project at LUT University in Finland appealed to us at many levels. The “Soletair” project, a research collaboration of LUT (prof. Jero Ahola) and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland (Dr. Pekka Simell) uses solar electricity to separate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to be synthesized with hydrogen produced from the water as a fuel. The Huber units pictured control the temperature at various stages (e.g. the Fischer-Tropsch reactor). This is absolutely remarkable science with great potential as a contributor to a reduction in the consumption of fossil fuels.