6 ms·

Using copper to convert CO₂ to methane

55 points by MilnerRoute 2y ago

bloopernova 2y ago
I am having trouble understanding the details here. How expensive is this process? Is it feasible to scale this? Are other catalysts better than this one at producing methane from CO2?
- catlikesshrimp 2y ago
  This is a publication about a finding. No price yet, no bussiness yet The current synthesis process starts with oil. I imagine through hydrogenation. The idea here is producing methane as a battery. A solarfarm would be upgraded to a power plant that generates electricity all day. That's it
  - SoftTalker 2y ago
    > A solarfarm would be upgraded to a power plant that generates electricity all day. That's it. That's it, but that would be incredibly valuable, as the big downside of solar is that it only works during the day, and only really works for the peak part of the day, maybe 6-8 hours depending on where you are. The question will be is this process to store solar energy as methane cheaper (bottom line, i.e. accounting for losses in turning it back into electricity later) than storing it in batteries.
    - cyberax 2y ago
      Some countries (Germany) need a way to store enough energy for several _weeks_ of consumption. This is prohibitively expensive for batteries.
      - math_dandy 2y ago
        What approaches to storage are viewed a as most promising? Is Germany building anything out yet or testing at scale?
        tonyarkles 2y ago
        In general, from my own efforts to try to understand the answer to that question, pumped hydro storage is probably the most promising but it'll only work in places that have the geography for it. There are a couple of excellent examples in Scotland, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station is one. The trick is that there's a 400m drop; lots of places won't have the geography to get that much head.
        cyberax 2y ago
        In Germany? So far it has been mostly magical thinking. It has almost infinite capacity Realistically, long-term hydrogen storage is the only technology that is even remotely feasible. There are several demonstrator projects ongoing right now. I'm personally not too optimistic about them.
        derriz 2y ago
        Germany has been the biggest exporter of electricity in the world in 8 of the last 10 years. Germany also has one of the most reliable grids in the world in terms of system interruptions - as measured by SAIDI - with less than 15 minutes of interruption per customer year - significantly more reliable than France for example. They've managed to keep the lights on after going completely cold turkey on Russian gas in the space of less than a year - a remarkable feat which has been given no credit by most German energy policy critics who have been confidently predicting energy Armageddon in such a scenario. Not to say that there are no grounds for criticizing German policy but most of the criticism seems to be politically motivated rather than based on specific failures of the policy. Secondly, why hydrogen? It's a potent greenhouse gas - GWP100 of 12 or 13 times that of CO2. Yes it's less potent than methane but it's far "leakier" and more difficult to contain than methane as well as being more dangerous and difficult to handle. It cannot be combusted in air (most are suggesting mixing it with methane) in a domestic setting because of the 10 times as much NOx caused by the higher burning temperature. While all the infrastructure for methane/natural gas already exists including long term (seasonal) storage facilities, I see no compelling reason to spend 100s of billions to build all this new infrastructure to use a different warming gas for energy storage and transport. To be honest it's a minor issue in the grand scheme of things - keeping natural gas around to cover the last 10% of electricity generation is no big deal as the world rushes to electrify the other activities which currently release large amounts of CO2. The focus should be on getting to that 80-90% carbon-free electricity and the electrification of as much as is possible of pollution sources like domestic heating/cooking, transport and heavy industry.
      - SoftTalker 2y ago
        Good point, any country at high lattiudes will need this during the winter.
      - derriz 2y ago
        I don't see why? Germany is part of one of the biggest most diverse synchronised electricity grids in the world - it sits at the centre of an international transmission system stretching from Ireland to Turkey and from the artic circle to Morocco. Germany has no need to store several weeks of electricity when it can just tap its neighbours when it needs to. In reality, generally Germany has been a net exporter of electricity.
