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Scientists Discover Efficient Process to Turn CO2 into Ethanol
- british_india 10y agoThis strikes me as a Hail Mary play by the fossil fuel industry to make us think--for a little more profit for them--that it's okay to burn carbon. I don't buy it.
- vorotato 10y agoMost people in Tennessee don't care about burning carbon so I don't see why they'd need a "hail mary play".
- logfromblammo 10y agoI'd presume that people in Tennessee may still prefer to burn a carbon-based fuel that does not leave behind a toxic ash slurry [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly... http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2015/may/10/reclaiming-kingston/303447/ http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2015/may/10/r...
- pjc50 10y agoThere isn't actually anything wrong with burning carbon fuels that are derived from atmospheric carbon - it's a net neutral.
- VT_Drew 10y ago>potentially creating a new technology to help avert climate change >The reaction turns CO2 into ethanol, which could in turn be used to power generators and vehicles. I am no scientist, my question is this: wouldn't it be a zero sum game at best? You are taking C02 out of the atmosphere, turning it into fuel, which then is used in C02 emitting engines.
- gns24 10y agoA zero sum game would be a huge improvement on the status quo.
- varg 10y agoWell a zero sum game would be pretty awesome, wouldn't it? ..Free fuel etc.
- crispyambulance 10y agoAnother article with more/better content here: https://www.ornl.gov/news/nano-spike-catalysts-convert-carbon-dioxide-directly-ethanol https://www.ornl.gov/news/nano-spike-catalysts-convert-carbo...
- lyschoening 10y agoWe can fill the Aral Sea up with vodka.
- lucozade 10y agoIf it were truly zero sum that could help solve the CO2 increase problem. But it can be better than that. If you had a zero sum technology that evened out fluctuations in other renewables then you're in the realms of CO2 reduction. You also may have the possibility of more practical sequestration than CO2 though I can think of a few pitfalls with ethanol lakes, especially around Spring Break time.
- NickM 10y agoYes it would. But if we can switch from a losing game to a zero sum game, that could still help prevent more climate change in the future. Right now, the best solution in most cases is probably renewables and batteries. But this could be a useful solution for something like air travel, where batteries are currently too big and heavy to allow for a good zero-carbon approach.
- lallysingh 10y agoYou can convert ethanol into hydrogen (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360319907002479 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360319907...), and use that as an (essentially, almost) emission-free fuel.
- harshreality 10y ago>This process has several advantages when compared to other methods of converting CO2 into fuel. The reaction uses common materials like copper and carbon, and it converts the CO2 into ethanol, which is already widely used as a fuel. >Perhaps most importantly, it works at room temperature, which means that it can be started and stopped easily and with little energy cost. This means that this conversion process could be used as temporary energy storage during a lull in renewable energy generation, smoothing out fluctuations in a renewable energy grid. Is it too much to ask that a science journal report on science in, like, quantitative terms to support a headline? Specifically: What's the efficiency (or how much energy is required per mole)? Estimated overall costs compared to batteries or grain ethanol? Other available chemical processes for capturing CO2, and their efficiency? Not reported. I have no idea what their arbitrary cut-off for "efficient" is, but if they say they want to make it more efficient, it obviously isn't efficient enough. Actual numbers might help to judge.
- karmajunkie 10y agoIn Popular Mechanics? Yeah, I think you might be asking for a bit much there.
- seren 10y agoThe abstract of the article includes : >Herein we report a common element, nanostructured catalyst for the direct electrochemical conversion of CO2 to ethanol with high Faradaic efficiency (63 % at −1.2 V vs RHE) and high selectivity (84 %) that operates in water and at ambient temperature and pressure. I am not exactly sure how to understand the 63% efficiency but I assume that this is the rate of conversion from electrical to chemical energy. However the conclusion of the article mentions that : >The overpotential (which might be lowered with the proper electrolyte, and by separating the hydrogen production to another catalyst) probably precludes economic viability for this catalyst, but the high selectivity for a 12-electron reaction suggests that nanostructured surfaces with multiple reactive sites in close proximity can yield novel reaction mechanisms. Which sounds much less optimistic that the article's headline.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- bnolsen 10y agoWe got moonshine, yes we do!
- m_mueller 10y agoSomething that annoys me with these articles is that such processes are usually praised as carbon capture at the same time as it is energy storage. Well yes, but not both at the same time. And I really doubt its effectiveness as energy storage in the first place - why would you burn fossil fuels (with a loss), then gather energy with renewables to capture back the CO2 (with a loss) and then use the energy of the ethanol again (again with a loss)? Just store the energy from the renewables in batteries.
