The future of coal is assured with this CO₂ capture and convert back to carbon invention.




New carbon capture method turns CO2 back into coal
Jonathan Bradley by Jonathan Bradley   July 10, 2019


carbon capture

Burning coal releases carbon dioxide into the air. What if the process could be reversed?

Some processes go in one direction only: it’s much easier to bake a batter than to extract flour, eggs, sugar and butter from a finished cake.

The same problem applies to carbon emissions: burning fossil fuels is a straightforward process but removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turning it back into coal is a far more challenging task.

However, an international team led by engineers from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has done exactly that.



“While we can’t literally turn back time, turning carbon dioxide back into coal and burying it back in the ground is a bit like rewinding the emissions clock.”

RMIT’s Dr Dorna Esrafilzadeh said one side benefit is the carbon ability to hold electrical charge.

“It could potentially be used as a component in future vehicles,” she said.

“The process also produces synthetic fuel as a byproduct, which could also have industrial applications.”

UNSW Professor Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh, the project’s lead investigator, said he is excited at the possibility of reducing carbon emissions.



“But no one knew how.”   

https://www.createdigital.org.au/carbon-capture-method-turns-co2-back-coal/?utms...

So juliar agrees CO2 is a problem hten.

juliar wrote on Aug 9^th, 2019 at 9:48am:


Seriously, juliar must be some sort of Liberal Party 'bot'.

The same spelling mistakes... all the time...

... I wonder if we can get the 'juliar bot' to self destruct like Captain Kirk was so adept at doing in Star Trek?



LOL. 

Sounds like nonsense.
It would take the same amount of energy
to break the carbon/ oxygen bonds
as was obtained by burning the coal.
Therefore  - no advantage to turn
it back into carbon.

I'm glad I have an education.

Juliar,
The idea is the same as free energy
or a perpetual motion machine.

Even NASA is getting in on the act.



Solar Powered Carbon Dioxide (CO2) Conversion
A low-cost nanomaterial thin-film device

NASA has developed a new technology that can convert the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (C02) into fuel by using solar-powered, thin-film devices.

Metal oxide thin films are fabricated to produce a photoelectrochemical cell that is powered by solar energy. By converting CO2 to fuel before it is emitted to the atmosphere this technology can mitigate the effects of the burning of fossil fuels, the worlds major fuel source for the foreseeable future

This new nanomaterial thin-film device provides a low cost, facile fabrication pathway to commercialize the technology in the sustainable energy market.

More importantly, it results in a zero carbon footprint by recycling C02 to fuels that are compatible with all existing fuel utilities. This is accomplished by using solar power to convert the C02 into a useable fuel in a very compact device.

Benefits
Efficient conversion of carbon dioxide
High efficiency sustainable energy usage
Inexpensive operations
Versatile
PV integrated device platform
Reduced emissions
Uses solar energy as the only power source
Useful fuels produced

Applications
Carbon capture technologies
Photoelectrochemistry
Automobile industry
Materials Science

The Technology
This technology consists of a photoelectrochemical cell composed of thin metal oxide films. It uses sunlight (primarily the ultraviolet (UV), visible and Infrared (IR) portions)) and inexpensive titanium dioxide composites to perform the reaction.

The device can be used to capture carbon dioxide produced in industrial processes before it is emitted to the atmosphere and convert it to a useful fuel such as methane.

These devices can be deployed to the commercial market with low manufacturing and materials costs. They can be made extremely compact and efficient and used in sensor and detector applications.

https://technology.nasa.gov/patent/TOP2-160

Bobby. wrote on Aug 9^th, 2019 at 12:35pm:


Anything to ripoff the punters on coal deals is what the LNP is all about !! Even pie in the sky hare brain ideas like this is what they will throw millions of tax payer dollars at one of their crooked LNP mates to engage in this BS

Sir lastnail wrote on Aug 11^th, 2019 at 5:07pm:



Hi Nail & Juliar,
It would work if you had unlimited free energy to use
such as the energy available from a Thorium nuclear reactor
or maybe a fusion reactor.
You could take CO2 out of the air and convert it back to Carbon and Oxygen.

However - trees & plants do that for free using sunlight as the energy source.

Robert get practical.

CO₂ capture is already done at some coal power stations and buried underground but it is expensive to do and this invention is a much cheaper way to do the same thing.