        cyberax 2y ago
        > Germany is part of one of the biggest most diverse synchronised electricity grids in the world Germany needs about 300GW in winter once it switches to electric heating and EVs. In winter, renewables regularly drop to about 10% of their average production for weeks at a time. So Germany will need to import about 250GW of power from its neighbors. That also need power for their own use. This is just not feasible. So the plan right now is to replace the coal generation with natural gas generation, and color the pipes in green paint. Oh, and make the companies to pinky-promise that they are "hydrogen ready".
        defrost 2y ago
        Covestro, a German company, already has a signed contract and made advance payments to receive the equivalent of up to 100,000 tonnes of green hydrogen (GH2) per year commencing 2025. A kilogramme of hydrogen - the unit most often used – has an energy value of about 33.3 kWh.[1] So a tonne of hydrogen delivers about 33 MWh and a million tonnes about 33 terawatt hours (TWh). To provide a sense of scale, the UK uses about 300 TWh of electricity a year. ~ https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2021/6/11/some-rules-of-thumb-of-the-hydrogen-economy https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2021/6/11/some-rules-o... It takes a good while to build out the physical infrastructure to deliver green hydrogen equivilants: Green hydrogen is made from renewable energy, producing zero pollution – its only by-product is steam. FFI’s ambition is to grow its green hydrogen production to 15 million tonnes of green hydrogen per year by 2030, accelerating to 50 million tonnes per year in the next decade thereafter. ~ https://fortescue.com/news-and-media/news/2022/07/05/fortescue-future-industries-and-covestro-announce-plans-to-enter-a-long-term-green-hydrogen-supply-agreement-2022-01-17 https://fortescue.com/news-and-media/news/2022/07/05/fortesc... The person doing this isn't in the "pinky promise" game, they built out a penny stock company from 2c a share to ~$28 a share over two decades to capture a large chunk of a billion tonne per annum raw iron ore market.
      - lazide 2y ago
        Winter and wars are why.
lottamus 2y ago
I’m not sure how effective using copper will be at scale, though I know you can use h2o and co2 to produce ch4 (methane) through a process called a Sabatier Reaction which involves the presence of a catalyst like nickel and high temperature. I’m guessing it would be a similar process here, except with copper? Additionally, I recently discovered a company Valar Atomics who are working on small scale nuclear reactors to produce methane from h2o and co2 using this method. - Valar Atomics announcement https://x.com/isaiah_p_taylor/status/1720418162985054350?s=46 https://x.com/isaiah_p_taylor/status/1720418162985054350?s=4...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- catlikesshrimp 2y ago
  Sabatier uses hydrogen. As an intermediate, it might be less efficient (and dangerous?) H2O -> H2 + O2| H2 + CO2 -> CH4 +O2 The idea is not new, but it is not bad https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas
bell-cot 2y ago
'Tis a sad day when a phys.org article is this fluffy. Much better is the research article's Abstract: > Carbon dioxide offers a unique opportunity as a feedstock for energy production through electrocatalysis. Methane production holds promise for its widespread applications and market demand. However, commercial viability faces challenges of low selectivity, current density, and high applied potential. Efforts to improve methane selectivity while suppressing multi-carbon products, e.g., ethylene, often involve lower alkalinity electrolytes. However, it reduces current density due to increased ohmic resistance without significant gains in the reaction yield. This study utilizes quantum mechanics computations to design a nano-cluster copper catalyst that redirects the reaction pathway from ethylene towards methane, even under alkaline conditions. We achieved a Faradaic efficiency (FE) of 85 %, a current density of 1.5 A/cm2, and stability of over 10 hours solely by controlling particle size in copper catalysts. This work paves the way to overcoming current limitations in electrocatalytic methane production and holds broader implications for advancing sustainable CO2 utilization in energy systems. Also of interest - could this electrochemical setup be run in reverse, as a methane fuel cell? That I'm aware of, 85% efficiency would be far better than the current state of the art there.