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Surely you understand that this is likely to cost a similar amount in energy terms as was released in burning the hydrocarbon in the first place?
by VBprogrammer 5y ago
Surely you understand that this is likely to cost a similar amount in energy terms as was released in burning the hydrocarbon in the first place?
- hutzlibu 5y agoNo problem, we just burn more coal then, oh wait ..
- credit_guy 5y agoThere's a slight variation of what the GP is proposing, called methane pyrolysis [1]. In that, you separate the hydrogen and the carbon from methane, and then you can burn the hydrogen to get energy, and store the carbon in a landfill. Burning hydrogen creates more energy than it takes to split the methane, so overall the process is exothermic. Right now that process is not economical yet (you need some catalysts, and the carbon doesn't just come out, it sticks to something, you need to wash it with some acids, then retrieve the acids, etc). But active research is ongoing, so there's a chance this will become viable in the next few years. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis#Methane_pyrolysis_for_hydrogen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis#Methane_pyrolysis_fo...
- kaba0 5y agoThat is for methane only, which you can just as well simply burn, because the resulting CO2 has less green house effect.
- VBprogrammer 5y agoOr burn and capture the CO2 before it has been dispersed into the atmosphere (where at a concentration of 0.04% you have to pump a lot of inert gases around your system to remove a small amount of CO2.