9 ms·

Scientists turn CO2 into jet fuel

61 points by vanburen 6y ago

laputan_machine 6y ago
Link to the article in question: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20214-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20214-z They call it 'renewable' yet use Iron as a catalyst. I'm not a chemist - how is that renewable?
- westurner 6y ago
  Yao, B., Xiao, T., Makgae, O.A. et al. "Transforming carbon dioxide into jet fuel using an organic combustion-synthesized Fe-Mn-K catalyst." Nat Commun 11, 6395 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20214-z https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20214-z
- codesnik 6y ago
  catalysts are not consumed in the reaction, by definition
- nayuki 6y ago
  Also, a catalyst only speeds up a reaction. It does not change the thermodynamics of a reaction. An irreversible reaction with the addition of a catalyst is still irreversible.
hannob 6y ago
This is a very poor article. The very first sentence is already wrong: "It could lead to net zero emissions for air travel." No, it can't. Aviation has a variety of emission sources, which include not only CO2, but also others like nitrous oxides and water vapour, which creates contrains and impacts cloud formation. There's huge uncertainty how large these effects are, but they're significant. It's not particularly surprising that you can turn CO2 into jet fuel. The issue is: It's not a complete fix for aviation's climate problem and the efficiency is extremely low. The amount of electricity needed is enormous. Worthy read (title is about hydrogen, but it also covers e-fuels quite a bit): https://www.cleansky.eu/news/hydrogen-powered-aviation-preparing-for-take-off https://www.cleansky.eu/news/hydrogen-powered-aviation-prepa... Key takeaways: Aviation CO2 emissions are 2%, but overall emissions are somewhere between 3 and 7%. And using E-Fuels to power future aviation (with current growth projections) requires more electricity than all the electricity that is genreated today.
- adrianN 6y ago
  At least the other effects of air travel don't last in the atmosphere for millennia.
- codingdave 6y ago
  I feel like the article was clear that this was just a step in a potential direction, not a full solution, and they explicitly said this wasn't even a viable for a single flight as of yet. If anyone comes up with a "complete fix", I'm all for it - in the meantime, looking into partial fixes to at least improve our situation sounds like a good idea to me.
- selectodude 6y ago
  I think the key takeaway from the laws of thermodynamics is that we can pull all the CO2 out of the air once we have fusion power. Before that point, it's not going anywhere.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    There are plenty of carbon free power sources that will be cheaper than fusion for the foreseeable future.
    - cogman10 6y ago
      I know I'm being a smart ass, but technically those are all fusion powered ;) Solar and wind are the result of the solar radiation which comes from fusion.
      - ben_w 6y ago
        If we’re being pedants: Tidal power is from the initial formation of the solar system. Geothermal is a roughly 50-50 mixture of the initial formation heat of the Earth’s creation and the decay of radioisotopes in the core. (I was going to add something about the crystallisation of liquid outer core onto the surface of the solid inner core, but Wikipedia implies that’s not a big source of heat).
jznsbdjfjd 6y ago
This headline is fake news. As the nature link says, there is already alot of past work for decades in this technology. The reasearch paper only studied existing catalysts and measured their efficiency. > In this investigation, we report the preparation of iron-based catalysts using the Organic Combustion Method (OCM) and determined their catalytic performance
M3phist0 6y ago
Half off-topic: Opening the link is blocked by my addblocker, since it redirects to https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_cc-session_ea8903f1-0158-4ba4-a4c4-3e2f7a220596 https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_... Bad link I guess.
cletus 6y ago
I don't believe carbon emissions will be "solved" by global altruism or even government regulation. This is something that will have a technological solution. Carbon sequestration from the atmosphere is not a hard problem and turning atmospheric carbon into fuel is not a hard problem. It just makes no sense to burn fossil fuels to do it. This is a net energy loss although there's still a market for turning inconvenient energy sources into convenient ones. But as soon as the energy source is cheaper than fossil fuels, the equation completely changes. This, to me, is the ultimate promise of renewables. It may well be the promise of fusion too but I'm not yet convinced fusion will ever be commercially viable. I'm least convinced about Tokamak reactors. New designs may prevail. Fusion is attractive because of the abundance of the fuel but the problems of containment (eg turbulence), alpha particle embrittlement and neutron embrittlement remain... huge. Stars contain all this with gravity.