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  Why would you need something that complex in a fuel cell? You don't need high selectivity. AFAIK, ceramic membranes work perfectly well as exchange elements for hydrocarbon-oxygen fuel cells; but I have no idea why they aren't being used everywhere. It used to be mostly due to longevity issues, but I haven't kept up. Also, Faradaic efficiency is not the total efficiency. For a fuel cell it would automatically be close to 100% anyway, while total efficiency is normally much lower.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  Ethylene is a lot more valuable than methane, so I don't understand the point here.
  - bell-cot 2y ago
    High-purity methane is much more valuable than methane with a grab-bag of larger hydrocarbons as contaminants. Especially if said contaminants include stuff like H2C2. That can be rather explosive. And might accumulate somewhere in the plumbing, unsuspected until ...
bryanlarsen 2y ago
AFAICT there are 3 broad steps for creation of "green" methane. - creating H2 from H2O - concentrating CO2 from either the atmosphere or the waste products of an industrial process such as cement production - creating CH4 from the H2 and the CO2. AKA Sabatier. This paper uses H2 as an input, so is only talking about the last step. A cheaper/better Sabatier is nice, but AFAICT it's the least expensive step of the three.
blueflow 2y ago
Doesn't pass basic thermodynamics. If this finding is worth it, strap the machine doing it onto a car with methane motor (already exists) and you'll have an Perpetuum mobile.
- cfgauss2718 2y ago
  Nothing about this research violates conservation of energy. The article as written is advocating using excess solar or wind energy as input to this CO2->CH4 conversion process (which is electrolysis based) so that some of that energy can be reused later by burning methane. Later, as in when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun is t shining.
  - blueflow 2y ago
    The title is "Using copper to convert CO₂ to methane could be game changer in mitigating climate change" which is wrong for the reason i told and which you did not address.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Huh? It is directly addressed. Excess solar power pulls excess co2 from atmosphere, and puts it into methane, which is stored. It can then be sequestered (carbon captured), or burned (carbon neutral energy storage).
      - blueflow 2y ago
        "Excess solar power" is the hypothetical clean power grid. I see that its supposed to be the "missing" power source, but its not helping saving any carbon as long as there are fossil plants in the grid. Temporarily replacing a fossil plant saves more carbon (that can be left in the ground for longer) than powering the conversion to methane (by a factor of at least 3, inverse of eff of plant). And that is not enough, the carbon needs to stay in the ground forever, not just some days longer. So its not a game changer, its barely even relevant to the CO2 levels. Might have some applications but its not the solution it is presented as (Like the previous "solutions" that cropped up every other week on HN and are now long forgotten).
hannob 2y ago
I had recently written a detailed article about e-methane, including how it compares to other hydrogen derivatives. tl;dr is that there are a lot of doubts whether e-methane makes any sense, as you usually end up either preferring hydrogen directly, or, if you need something with a carbon atom, you likely will use methanol. Here's the article: https://industrydecarbonization.com/news/is-there-a-place-for-e-methane-in-a-climate-neutral-future.html https://industrydecarbonization.com/news/is-there-a-place-fo... I had posted it on HN, but didn't get upvoted.
- Gibbon1 2y ago
  I'll read it. Will say that starting with CO2 feels to me like playing the game in hard mode. > For companies seeking to use e-methane, it usually means their technology and production processes don't have to change. They are merely buying e-methane that has already been subsidized elsewhere. I feel like things like e-methane are attractive when you're thinking like an MBA where your first instinct is to preserve the value you of your capital assets and suppress competition. Good: Pretend we can use e-methane to fuel our existing Direct reduced iron (DRI) plants. Advantage you kick the can down the road and when it fails you're either already gone or can blame the government for interfering. Bad: Admit direct electrolytic reduction processes will obsolete all your equipment. Disadvantage watch the market price in the future value of your company.
