7 ms·
Engineers find a new way to convert carbon dioxide into useful products
- mouse_ 3y agolong co2
- aimonster2 3y agoSure. Put it in a greenhouse and make food! Like I said to another thread, just use CaO->CaCO3 then go backwards CaCO3->CaO at the point that you're using it as long as the heating doesn't adversely effect the greenhouse environment.
- jacknews 3y agoI'm sure this is useful in some situations, but their example of converting the co2 from a power plant makes no sense to me. You burn carbon-fuel and oxygen to get energy (and most of the energy comes from the oxygen actually), then use the energy to release half the oxygen from the co2 back again. What's the point? Perhaps it makes some sense for methane, etc which has a lot of hydrogen?
- CoastalCoder 3y agoIt's just a jobs program for carbon atoms, to distract people from Big Oxygen! (Apologies, I'm new to chemistry-related humor.)
- jacknews 3y agoWell, it is underappreciated I think, that an increase in co2 levels is actually also a decrease in o2 levels - and animals can be quite sensitive to o2 levels.
- Retric 3y agoThe drop in O2 levels is a long way from being noticeable by animals. 280 > 420 PPM for CO2 is just 209,640 ppm > 209,500 ppm PPM O2 a drop of under 0.007%.
- datascienced 3y agoMaybe because you can keep your coal fired base load (and associated sunk cost/asset value) and then have renewable powered CO removal. If you are going to do this why put up with a puny 400ppm when you just go to a rich source of CO2, cut out the middle man (the atmosphere and entropy!). You can also make a different thing out of the captured CO2, maybe a building material instead of a fuel.
- jacknews 3y agojust feed the renewable to the grid? I suppose it could make some sense at peak solar hours to 'waste' the solar power to scrub co2 from coal plants that can't be shut down easily, but it still seems incredibly wasteful.
- dotnet00 3y agoCould be something like spinning up the power plant to meet demand, storing the co2 and treating it when there is excess renewable energy available. Sure you could build more renewables instead, but if it can be retrofitted onto existing power plants for less cost than replacing the plant with renewables, it could make financial sense.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- royaltheartist 3y agodon't we already have farming?
- compootr 3y agofor the amount of stuff people buy on temu and shien, no
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago[dead]
- joak 3y agoPhotosynthesis is at least an order of magnitude less efficient than photovoltaics in converting light into chemical energy.
- willmadden 3y agoI think he's talking about creating food and oxygen to breath, not chemical energy.
- datascienced 3y agoThat is also chemical energy! And we make more than enough food already right?
- Zardoz84 3y agoperhaps enough food. But it's very poorly distributed
- constantcrying 3y agoIt is also many orders of magnitude easier to fill large spaces with photosynthesizing devices which will convert CO2 from the atmosphere into usable material. Including foody building materials, fuels.
- rhelz 3y agoI really don't see the point of this...it takes at least as much energy to "unburn" the CO2 in the air back into organic molecules, as burning the coal/oil released in the first place. (If it took less, we could make a perpetual motion machine by burning and unburning coal) Are we really supposed to expend as much energy as we expended in the entire industrial age just to remove the excess CO2 in the atmosphere?
- genter 3y agoGasoline and diesel are much more energy dense than lithium batteries. Tesla has shown that this doesn't matter too much for cars, but lithium battery powered trains and planes are a long way off, if ever. This could be the first step of creating renewable gasoline/diesel for them.
- alexose 3y agoTotally agree. We're a lot closer to sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) than we are to electric airliners. Another thing to consider is that aviation only accounts for around 2% of global carbon emissions. If SAF ends up being harder to make than expected, it might end up making sense to keep extracting + refining some fossil fuels and mitigate them using some other means (mineralization, perhaps). Cheap carbon dioxide removal could end up leading to some rather unintuitive outcomes.
- MrVandemar 3y ago> aviation only accounts for around 2% of global carbon emissions You mean: “aviation accounts for around 2% of global carbon emissions”. There is no only about it. 2% is actually a meaningful and substantial number when you consider the pie-chart it's sliced out of represents a collossal problem.
- rhelz 3y agoAfter a plane burns all its jet fuel to fly where it is going, we will have to expend even more than that much energy to suck the C02 out of the air again. Flying will cost at least 2x as much as it does today.
- wrycoder 3y agoAll you need is energy. Now, where do we get energy for the chemical industry?
- TheDudeMan 3y agoNuclear
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoJust put the chemical plant right next to a field of solar panels and windmills. If it's not sunny or windy, scale down.
- usrnm 3y agoEven better, a nuclear power plant
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoNuclear is great, but if you have no constraints around when to scale up and down besides energy availability and nothing else nearby to power then complexity wise it's probably overkill.
- jfengel 3y agoAnother article on the same scientist, from the same source, two years ago https://news.mit.edu/2022/turning-carbon-dioxide-valuable-products-0907 https://news.mit.edu/2022/turning-carbon-dioxide-valuable-pr...