Well, the solar and windy farms are proving to be a bit like Tesla cars - kind of useless but they could be used to power CO₂ capturing from the air as well as powering electrolyzers to produce hydrogen and oxygen from fresh or sea water as is already being done overseas.

As far as thorium goes, India is still trying after about 40 years. And the Yanks got it going but abandoned it for bomb production.

Chevron Gas produces lots of CO₂ as they split it from natural gas and they are now burying it underground in sandstone.


Lee, CO₂ capture is now easy and cheap. The synthetic fuel is probably oil or methane.

https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/carbon-capture-to-fuel-is...

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-c...

https://www.wartsila.com/twentyfour7/in-detail/synthetic-fuels-supporting-wartsi...

Won't they be happy with this new invention then ?

That is kind of a Greeny denier site. It just says NO to everything just like the Greenies do.

I am hesitant to challenge the highly respected Lee. But this does seem to clash with his veracity.


There are currently 23 large-scale integrated CCS projects in operation or under construction. Significant projects include:

Boundary Dam power station
The world’s first large-scale CCS project in the power sector commenced operation in October 2014 at the Boundary Dam power station in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Petra Nova
Petra Nova, which came online in early 2017 and is the second CCUS coal plant, is the world's largest post-combustion carbon capture facility installed on an existing coal-fuelled power plant and plans to store more than 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 a year.

The Sleipner and Snøhvit CO2 storage projects
These projects in Norway have stored over 16 million tonnes of CO2 into offshore deep saline formations.

Abu Dhabi CCS Project
The project came online in 2016 and is the world’s first commercial CCUS facility for the steel industry, capturing 800,000 tonnes of CO2 and, injecting it in maturing fields to enhance oil recovery (EOR)

Tuticorin CCU Project
The unsubsidised, fully commercial CCUS project from Carbon Clean Solutions in the port of Tuticorin, India has been able to significantly reduce the costs associated with capturing the CO2


See the whole story here

https://www.worldcoal.org/reducing-co2-emissions/carbon-capture-use-storage

juliar wrote on Aug 11^th, 2019 at 7:24pm:



That's a good idea & here is a video about it:



Carbon Dioxide Tucked into Basalt Converts to Rock

juliar wrote on Aug 11^th, 2019 at 6:47pm:



Firstly you were talking coal and CCS. Now it appears there may be a second one - Petra Nova. Which apparently is marginal operationally.

juliar wrote on Aug 11^th, 2019 at 6:47pm:


Are gas plants.

Abu Dabhi is taking CO2 from a steel smelter.

Tuticorin is taking the CO2 and making baking soda.

juliar wrote on Aug 11^th, 2019 at 8:50pm:


Exactly how many in operation and how many under construction?

juliar wrote on Aug 11^th, 2019 at 8:50pm:


Yes. And they say it is scaleable. The proof of the pudding would be in the eating.

juliar wrote on Aug 11^th, 2019 at 8:50pm:


And there is no need for it now. Increased CO2 is greening the planet. Making crops grow better.

"Globally, vegetation greening has occurred over a larger area than vegetation browning (high confidence)."

latest IPCC report Summary for Policymakers.


And increased CO2 greening the planet is improving natural plant sequestration.

juliar wrote on Aug 11^th, 2019 at 5:36pm:


yeh and where will you buy the hydrogen from socko ? I bet you you'll be praying that there is a fool bowser down the road from you and not in another state LOL

All battery electrical vehicle owners will enjoy free chargeups at home from rooftop solar whilst socko and its retarded mates will be once again taking it up the arse at the hydrogen fool bowser thats if they ever build any which has been coming for the last half a century  LOL

But Bobby I realize now you like to wander in fantasy - but nice beneficial fantasy.

I looked up lots of stuff and India is still trying to get their thorium going after about 40 years and instead have gone to uranium even tho they don't have much.

They need the US to tell them how to do it as the US got a thorium reactor going years ago but let it grow dust while they concentrated on bombs.

Thorium has taken a backseat to uranium because of bombs and so thorium has not been developed to practical designs and won't be for many years as it is just too hard.

Even China has put them on the back burner.

Thorium just can't get a go
https://www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/02/16/the-thing-about-thorium-why...


CO₂ emissions
There are lots of manufacturing processes that pour out CO₂ especially heating processes and electricity has only a minor role in this as the heat is provided by gas or coal.