- vegetablepotpie 6y ago
  To a large extent the equation is already flipping. Solar and wind are getting cheaper every year and will decisively beat fossil fuels on a dollar per watt basis eventually. I believe we need to go faster than what is economically feasible because according to the IPCC we are on track to a +4C world by 2100 where a +2C change will already lead to catastrophic consequences for civilization. Government regulation and individual altruism is necessary, but not sufficient, to solve the emissions problem. There are other tools though. Government incentives can change the economics to make necessary changes happen faster. For example California's cap and trade system has enabled new business opportunities, which reduce climate change. There are companies that make money by gathering old refrigerant and incinerate it to sell carbon offsets because of cap and trade. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet/kwhnz8b https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet/kwhnz8b
idlewords 6y ago
Plants hate them!
jwilk 6y ago
Archived copy without GDPR nag screen: https://archive.today/h0bYu https://archive.today/h0bYu
- smarx007 6y ago
  https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/ https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/
neural_thing 6y ago
Synthetic biology can do it better. Fix CO2 by growing sugar cane, turn sugar into jet fuel with genetically engineered yeast. https://www.total.com/media/news/press-releases/total-and-amyris-renewable-jet-fuel-ready-use-commercial-aviation https://www.total.com/media/news/press-releases/total-and-am... Still not commercially viable, but much closer to it than the linked process.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Can we scale that up enough to cover all our air travel?
  - freemint 6y ago
    Yeah but only using lots of land (more than it would require to run a solar powered electrified transport system) or using lots of energy and money (conservative guesstimate 50% of world GDP where air travel account for ~2% of CO2e emissions).
- dreamcompiler 6y ago
  That approach requires lots of land, water, and time. Nothing wrong with that, but much of the funding for CO2->jet fuel research comes from the military, which wants to be able to create liquid fuel quickly from CO2 in the atmosphere and they don't care how inefficient it is. Military customers are typically not very interested in processes that require running a farm.
  - iguy 6y ago
    The military also spends a lot of time turning jet fuel into electricity, because the former is energy-dense, easy to store, easy to transport. And they need electricity in lots of places without a grid. Where would the reverse be useful? Somehow you have unlimited electricity but no fuel, and you have time and space to run a chemical refinery? (And isn't carbon capture from the atmosphere likely to require farm-scale infrastructure anyway?)
Animats 6y ago
The team heated a mix of citric acid, hydrogen and an iron-manganese-potassium catalyst to turn CO2 into a liquid fuel capable of powering jet aircraft. ... The lab method only produced a few grams of fuel Wasn't this on HN a few days ago?
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  Yes. This same topic was discussed 2 days ago with lots of good commentary (albeit from wired rather than engadget). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25517512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25517512
pjc50 6y ago
The US navy have been investigating this for a while, e.g. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17632-how-to-turn-seawater-into-jet-fuel/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17632-how-to-turn-sea... (2009) The advantages are obvious - a nuclear carrier could make fuel for its aircraft and potentially its escorts too. Wonder how this is getting along.
As_himself 6y ago
I like how 5 days ago we had ; " Could Carbon Dioxide Be Turned into Jet Fuel? " [0] and after some HN users decided to investigate for 120 hours we have this ^ [0] ; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25517512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25517512
peter_d_sherman 6y ago
>"Wired reports that Oxford University scientists have successfully turned CO2 into jet fuel, raising the possibility of conventionally-powered aircraft with net zero emissions. The technique effectively reverses the process of burning fuel by relying on the organic combustion method. The team heated a mix of citric acid, hydrogen and an iron-manganese-potassium catalyst to turn CO2 into a liquid fuel capable of powering jet aircraft. The approach is inexpensive, uncomplicated and uses commonplace materials. It’s cheaper than processes used to turn hydrogen and water into fuel."