- alexose 3y agoI've spent a decent amount of time learning about this stuff. Here's the lens I use to understand advancements in CO2 reduction: Carbon monoxide is, indeed, an incredibly useful and versatile precursor in many industrial processes. Sourcing it from CO2 in the air unlocks all sorts of carbon-negative technologies, including sustainable fuels and plastics. As we begin to wind down fossil fuel extraction, this becomes increasingly important. However, the only driver of adoption at scale is cost. Any new method to reduce CO2 must compete not only with established fossil sources, but also more established reduction techniques like RWGS. Even if there's a breakthrough in energy efficiency, as we seem to have here, one must consider the entire system cost as compared to the alternatives. This is why a lot of research isn't aiming for straight CO2 reduction, but conversion to C2+ molecules. This might allow a more efficient pathway from CO2 to more valuable chemicals. This article linked here suggests that the researchers also have this in mind: > By swapping in different catalysts, the researchers plan to try making other products such as methanol and ethanol using this approach. In my opinion, this is where the rubber meets the road. It's not just about making carbon monoxide: It's about turning CO2 into value-added molecules.
- joak 3y agoI cannot agree more. Having a better energy efficiency can only improve opex but capex makes probably most of the cost. And energy is probably free. Let me explain: if we install solar panels at scale only a fraction of the energy produced can be sold because in the sunny hours of the day there is overproduction. So why would you want to have a better efficiency in energy use? What matters is to build the cheapest possible machine, to make use of the energy in excess. At whatever efficiency, otherwise the energy is simply curtailed.
- hackerlight 3y ago> What matters is to build the cheapest possible machine, to make use of the energy in excess. I see 4 ways you can use excess. Either sell it to other states or countries, make green hydrogen (natgas competitor), charge short term storage (batteries, pumped hydro), or carbon conversion.
- mchannon 3y agoMy favorite way to make CO out of CO2 is thermal cracking, which is quite straightforward: 2 CO2 -(700°C)-> 2 CO + O2
- Scene_Cast2 3y agoCould you verify the temperature? Absolute zero is -273.15 C. Or did you mean positive 700C?
- bradrn 3y agoI think the intention was to place ‘700°C’ within the arrow, like so: -(…)->.
- CyberDildonics 3y agoIs carbon monoxide valuable?
- datascienced 3y agoThe article says it is a precursor for other chemicals so yes. If you just let it out as is it is probably pollution of a different kind, since CO can kill in high enough concentration.
- pooper 3y agoI thought CO just steals one more oxygen / whatever wherever it can find to become stable which is what makes it toxic? CO hemoglobin?
- oldstrangers 3y agoIsn't https://www.twelve.co/ https://www.twelve.co/ already doing this?
- joak 3y agoI prefer this one https://terraformindustries.com/ https://terraformindustries.com/ Less PR and more doing.
- Solvency 3y agoSome trendy vodka brand aircompany.com spent a shit ton ($$$$) on a bunch of CG companies to help them "pivot" as some high-tech carbon dioxide product company. The site is bizarre and confusing and seems to be trying to capitalize on this.
- m3kw9 3y agoImagine if they find a way to get zero emission from gasoline engines
- sjy67 3y agoJust curious, if this do turn out to solve CO2 emmission, would governments allow carbon tax to drop to zero? Or it will be renamed as CO tax instead?
- spuz 3y agoIf this is indeed a cost effective way to convert CO2 to more useful chemicals, then it will encourage more CO2 emission into the atmosphere, not less. Industries that are currently CO2 polluting will be encouraged to produce more CO2 so that it can be converted into CO. Some of that additional CO2 will inevitably escape into the atmosphere. As long as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is below the concentration of CO2 in the ground then we'll need a carbon tax to discourage its release in the atmosphere.
- bequanna 3y agoHow many taxes have been created and since disappeared? It almost never happens. Governments get addicted to the revenue.
- acec 3y agoPlanting trees for wood?
- acec 3y agoTrees, wood?
- fijiaarone 3y agoYou should see what farmers have been doing with carbon dioxide for thousands of years.
- cumshitpiss 3y ago[dead]
- photochemsyn 3y agoFull paper: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacsau.3c00823 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/jacsau.3c00823 It's really more about tethered heterogenous catalyst development, the idea being that anchoring the soluble catalysts on the electrode via a molecular tether (DNA in this case) improves reaction performance on several axes. > "Here, we demonstrate the first application of DNA “Velcro” to immobilize molecular CO2RR catalysts on electrode surfaces (Figure 1b). The DNA-catalyst conjugates are readily synthesized and have improved stability as compared to the small-molecule catalysts alone simply through the incorporation of the DNA. Subsequent immobilization on carbon electrodes through hybridization to predeposited complementary DNA strands showed improved Faradaic efficiency (FE) toward CO production. We anticipate this method to be a general strategy to more easily and efficiently immobilize electrocatalysts for improved catalytic efficiency." Industrial development is possible but depends on the lifetime of the catalyst and ease of regenerating it in a timely efficient manner as it wears out.
- zzz999 3y agoIsn't life mostly carbon and water? And needs a bit of oxygen? Seems like the perfect match.
- Zeusanthena 3y ago[dead]