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I believe that converting Ga2O3 back into gallium metal should not necessarily release any CO2, just the O2 that I suppose was originally in the atmosphere anyw

I believe that converting Ga2O3 back into gallium metal should not necessarily release any CO2, just the O2 that I suppose was originally in the atmosphere anyway. You should be able to do it with heat, electrolysis hydrogen + heat to reduce it, or electrolysis itself. Theoretically you can do these all with electricity. It makes way more sense than when I see carbonates brought up as a way to sequester things at least, since the thing being cycled has no carbon in it at least.

mumblemumble 5y ago
Though, if we have enough clean electricity generation capacity to convert that gallium oxide back to gallium without releasing more CO2 than we had sunk in the first place, then one wonders why we're rube goldberging it rather than eliminating the carbon-intensive processes altogether. In other words, this doesn't sound to me like a solution to our clean energy problems, so much as a cool thing we might be able to do on a mass scale after our clean energy problems have already been solved.