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This is wildly optimistic, but personally, I'm looking forward to CO2 captured from the atmosphere, reformed into hydrocarbons on-site, and used as feedstock in
by matmatmatmat 5y ago
This is wildly optimistic, but personally, I'm looking forward to CO2 captured from the atmosphere, reformed into hydrocarbons on-site, and used as feedstock in the global plastics and fertilizer trades.
Yes, balancing that equation is going to require energy input. Yes, probably gonna require some pretty smart chemists. But impossible? Well, I don't see why not.
Edit: There's probably not that much utility in this. See comments below.
- garmaine 5y agoCarbon isn't used in fertilizer, no?
- matmatmatmat 5y agoMy understanding is that synthetic fertilizers are (at least in part) made using crude oil. Would be interested to hear an expert chime in.
- scoopertrooper 5y agoThe only synthetic fertilizers that include hydrocarbons in their production chain are ammonia based, but all CO2 (or as much as is practicable) is removed from the end product. It's really only used on the way to producing hydrogen.
- matmatmatmat 5y agoThanks for the clarification!
- garmaine 5y agoFurthermore the ammonia production processes use natural gas (not crude oil!) only as a source of hydrogen. They could split water instead, it’s just that the natural gas is cheaper.
- robbiep 5y agoPoster probably refers to Ammonia from Haber-Bosch process which generally used methane for H2 source (although I guess if we get to the point where we have the technical capability to take CO2 to energy feedstocks we probably have the capability to generate real green H2)
- garmaine 5y agoWe have the ability to generate green H2 from electrolysis.
- robbiep 5y agoYes but OP’s whole spiel is about us having enough excess energy to do things like turn CO2 into feedstocks and currently we can’t do that (well at least in no way is it economically viable to do that), and the proportion of green H2 is tiny in comparison to that made with fossil fuels, so it clearly isn’t economically effective to do that yet either
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoCarbon itself is a soil amendment. (think compost). Organic farms use tonnes of the stuff every year as a top dressing. If you have pure carbon you could mix it up with NPK and micronutrients and have a compost alternative for large scale industrial farming.