Animats 2y ago
Actual title: "Using copper to convert CO₂ to methane could be game changer in mitigating climate change". Is there demand for methane? Why are there so many methane flares at oil wells in Texas, then? At the rate solar, wind, and batteries are coming along, carbon capture is a waste of time and resources. Price alone is going to eliminate most demand for carbon based fuels. This is happening much faster than expected. See last week's Economist.
- passwordoops 2y ago
  >Why are there so many methane flares at oil wells in Texas, then? Flaring is more cost effective at current prices
  - tonyarkles 2y ago
    Yeah, my understanding is that there's a couple of moving parts for that: - Methane is 28x more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 is. I'm rusty on my chemistry but it seems like CH4 + 2 O2 => CO2 + 2 H2O, so by flaring it you're getting a 28x reduction in GHG potential even though it looks bad seeing it burning like that. - The infrastructure isn't in place to harvest, liquify, and transport methane from oil fields. Oil itself is relatively easy to transport away from oil fields to refineries, while natural gas needs near-site processing to turn it into a liquid and keep it compressed. You also would need to build out (smaller) pipelines to transport it from the oil field to the existing natural gas handling infrastructure which may not be nearby. It's one of those things where it's basically free coming out of the well but a big investment would be required to capture it and, assuming you're going to be pulling the oil out anyway, burning it is better for the environment than just venting it. Edit: I do recall recently reading about some tech though where they were going to start using it on-site for fuel for equipment. I think it was for on-site generators instead of using electricity from the grid, but I don't have a link handy.
    - Animats 2y ago
      That would be Giga Energy.[1] They co-locate containerized Bitcoin mining systems with wells that produce excess natural gas and methane, burn the gas for power, and export bitcoin. Really. [1] https://www.gigaenergy.com/ https://www.gigaenergy.com/
trhway 2y ago
Water + CO2 into methane and oxygen. Hopefully just in time for the SpaceX Mars mission.
greenthrow 2y ago
This is nonsense. There's not enough demand for methane and methane itself is an even worse greenhouse gas than CO2.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  True about methane being questionable in itself, but converting methane to gasoline would be very useful. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_to_liquids https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_to_liquids
  - dzhiurgis 2y ago
    Gasoline in era of EVs is nuts. Liquified natural gas might still have few decades for certain industries, but with electrification underway for pretty much everything all these processes seem pointless. Sure you could capture CO2 from a plant, liquify, ship to where sun shines, convert to CNG, then ship back. Or you could just build power lines.
    - adastra22 2y ago
      Plastics (a petroleum product) are not useless.
      - dzhiurgis 2y ago
        Ok that's fair. Can they made by oil byproducts only or can it be eventually synthesised from CO2?
        actionfromafar 2y ago
        You can synthesise basically anything from CO2 and hydrogen. You can get syn-crude which can the be treated the same as regular crude. If we had "unlimited" electricity we could make basically anything from air and water.
        2y ago
Someone 2y ago
FTA: “Our top finding was that extremely small copper nanoclusters are very effective at producing methane," continues Salehi. "This was a significant discovery, indicating that the size and structure of the copper nanoclusters play a crucial role in the reaction's outcome."” How can that be surprising for “a new catalyst for converting carbon dioxide (CO2) into methane”? Are there any catalysts where their effectiveness doesn’t increase with surface area? Also, if they make them tiny (“we used copper catalysts with different sizes, from small ones with only 19 atoms to larger ones with 1000 atoms”), how do you make sure you don’t pump out the catalyst with the methane? A filter?

