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Soooo. I suppose this has the potential to be very interesting and at the least is very relevant to my personal research. I'm actually working (with a small tea

Soooo. I suppose this has the potential to be very interesting and at the least is very relevant to my personal research. I'm actually working (with a small team) to develop methanol powered autonomous climate research stations. It would be very neat if we could power them via CO2, or poetic. However, wtf is this press release? Is this research? This is announcing a patent? This doesn't seem like science to me? Where's the publications, where is the methodology description? What about the constraints? Energy density of methanol is high, but what's the energy input necessary for the conversion process? Is this only effectively helpful if renewable powered? This press release is useless to anyone who actually cares about the work. It's mediocre marketing at best. God I hate academic press offices.

siver_john 4y ago
Looking at Google Scholar it appears the related paper is here: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6463/ac006f/meta https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6463/ac006f/... There also appears to be a patent but I don't trust my googlefu enough to try and search for that.
- earthscienceman 4y ago
  Thank you for this very much, I didn't manage to find it. I stand by the fact that an academic press office isn't linking to the original paper is absurd. After a brief skim of the paper... the press release is (as typical) pretty out of touch with the research. Chemistry is nothing short of impressive! And I hope methodologies like these push towards viable carbon capture, mostly so we don't get idiots continuing to experiment with riskier techniques like iron fertilization etc. However, the paper leaves me with so many questions. Methane is shown to be an output of the chemical reaction leading to methanol, they claim the methane output is reduced by their modifications to the method but they make no attempt to quantify the amount of methane released in the reaction or how that compares to the CO2 capture. Also also. I'm not a chemist, but it's pretty weird to be measuring energy in eV is it not? If this were truly climate-centric, they could very easily put the Wattage required per kg of carbon capture. Which, although probably extremely high given they haven't had time to optimize it, would give a very clear idea of the efficiency of the capture. It looks like some of this might be quantified in the patent but I can only read French, not German :(
  - R0b0t1 4y ago
    It's measured in eV as it's the most precise* measurement you can make. Ultimately it does turn into enthalpy. Process takes place at 21 bar and 300-500C. I do not see this being efficient unless powered by nukes. This is fine though, and more accessible than the gasoline production methods that use similar high pressure high temperature reactors.
    - earthscienceman 4y ago
      It is the most precise measurement of the energy input required chemically. It says nothing of the efficiency of the process. The energy required to get to 21 bar and 300-500C and maintain it while that energy input is being provided for that specific chemical reaction. I'll reiterate, I have no issue that it's inefficient, that's to be expected. It's not hard at all to give a net energy input for the entire process. In fact that would be the easiest part of the paper. If you're giving your research to your press office to make a statement about "climate protection" I damn well expect that number to be provided. Powered by nuclear as you propose is wonderful, btw. I personally would take nuclear waste over atmospheric CO2 every day of the week.
      - jjoonathan 4y ago
        Let's make a giant offshore nuclear-powered CO2->petrol production facility and become techno oil barons. Maybe bond villains too. You have to do something with the money, right? I want to see this movie.
    - jabl 4y ago
      > It's measured in eV as it's the most precise* measurement you can make. Er, no. Just no. eV is just a unit, that doesn't make it more or less precise. eV had its origins in early accelerator physics work where it was a convenient unit to use, and it's use spread from there to other subfields of physics, including ones where the connection to the original processes measured in the early accelerator work is tenuous at best.
      - 4y ago
- samstave 4y ago
  https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2022073055A1/en?q=co2+methanol&q=Gernot+Pacholik https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2022073055A1/en?q=co2+me... I think....
- wgj 4y ago
  https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2022073055A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2022073055A1/en

siver_john 4y ago

Looking at Google Scholar it appears the related paper is here: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6463/ac006f/meta https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6463/ac006f/... There also appears to be a patent but I don't trust my googlefu enough to try and search for that.

earthscienceman 4y ago
Thank you for this very much, I didn't manage to find it. I stand by the fact that an academic press office isn't linking to the original paper is absurd. After a brief skim of the paper... the press release is (as typical) pretty out of touch with the research. Chemistry is nothing short of impressive! And I hope methodologies like these push towards viable carbon capture, mostly so we don't get idiots continuing to experiment with riskier techniques like iron fertilization etc. However, the paper leaves me with so many questions. Methane is shown to be an output of the chemical reaction leading to methanol, they claim the methane output is reduced by their modifications to the method but they make no attempt to quantify the amount of methane released in the reaction or how that compares to the CO2 capture. Also also. I'm not a chemist, but it's pretty weird to be measuring energy in eV is it not? If this were truly climate-centric, they could very easily put the Wattage required per kg of carbon capture. Which, although probably extremely high given they haven't had time to optimize it, would give a very clear idea of the efficiency of the capture. It looks like some of this might be quantified in the patent but I can only read French, not German :(
- R0b0t1 4y ago
  It's measured in eV as it's the most precise* measurement you can make. Ultimately it does turn into enthalpy. Process takes place at 21 bar and 300-500C. I do not see this being efficient unless powered by nukes. This is fine though, and more accessible than the gasoline production methods that use similar high pressure high temperature reactors.
  - earthscienceman 4y ago
    It is the most precise measurement of the energy input required chemically. It says nothing of the efficiency of the process. The energy required to get to 21 bar and 300-500C and maintain it while that energy input is being provided for that specific chemical reaction. I'll reiterate, I have no issue that it's inefficient, that's to be expected. It's not hard at all to give a net energy input for the entire process. In fact that would be the easiest part of the paper. If you're giving your research to your press office to make a statement about "climate protection" I damn well expect that number to be provided. Powered by nuclear as you propose is wonderful, btw. I personally would take nuclear waste over atmospheric CO2 every day of the week.
    - jjoonathan 4y ago
      Let's make a giant offshore nuclear-powered CO2->petrol production facility and become techno oil barons. Maybe bond villains too. You have to do something with the money, right? I want to see this movie.
  - jabl 4y ago
    > It's measured in eV as it's the most precise* measurement you can make. Er, no. Just no. eV is just a unit, that doesn't make it more or less precise. eV had its origins in early accelerator physics work where it was a convenient unit to use, and it's use spread from there to other subfields of physics, including ones where the connection to the original processes measured in the early accelerator work is tenuous at best.
    - 4y ago
samstave 4y ago
https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2022073055A1/en?q=co2+methanol&q=Gernot+Pacholik https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2022073055A1/en?q=co2+me... I think....
wgj 4y ago
https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2022073055A1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2022073055A1/en