Consider the Chevron Gorgon natural gas project where the natural gas is mixed with lots of CO₂ which was until recently exhausted to the air but is now being buried in sandstone.

Lots of CO2 coming out here
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/28/industries-sectors-carbon-em...

Bobby. wrote on Aug 11^th, 2019 at 6:24pm:




This idea will work, but I suspect what juliar wants is coal fired power plants driving this, which essentially through thermodynamics wouldn't work. You need nuclear, hydroelectric or renewables to make this work.

juliar wrote on Aug 12^th, 2019 at 10:18am:




So if they are doing it, they aren't useless.

juliar wrote on Aug 12^th, 2019 at 10:28am:




Proven?  Please provide a reference other the Telegraph.

juliar wrote on Aug 12^th, 2019 at 10:18am:



Juliar - have you ever studied chemistry?

They weren't my best subjects at university - both organic and inorganic but I do know the basics.

To me it seems my point about the carbon/ oxygen bonds have gone way over your head.

It also applies to hydrogen/oxygen bonds in water.

Bobby,

you have lost me there.  Perhaps you could repeat your bit about bonds.

Water can most certainly be split into hydrogen and oxygen in an electrolyzer and this is already being done overseas and tested here in Sth Aust.

A small unit can be used with a car engine where the hydrogen and oxygen gases are drawn into the air intake.


For CO₂ capture from the air electricity is required to drive the fans sucking the air in.

juliar wrote on Aug 12^th, 2019 at 5:35pm:


What do you know about chemistry?

juliar wrote on Aug 12^th, 2019 at 5:47pm:



I already wrote:
"Sounds like nonsense.
It would take the same amount of energy
to break the carbon/ oxygen bonds
as was obtained by burning the coal.
Therefore  - no advantage to turn
it back into carbon."

It's the same with turning water back into Hydrogen and Oxygen.
It takes energy - in fact the process of electrolysis  is not very efficient
so it takes more energy to break the bonds than
you get by the exothermic reaction of combining them.

Sir lastnail wrote on Aug 12^th, 2019 at 4:54pm:



Nope. But i notice you are talking about David Attenborough and he is away with the mythical fairies.

juliar wrote on Aug 12^th, 2019 at 6:01pm:



100% capture and storage.

Now if only the sea would rise then the Greenies would have some "proof".

The real danger is a return to an ice age which can happen when the sunspot activity falls.

Is Dave being paid to push the Greeny message like Mr Flannery was ?

Robert, suggest you stop dreaming and look at real practical things.

Bobby. wrote on Aug 12^th, 2019 at 6:29pm:



You mean like where he just happened to have a camera crew in place to catch the vision of the walruses falling from the cliff?

But he showed how cold it is in the Arctic and the Antarctic.

The trouble is the sea level is not rising.

But the drought in Australia is very real and the hot weather in Europe is very real and the extreme cold in the USA is very real.

And the greening of the deserts is very real due to the beneficial CO2.

It must be hard being a Greeny.

lee wrote on Aug 12^th, 2019 at 6:17pm:


he relied on expert opinions from authorities on the subject unlike google junkies like yourself and dimwit socko !!

juliar wrote on Aug 13^th, 2019 at 7:35am:


Sir Nail is a friend of mine.

Please state your chemistry qualifications?

Now back to FACTS on the TOPIC.

CO₂ to fuel is all the go. Govt subsidies assured. A circular environment.

The only concern with this is that if too much CO₂ is extracted from the air then plants will start to droop.



Climate Change Can Be Stopped by Turning Air Into Gasoline
ROBINSON MEYER JUN 7, 2018

A Harvard professor says his company should be able to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, at industrial scales, by 2021.


A small bottle of yellowish liquid on a tree stump. A liquid fuel, synthesized from water and carbon dioxide by Carbon Engineering CARBON ENGINEERING

A team of scientists from Harvard University and the company Carbon Engineering announced on Thursday that they have found a method to cheaply and directly pull carbon-dioxide pollution out of the atmosphere.

If their technique is successfully implemented at scale, it could transform how humanity thinks about the problem of climate change. It could give people a decisive new tool in the race against a warming planet, but could also unsettle the issue’s delicate politics, making it all the harder for society to adapt.