55 points by MilnerRoute 2y ago

I am having trouble understanding the details here. How expensive is this process? Is it feasible to scale this? Are other catalysts better than this one at producing methane from CO2?

catlikesshrimp 2y ago
This is a publication about a finding. No price yet, no bussiness yet The current synthesis process starts with oil. I imagine through hydrogenation. The idea here is producing methane as a battery. A solarfarm would be upgraded to a power plant that generates electricity all day. That's it
- SoftTalker 2y ago
  > A solarfarm would be upgraded to a power plant that generates electricity all day. That's it. That's it, but that would be incredibly valuable, as the big downside of solar is that it only works during the day, and only really works for the peak part of the day, maybe 6-8 hours depending on where you are. The question will be is this process to store solar energy as methane cheaper (bottom line, i.e. accounting for losses in turning it back into electricity later) than storing it in batteries.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    Some countries (Germany) need a way to store enough energy for several _weeks_ of consumption. This is prohibitively expensive for batteries.
    - math_dandy 2y ago
      What approaches to storage are viewed a as most promising? Is Germany building anything out yet or testing at scale?
      - tonyarkles 2y ago
        In general, from my own efforts to try to understand the answer to that question, pumped hydro storage is probably the most promising but it'll only work in places that have the geography for it. There are a couple of excellent examples in Scotland, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruachan_Power_Station is one. The trick is that there's a 400m drop; lots of places won't have the geography to get that much head.
      - cyberax 2y ago
        In Germany? So far it has been mostly magical thinking. It has almost infinite capacity Realistically, long-term hydrogen storage is the only technology that is even remotely feasible. There are several demonstrator projects ongoing right now. I'm personally not too optimistic about them.
        derriz 2y ago
        Germany has been the biggest exporter of electricity in the world in 8 of the last 10 years. Germany also has one of the most reliable grids in the world in terms of system interruptions - as measured by SAIDI - with less than 15 minutes of interruption per customer year - significantly more reliable than France for example. They've managed to keep the lights on after going completely cold turkey on Russian gas in the space of less than a year - a remarkable feat which has been given no credit by most German energy policy critics who have been confidently predicting energy Armageddon in such a scenario. Not to say that there are no grounds for criticizing German policy but most of the criticism seems to be politically motivated rather than based on specific failures of the policy. Secondly, why hydrogen? It's a potent greenhouse gas - GWP100 of 12 or 13 times that of CO2. Yes it's less potent than methane but it's far "leakier" and more difficult to contain than methane as well as being more dangerous and difficult to handle. It cannot be combusted in air (most are suggesting mixing it with methane) in a domestic setting because of the 10 times as much NOx caused by the higher burning temperature. While all the infrastructure for methane/natural gas already exists including long term (seasonal) storage facilities, I see no compelling reason to spend 100s of billions to build all this new infrastructure to use a different warming gas for energy storage and transport. To be honest it's a minor issue in the grand scheme of things - keeping natural gas around to cover the last 10% of electricity generation is no big deal as the world rushes to electrify the other activities which currently release large amounts of CO2. The focus should be on getting to that 80-90% carbon-free electricity and the electrification of as much as is possible of pollution sources like domestic heating/cooking, transport and heavy industry.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      Good point, any country at high lattiudes will need this during the winter.
    - derriz 2y ago
      I don't see why? Germany is part of one of the biggest most diverse synchronised electricity grids in the world - it sits at the centre of an international transmission system stretching from Ireland to Turkey and from the artic circle to Morocco. Germany has no need to store several weeks of electricity when it can just tap its neighbours when it needs to. In reality, generally Germany has been a net exporter of electricity.
      - cyberax 2y ago
        > Germany is part of one of the biggest most diverse synchronised electricity grids in the world Germany needs about 300GW in winter once it switches to electric heating and EVs. In winter, renewables regularly drop to about 10% of their average production for weeks at a time. So Germany will need to import about 250GW of power from its neighbors. That also need power for their own use. This is just not feasible. So the plan right now is to replace the coal generation with natural gas generation, and color the pipes in green paint. Oh, and make the companies to pinky-promise that they are "hydrogen ready".
        defrost 2y ago
        Covestro, a German company, already has a signed contract and made advance payments to receive the equivalent of up to 100,000 tonnes of green hydrogen (GH2) per year commencing 2025. A kilogramme of hydrogen - the unit most often used – has an energy value of about 33.3 kWh.[1] So a tonne of hydrogen delivers about 33 MWh and a million tonnes about 33 terawatt hours (TWh). To provide a sense of scale, the UK uses about 300 TWh of electricity a year. ~ https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2021/6/11/some-rules-of-thumb-of-the-hydrogen-economy https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2021/6/11/some-rules-o... It takes a good while to build out the physical infrastructure to deliver green hydrogen equivilants: Green hydrogen is made from renewable energy, producing zero pollution – its only by-product is steam. FFI’s ambition is to grow its green hydrogen production to 15 million tonnes of green hydrogen per year by 2030, accelerating to 50 million tonnes per year in the next decade thereafter. ~ https://fortescue.com/news-and-media/news/2022/07/05/fortescue-future-industries-and-covestro-announce-plans-to-enter-a-long-term-green-hydrogen-supply-agreement-2022-01-17 https://fortescue.com/news-and-media/news/2022/07/05/fortesc... The person doing this isn't in the "pinky promise" game, they built out a penny stock company from 2c a share to ~$28 a share over two decades to capture a large chunk of a billion tonne per annum raw iron ore market.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Winter and wars are why.

lottamus 2y ago

I’m not sure how effective using copper will be at scale, though I know you can use h2o and co2 to produce ch4 (methane) through a process called a Sabatier Reaction which involves the presence of a catalyst like nickel and high temperature. I’m guessing it would be a similar process here, except with copper? Additionally, I recently discovered a company Valar Atomics who are working on small scale nuclear reactors to produce methane from h2o and co2 using this method. - Valar Atomics announcement https://x.com/isaiah_p_taylor/status/1720418162985054350?s=46 https://x.com/isaiah_p_taylor/status/1720418162985054350?s=4...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
catlikesshrimp 2y ago
Sabatier uses hydrogen. As an intermediate, it might be less efficient (and dangerous?) H2O -> H2 + O2| H2 + CO2 -> CH4 +O2 The idea is not new, but it is not bad https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas

