3 ms·

Just take the CO2 from the atmosphere, concentrate it to a 100% pure CO2 stream, then generate a 100% H2 stream from water, blow off one O to make CO (carbon mo

Just take the CO2 from the atmosphere, concentrate it to a 100% pure CO2 stream, then generate a 100% H2 stream from water, blow off one O to make CO (carbon monoxide), now we're into well-characterized Fisher-Tropsch and Sabattier processes... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction Why on earth would you devote a scrap of quality agricultural land to ethanol production? You might as well just compost lost crops, get better production later. Seriously, biofuels are like raising seals in pens so you can kill them and get lamp oil from their blubber, it's just stupid.

jabl 3y ago
Yes. Another variation on this scheme (which AFAIK the Porsche synthetic fuel plant in Chile is doing) is producing methane from atmospheric CO2 and H2 from electrolysis, then converting methane to methanol (how most methanol is produced today, albeit from fossil methane (natural gas)), and finally converting methanol to gasoline with the methanol-to-gasoline (MTG) process. But in the context of corn ethanol in the USA, none of this has anything to do with the environment or sane economics, it's all just an agricultural subsidy scheme.