61 points by vanburen 6y ago

Link to the article in question: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20214-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20214-z They call it 'renewable' yet use Iron as a catalyst. I'm not a chemist - how is that renewable?

westurner 6y ago
Yao, B., Xiao, T., Makgae, O.A. et al. "Transforming carbon dioxide into jet fuel using an organic combustion-synthesized Fe-Mn-K catalyst." Nat Commun 11, 6395 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20214-z https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20214-z
codesnik 6y ago
catalysts are not consumed in the reaction, by definition
nayuki 6y ago
Also, a catalyst only speeds up a reaction. It does not change the thermodynamics of a reaction. An irreversible reaction with the addition of a catalyst is still irreversible.

hannob 6y ago

This is a very poor article. The very first sentence is already wrong: "It could lead to net zero emissions for air travel." No, it can't. Aviation has a variety of emission sources, which include not only CO2, but also others like nitrous oxides and water vapour, which creates contrains and impacts cloud formation. There's huge uncertainty how large these effects are, but they're significant. It's not particularly surprising that you can turn CO2 into jet fuel. The issue is: It's not a complete fix for aviation's climate problem and the efficiency is extremely low. The amount of electricity needed is enormous. Worthy read (title is about hydrogen, but it also covers e-fuels quite a bit): https://www.cleansky.eu/news/hydrogen-powered-aviation-preparing-for-take-off https://www.cleansky.eu/news/hydrogen-powered-aviation-prepa... Key takeaways: Aviation CO2 emissions are 2%, but overall emissions are somewhere between 3 and 7%. And using E-Fuels to power future aviation (with current growth projections) requires more electricity than all the electricity that is genreated today.

adrianN 6y ago
At least the other effects of air travel don't last in the atmosphere for millennia.
codingdave 6y ago
I feel like the article was clear that this was just a step in a potential direction, not a full solution, and they explicitly said this wasn't even a viable for a single flight as of yet. If anyone comes up with a "complete fix", I'm all for it - in the meantime, looking into partial fixes to at least improve our situation sounds like a good idea to me.
selectodude 6y ago
I think the key takeaway from the laws of thermodynamics is that we can pull all the CO2 out of the air once we have fusion power. Before that point, it's not going anywhere.
- adrianN 6y ago
  There are plenty of carbon free power sources that will be cheaper than fusion for the foreseeable future.
  - cogman10 6y ago
    I know I'm being a smart ass, but technically those are all fusion powered ;) Solar and wind are the result of the solar radiation which comes from fusion.
    - ben_w 6y ago
      If we’re being pedants: Tidal power is from the initial formation of the solar system. Geothermal is a roughly 50-50 mixture of the initial formation heat of the Earth’s creation and the decay of radioisotopes in the core. (I was going to add something about the crystallisation of liquid outer core onto the surface of the solid inner core, but Wikipedia implies that’s not a big source of heat).

jznsbdjfjd 6y ago

This headline is fake news. As the nature link says, there is already alot of past work for decades in this technology. The reasearch paper only studied existing catalysts and measured their efficiency. > In this investigation, we report the preparation of iron-based catalysts using the Organic Combustion Method (OCM) and determined their catalytic performance

M3phist0 6y ago

Half off-topic: Opening the link is blocked by my addblocker, since it redirects to https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_cc-session_ea8903f1-0158-4ba4-a4c4-3e2f7a220596 https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_... Bad link I guess.

cletus 6y ago

I don't believe carbon emissions will be "solved" by global altruism or even government regulation. This is something that will have a technological solution. Carbon sequestration from the atmosphere is not a hard problem and turning atmospheric carbon into fuel is not a hard problem. It just makes no sense to burn fossil fuels to do it. This is a net energy loss although there's still a market for turning inconvenient energy sources into convenient ones. But as soon as the energy source is cheaper than fossil fuels, the equation completely changes. This, to me, is the ultimate promise of renewables. It may well be the promise of fusion too but I'm not yet convinced fusion will ever be commercially viable. I'm least convinced about Tokamak reactors. New designs may prevail. Fusion is attractive because of the abundance of the fuel but the problems of containment (eg turbulence), alpha particle embrittlement and neutron embrittlement remain... huge. Stars contain all this with gravity.

