DailyDirt: Fuels From Thin Air
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Carbon dioxide has been the focus of a lot of discussions on global climate change and energy policy. Certainly, there are other greenhouse gases, but CO2 is the major by-product of our fossil-fueled economy that people have been massively pumping into the air at an extraordinary rate. Over millennia, biology has already come up with an answer to this problem -- in nature, carbon dioxide is part of a carbon cycle that is recycled and/or sequestered into wood or sugars or other forms of chemical storage. Perhaps some clever chemists/scientists can come up with another kind of photosynthesis to save us from dangerously high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Check out some of these research projects that could turn CO2 into fuels.- A new catalytic system using ionic liquids and carbon nanofibers has been shown to turn carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide, which is could be used to create syngas and other fuels. The real breakthrough here is the discovery of a relatively new class of metal-free catalysis using doped carbon nanofibers. [url]
- The combustion of methanol to CO2 and water is a well-known reaction, but finding catalysts that promote the reverse reaction (CO2 to methanol) is what would be really useful. A novel, very efficient, single-step catalytic system to convert CO2 to methanol has been devised, but the problem is that it uses a borane compound that is actually more expensive to make than methanol (so the process isn't very economical). [url]
- Carbon Recycling International is a company that has a commercially viable process to turn waste CO2 into methanol. The trick is that the company has access to the waste CO2 from a geothermal power plant next to a volcano in Iceland -- giving it access to a relatively cheap source of CO2 and energy. The company brands its methanol as Vulcanol -- to remind buyers that its product comes from a natural volcano source. [url]
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Filed Under: borane, carbon dioxide, catalysts, chemistry, climate change, energy, fuel, geothermal power, ghg, iceland, ionic liquids, methanol, nanofibers, vulcanol
Companies: carbon recycling international
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DME
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dimethyl_ether
Of course, turning CO2 back into a fuel requires energy. It would make no sense to burn a fossil fuel to recycle CO2, you'd need to use something like hydropower, wind, solar, geothermal or nuclear power.
It certainly makes a whole lot more sense to create something like methanol or DME than it does to make ethanol from corn (which consumes about as much fossil fuel to produce as it "saves"). Whenever I read (usually on a "green" web site) that Country X or Y is getting 15% of its energy from "biomass" and this is touted as a "good thing," I don't whether or laugh or cry. Almost always, they are talking about ethanol, which is good for public relations but not for the environment.
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Re: DME
DME is the precursor of Dimethyl Sulphate, it likes sulfur a lot and can get it in many many ways.
What makes one bad and the other good?
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if it is a catalyst it is not consumed in the reaction, therefore would only need to be produced once.
The issue with any of these schemes in the energy equation, like converting water into hydrogen and oxygen a clean and effective source of energy, but it takes at least the same amount of energy to create H and O as you get back by burning the H and O, usually much more energy.
Want to extract carbon out of the atmosphere? plant a tree.
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Re:
But the concept of planting a tree is a good one, the tree does all the energy work on their own and give out many other things that can be used.
Now that is the real challenge, to make closed artificial systems that function like natural systems.
e.g.:
Bank erosion can be remedied by putting a retaining wall that can be reinforced by metal rods inserted and meshes that eventually will decompose or you can use plants with long strong root systems that regenerate all by themselves and last practically forever, in India there is a region that build bridges out of trees they last hundreds of years(the lifespan of the trees),
http://rootbridges.blogspot.com/
http://homeguides.sfgate.com/soil-erosion-control-plant-list- 68961.html
http://www.laspilitas.com/garden/howto/slope.html
They call planting a low tech solution for erosion, but really, which man made material can regenerate itself, self replicate and last indefinitely?
Digressing now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalysis
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