bell-cot 2y ago

'Tis a sad day when a phys.org article is this fluffy. Much better is the research article's Abstract: > Carbon dioxide offers a unique opportunity as a feedstock for energy production through electrocatalysis. Methane production holds promise for its widespread applications and market demand. However, commercial viability faces challenges of low selectivity, current density, and high applied potential. Efforts to improve methane selectivity while suppressing multi-carbon products, e.g., ethylene, often involve lower alkalinity electrolytes. However, it reduces current density due to increased ohmic resistance without significant gains in the reaction yield. This study utilizes quantum mechanics computations to design a nano-cluster copper catalyst that redirects the reaction pathway from ethylene towards methane, even under alkaline conditions. We achieved a Faradaic efficiency (FE) of 85 %, a current density of 1.5 A/cm2, and stability of over 10 hours solely by controlling particle size in copper catalysts. This work paves the way to overcoming current limitations in electrocatalytic methane production and holds broader implications for advancing sustainable CO2 utilization in energy systems. Also of interest - could this electrochemical setup be run in reverse, as a methane fuel cell? That I'm aware of, 85% efficiency would be far better than the current state of the art there.

marcosdumay 2y ago
Why would you need something that complex in a fuel cell? You don't need high selectivity. AFAIK, ceramic membranes work perfectly well as exchange elements for hydrocarbon-oxygen fuel cells; but I have no idea why they aren't being used everywhere. It used to be mostly due to longevity issues, but I haven't kept up. Also, Faradaic efficiency is not the total efficiency. For a fuel cell it would automatically be close to 100% anyway, while total efficiency is normally much lower.
pfdietz 2y ago
Ethylene is a lot more valuable than methane, so I don't understand the point here.
- bell-cot 2y ago
  High-purity methane is much more valuable than methane with a grab-bag of larger hydrocarbons as contaminants. Especially if said contaminants include stuff like H2C2. That can be rather explosive. And might accumulate somewhere in the plumbing, unsuspected until ...

bryanlarsen 2y ago

AFAICT there are 3 broad steps for creation of "green" methane. - creating H2 from H2O - concentrating CO2 from either the atmosphere or the waste products of an industrial process such as cement production - creating CH4 from the H2 and the CO2. AKA Sabatier. This paper uses H2 as an input, so is only talking about the last step. A cheaper/better Sabatier is nice, but AFAICT it's the least expensive step of the three.

blueflow 2y ago

Doesn't pass basic thermodynamics. If this finding is worth it, strap the machine doing it onto a car with methane motor (already exists) and you'll have an Perpetuum mobile.

cfgauss2718 2y ago
Nothing about this research violates conservation of energy. The article as written is advocating using excess solar or wind energy as input to this CO2->CH4 conversion process (which is electrolysis based) so that some of that energy can be reused later by burning methane. Later, as in when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun is t shining.
- blueflow 2y ago
  The title is "Using copper to convert CO₂ to methane could be game changer in mitigating climate change" which is wrong for the reason i told and which you did not address.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Huh? It is directly addressed. Excess solar power pulls excess co2 from atmosphere, and puts it into methane, which is stored. It can then be sequestered (carbon captured), or burned (carbon neutral energy storage).
    - blueflow 2y ago
      "Excess solar power" is the hypothetical clean power grid. I see that its supposed to be the "missing" power source, but its not helping saving any carbon as long as there are fossil plants in the grid. Temporarily replacing a fossil plant saves more carbon (that can be left in the ground for longer) than powering the conversion to methane (by a factor of at least 3, inverse of eff of plant). And that is not enough, the carbon needs to stay in the ground forever, not just some days longer. So its not a game changer, its barely even relevant to the CO2 levels. Might have some applications but its not the solution it is presented as (Like the previous "solutions" that cropped up every other week on HN and are now long forgotten).

hannob 2y ago

I had recently written a detailed article about e-methane, including how it compares to other hydrogen derivatives. tl;dr is that there are a lot of doubts whether e-methane makes any sense, as you usually end up either preferring hydrogen directly, or, if you need something with a carbon atom, you likely will use methanol. Here's the article: https://industrydecarbonization.com/news/is-there-a-place-for-e-methane-in-a-climate-neutral-future.html https://industrydecarbonization.com/news/is-there-a-place-fo... I had posted it on HN, but didn't get upvoted.