vegetablepotpie 6y ago
To a large extent the equation is already flipping. Solar and wind are getting cheaper every year and will decisively beat fossil fuels on a dollar per watt basis eventually. I believe we need to go faster than what is economically feasible because according to the IPCC we are on track to a +4C world by 2100 where a +2C change will already lead to catastrophic consequences for civilization. Government regulation and individual altruism is necessary, but not sufficient, to solve the emissions problem. There are other tools though. Government incentives can change the economics to make necessary changes happen faster. For example California's cap and trade system has enabled new business opportunities, which reduce climate change. There are companies that make money by gathering old refrigerant and incinerate it to sell carbon offsets because of cap and trade. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet/kwhnz8b https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet/kwhnz8b

idlewords 6y ago

Plants hate them!

jwilk 6y ago

Archived copy without GDPR nag screen: https://archive.today/h0bYu https://archive.today/h0bYu

smarx007 6y ago
https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/ https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

neural_thing 6y ago

Synthetic biology can do it better. Fix CO2 by growing sugar cane, turn sugar into jet fuel with genetically engineered yeast. https://www.total.com/media/news/press-releases/total-and-amyris-renewable-jet-fuel-ready-use-commercial-aviation https://www.total.com/media/news/press-releases/total-and-am... Still not commercially viable, but much closer to it than the linked process.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
Can we scale that up enough to cover all our air travel?
- freemint 6y ago
  Yeah but only using lots of land (more than it would require to run a solar powered electrified transport system) or using lots of energy and money (conservative guesstimate 50% of world GDP where air travel account for ~2% of CO2e emissions).
dreamcompiler 6y ago
That approach requires lots of land, water, and time. Nothing wrong with that, but much of the funding for CO2->jet fuel research comes from the military, which wants to be able to create liquid fuel quickly from CO2 in the atmosphere and they don't care how inefficient it is. Military customers are typically not very interested in processes that require running a farm.
- iguy 6y ago
  The military also spends a lot of time turning jet fuel into electricity, because the former is energy-dense, easy to store, easy to transport. And they need electricity in lots of places without a grid. Where would the reverse be useful? Somehow you have unlimited electricity but no fuel, and you have time and space to run a chemical refinery? (And isn't carbon capture from the atmosphere likely to require farm-scale infrastructure anyway?)

Animats 6y ago

The team heated a mix of citric acid, hydrogen and an iron-manganese-potassium catalyst to turn CO2 into a liquid fuel capable of powering jet aircraft. ... The lab method only produced a few grams of fuel Wasn't this on HN a few days ago?

acidburnNSA 6y ago
Yes. This same topic was discussed 2 days ago with lots of good commentary (albeit from wired rather than engadget). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25517512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25517512

pjc50 6y ago

The US navy have been investigating this for a while, e.g. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17632-how-to-turn-seawater-into-jet-fuel/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17632-how-to-turn-sea... (2009) The advantages are obvious - a nuclear carrier could make fuel for its aircraft and potentially its escorts too. Wonder how this is getting along.

As_himself 6y ago

I like how 5 days ago we had ; " Could Carbon Dioxide Be Turned into Jet Fuel? " [0] and after some HN users decided to investigate for 120 hours we have this ^ [0] ; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25517512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25517512

peter_d_sherman 6y ago

>"Wired reports that Oxford University scientists have successfully turned CO2 into jet fuel, raising the possibility of conventionally-powered aircraft with net zero emissions. The technique effectively reverses the process of burning fuel by relying on the organic combustion method. The team heated a mix of citric acid, hydrogen and an iron-manganese-potassium catalyst to turn CO2 into a liquid fuel capable of powering jet aircraft. The approach is inexpensive, uncomplicated and uses commonplace materials. It’s cheaper than processes used to turn hydrogen and water into fuel."