- oddevan 10y agoI wonder if it would be useful to harvest excess CO2 from the atmosphere. That way, you're using the existing CO2 as a fuel source.
- m_mueller 10y agoAm I missing the sarcasm tag?
- adrianN 10y agoBatteries might be more expensive than storing energy in liquid fuels. They have a limited number of charge cycles after all, whereas a vat of Ethanol can be refilled forever. There is also a large number of motors available that can burn Ethanol, but a significantly smaller number of electric vehicles.
- m_mueller 10y ago1.) electric vehicles are also vastly simpler mechanically, so what you gain with energy storage efficiency in gasoline tanks you loose with their complex motors. 2.) if cheap energy density is the problem they want to solve, then this process at least needs to be compared to using the land to grow plants in order to turn them into ethanol fuel. So a comparison like "wind farm under average conditions + ethanol farming" vs. "wind farm under average conditions + solar under average conditions + CO2 to ethanol process" --> how many Joules of kinetic energy can you produce per square kilometer of land, given the fuel/electricity is used in the currently most efficient motors/batteries?
- krylon 10y agoSo, basically, we can fight Global Warming and get hammered doing so? Now that's what I call a win-win! (Seriously, though, one could do other things with ethanol besides burning it.)
- maga 10y ago>The catalyst’s novelty lies in its nanoscale structure, consisting of copper nanoparticles embedded in carbon spikes. This nano-texturing approach avoids the use of expensive or rare metals such as platinum that limit the economic viability of many catalysts. How about large scale production of the catalyst? Do we have any idea of how to produce efficiently a "nanoscale structure consisting of copper nanoparticles embedded in carbon spikes" in large quantities?
- acveilleux 10y agoNo idea about this material in specific but a lot of nanoscale stuff is manufactured using photo lithography, basically the same way we make micro conductors since it's a process we understand well and we can scale (just ask Intel.) It sounds like this material would have good tolerance for minor imperfections (unlike IC) so yield could be really good.
- AstralStorm 10y agoThe problem with this one attempt is the energy input required for it to work. That requires major research on the cathode.
- mrfusion 10y agoIs there a way to cheaply store ethanol long term and prevent it from turning back into co2?
- kinofcain 10y agoBarrels.
- mrfusion 10y agoCould we run this process on Venus for terraforming?
- mtgx 10y ago"Great, now we can go back to using coal!" - said coal industry supporters.
- Gatsky 10y agoI don't get the point of this. We already have a self propagating machine that can turn carbon dioxide into a useful carbon substrate that is stable over long time periods, and is a thoroughly proven carbon sequestration technology. It's called a tree.
- AlexCoventry 10y agoThe main question is whether there's a carbon sequestration process which can be industrialized so that it's more effective than planting trees.
- btbuildem 10y agoNot sure we want to start competing with trees -- what if we get better than them at it? Do trees start dying for lack of CO2?
- adrianN 10y agoIt's not like we couldn't stop if the CO2 levels dropped too far.
- btbuildem 10y agoJust like we are able to stop now, as the CO2 levels are life-threateningly high, right?
- undersuit 10y agoIf we could process enough CO2 to reverse current inputs(i.e. the equivalent of hundreds of billions of tree growth) we could possibly think about scaling up the process to remove all the CO2 from our atmosphere as fast as we can. But we won't run out of CO2 unless we take all the ethanol we're producing with the CO2 and store it, instead of generating energy from it via combustion.
- adrianN 10y agoPlants capture about 1% of the incoming sunlight energy into chemical energy. We might be able to come up with a process that is more efficient.
- lvs 10y agoExcept it also generates CO and methane in nontrivial amount (something like 5-10% apparently), one of which is a highly toxic pollutant and the other is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2.
- eveningcoffee 10y agoMethane can be used as fuel, so can be converted back into energy and CO2. CO is more troublesome as it is converted into ozone in presence of sunlight and hydroxide ions.
- M_Grey 10y agoI used to read PopMech in the bathroom, but years ago it fell far below even that modest standard. Today, I wouldn't wipe myself with it. "By using common materials..." Which ones? In what arrangement? How would it scale to the level of atmospheric scrubbing? They mention copper and carbon later, but fail to mention if that carbon is in the form of nanotubes, or some more easily mass-manufactured form. If you read this article and come out of it with fewer questions than you did going in, you're doing it wrong.
- brownbat 10y ago"Efficient" here does not imply "economic viability," which the original article suggests is out of reach for this technique. Should click-baity science articles be flagged on HN? I don't know.