Gibbon1 2y ago
I'll read it. Will say that starting with CO2 feels to me like playing the game in hard mode. > For companies seeking to use e-methane, it usually means their technology and production processes don't have to change. They are merely buying e-methane that has already been subsidized elsewhere. I feel like things like e-methane are attractive when you're thinking like an MBA where your first instinct is to preserve the value you of your capital assets and suppress competition. Good: Pretend we can use e-methane to fuel our existing Direct reduced iron (DRI) plants. Advantage you kick the can down the road and when it fails you're either already gone or can blame the government for interfering. Bad: Admit direct electrolytic reduction processes will obsolete all your equipment. Disadvantage watch the market price in the future value of your company.

Animats 2y ago

Actual title: "Using copper to convert CO₂ to methane could be game changer in mitigating climate change". Is there demand for methane? Why are there so many methane flares at oil wells in Texas, then? At the rate solar, wind, and batteries are coming along, carbon capture is a waste of time and resources. Price alone is going to eliminate most demand for carbon based fuels. This is happening much faster than expected. See last week's Economist.

passwordoops 2y ago
>Why are there so many methane flares at oil wells in Texas, then? Flaring is more cost effective at current prices
- tonyarkles 2y ago
  Yeah, my understanding is that there's a couple of moving parts for that: - Methane is 28x more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 is. I'm rusty on my chemistry but it seems like CH4 + 2 O2 => CO2 + 2 H2O, so by flaring it you're getting a 28x reduction in GHG potential even though it looks bad seeing it burning like that. - The infrastructure isn't in place to harvest, liquify, and transport methane from oil fields. Oil itself is relatively easy to transport away from oil fields to refineries, while natural gas needs near-site processing to turn it into a liquid and keep it compressed. You also would need to build out (smaller) pipelines to transport it from the oil field to the existing natural gas handling infrastructure which may not be nearby. It's one of those things where it's basically free coming out of the well but a big investment would be required to capture it and, assuming you're going to be pulling the oil out anyway, burning it is better for the environment than just venting it. Edit: I do recall recently reading about some tech though where they were going to start using it on-site for fuel for equipment. I think it was for on-site generators instead of using electricity from the grid, but I don't have a link handy.
  - Animats 2y ago
    That would be Giga Energy.[1] They co-locate containerized Bitcoin mining systems with wells that produce excess natural gas and methane, burn the gas for power, and export bitcoin. Really. [1] https://www.gigaenergy.com/ https://www.gigaenergy.com/

trhway 2y ago

Water + CO2 into methane and oxygen. Hopefully just in time for the SpaceX Mars mission.

greenthrow 2y ago

This is nonsense. There's not enough demand for methane and methane itself is an even worse greenhouse gas than CO2.

actionfromafar 2y ago
True about methane being questionable in itself, but converting methane to gasoline would be very useful. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_to_liquids https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_to_liquids
- dzhiurgis 2y ago
  Gasoline in era of EVs is nuts. Liquified natural gas might still have few decades for certain industries, but with electrification underway for pretty much everything all these processes seem pointless. Sure you could capture CO2 from a plant, liquify, ship to where sun shines, convert to CNG, then ship back. Or you could just build power lines.
  - adastra22 2y ago
    Plastics (a petroleum product) are not useless.
    - dzhiurgis 2y ago
      Ok that's fair. Can they made by oil byproducts only or can it be eventually synthesised from CO2?
      - actionfromafar 2y ago
        You can synthesise basically anything from CO2 and hydrogen. You can get syn-crude which can the be treated the same as regular crude. If we had "unlimited" electricity we could make basically anything from air and water.
        2y ago

Someone 2y ago

FTA: “Our top finding was that extremely small copper nanoclusters are very effective at producing methane," continues Salehi. "This was a significant discovery, indicating that the size and structure of the copper nanoclusters play a crucial role in the reaction's outcome."” How can that be surprising for “a new catalyst for converting carbon dioxide (CO2) into methane”? Are there any catalysts where their effectiveness doesn’t increase with surface area? Also, if they make them tiny (“we used copper catalysts with different sizes, from small ones with only 19 atoms to larger ones with 1000 atoms”), how do you make sure you don’t pump out the catalyst with the methane? A filter?