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Organic feedstocks (non-fuel), although smaller isn't exactly a tiny market. Depending on how much control you have over the fixation process you might be able
by apo 7y ago
Organic feedstocks (non-fuel), although smaller isn't exactly a tiny market. Depending on how much control you have over the fixation process you might be able to tap into some high-value alcohol markets. That's the main reason I added the follow-up to the original questions.
In other words, the flow of material would look like:
CO2 -> polymers, drugs, and other useful solid materials
There would be no [product] -> CO2 step at the end. It cuts out the re-release of CO2 and eliminates a dependence on petroleum.
- pcl 7y agoI believe that as long as we have a huge worldwide oil / diesel / gasoline infrastructure in place, from transport to refining to distribution to combustion, it makes a lot of sense to build reasonably-efficient carbon-neutral mechanisms to plug into that infrastructure. In other words, for the next handful of decades, the worldwide fleet of cars, trucks, generators, boats, etc. are going to be burning carbon that comes from somewhere. Products like this provide a carbon-neutral means of supplying that demand. It's like working on a huge existing codebase, but at much larger scale, and with geopolitics. People are working on rebuilding it all from scratch, but iterating within the existing infrastructure could also deliver huge wins. And, if we somehow found ourselves in a world in which carbon-neutral petrochemicals were the norm, well, we can always generate a surplus and sequester that surplus, right?
- jacobush 7y agoIf I am allowed to daydream freely, a huge fusion reactor with a gasoline pipeline flowing from it, is (in my mind) a beautiful thing.
- rmcginnis 7y agoUltimately anything we make now with petroleum feedstocks could be made from CO2 mined from the air instead. Gasoline and other transportation fuels is a logical first step, but we don't need to stop there. Agreed!