Transitional

Another “I spotted this thing” one today.

I spotted this thing today at the service station:

It got me curious – I’m often surprised that my first reaction to stuff like this is a bit of scepticism, until I remember that Google is a thing and I can just look it up.

Here’s some cool info:

There are 2 versions of vapour recovery technology – VR1 captures vapours when the tanker refills the underground tanks, and VR2 captures vapours when people use the bowser.

The intention is to reduce the masses of vapour that are lost to the air each year, which is apparently a huge contributor to smog. This article from the EPA website has more info.

This would technically fall under the banner of climate tech, though if we were being pedantic I’d probably call it transitional tech, since many of these technologies are simply making transitional systems (like fossil fuels) just a bit less bad for the period of time that we’re stuck with them.

The concept looks similar to the carbon capture techniques, or direct air capture (or DAC) that are starting to be used on things like freight ships, which literally look like a lid for all of the chimneys.

All necessary solutions… until they’re no longer necessary! 😜