Above all, the new technique is noteworthy because it promises to remove carbon dioxide cheaply. As recently as 2011, a panel of experts estimated that it would cost at least $600 to remove a metric ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The new paper says it can remove the same ton for as little as $94, and for no more than $232. At those rates, it would cost between $1 and $2.50 to remove the carbon dioxide released by burning a gallon of gasoline in a modern car.

“If these costs are real, it is an important result,” said Ken Caldeira, a senior scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science. “This opens up the possibility that we could stabilize the climate for affordable amounts of money without changing the entire energy system or changing everyone’s behavior.”

The team published their results Thursday morning in Joule, a new American scientific journal printed by the same publisher behind the biology journal Cell.

“What we’ve done is build a [direct-air capture] process that is—as much as possible—built on existing processes and technologies that are widespread in the world,” said David Keith, a professor of applied physics at Harvard and the lead author of the new study. “That’s why we think we have a reasonable possibility of scaling up.”



Their technique, while chemically complicated, does not rely on unprecedented science. In effect, Keith and his colleagues have grafted a cooling tower onto a paper mill. It has three major steps.

First, outside air is sucked into the factory’s “contactors” and exposed to an alkaline liquid. These contactors resemble industrial cooling towers: They have large fans to inhale air from the outside world, and they’re lined with corrugated plastic structures that allow as much air as possible to come into contact with the liquid. In a cooling tower, the air is meant to cool the liquid; but in this design, the air is meant to come into contact with the strong base. “CO2 is a weak acid, so it wants to be in the base,” said Keith.

Second, the now-watery liquid (containing carbon dioxide) is brought into the factory, where it undergoes a series of chemical reactions to separate the base from the acid. The liquid is frozen into solid pellets, slowly heated, and converted into a slurry. Again, these techniques have been borrowed from elsewhere in chemical industry: “Taking CO2 out of a carbonate solution is what almost every paper mill in the world does,” Keith told me.

Finally, the carbon dioxide is combined with hydrogen and converted into liquid fuels, including gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. This is in some ways the most conventional aspect of the process: Oil companies convert hydrocarbon gases into liquid fuels every day, using a set of chemical reactions called the Fischer-Tropsch process. But it’s key to Carbon Engineering’s business: It means the company can produce carbon-neutral hydrocarbons.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/its-possible-to-reverse-clim...

Smell the fear socko LOL

Another stroke of genius on Elon Musks behalf. A true visionary

The normally ignored loony Greeny scunge is displaying her legendary ignorance. Was she dropped on her head as a child ?

juliar wrote on Aug 13^th, 2019 at 11:23am:



Of course I know about electrolysis.

It requires energy as they say:
utilise solar and wind power to create carbon-neutral hydrogen gas to be stored in the Jemena Gas Network – the largest in Australia.

So - tell us about your qualifications in chemistry?

Bobby. wrote on Aug 13^th, 2019 at 11:37am:


I'd rather feed the energy I create at home from rooftop solar directly into an electric car !! Why would I want to take it up the arse at any fool bowser and pay socko and his deadbeat opportunist mates for the privilege when they are always banging on about reducing power prices ! Here is your opportunity to drastically reduce power and energy pricing

lee wrote on Aug 13^th, 2019 at 4:04pm:


That's why I preficed the statement with "I'd rather"

And since most people work from home these days it's a win win but if you have battery backup then it's still a win win !!

Even William Gates is pushing CO₂ capture from the air to fuel and making it a continuous recycling process.




Bill Gates is backing a plan to turn CO2 into fuel
Sophie Hardach 05 Feb 2018


Smoke billows from the chimneys of a wood products factory near the city of Burgos, northern Spain  December 9, 2009.
'Air to fuels' technology promises to clean up the atmosphere and provide clean fuel. Image: REUTERS/Felix Ordonez

The biggest climate meeting in history, with 15,000 participants from 192 nations, opened in Copenhagen on Monday with hosts Denmark saying an unmissable opportunity to protect the planet was "within reach".

Could the future of clean energy be to turn air into petrol? It may sound too good to be true, but Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and his partners are experimenting with a technology that could potentially help stop global warming as well as provide clean fuel. At their facility in Squamish, western Canada, engineers have already succeeded in extracting CO2 from the air and using it to produce a mix of petrol and diesel. They hope to eventually replicate the process on an industrial scale, the Guardian reports.

Carbon Engineering, a company set up by Gates, physicist David Keith and oil sands magnate Norman Murray Edwards, and its partner, Canadian energy company Greyrock, announced last December that they had made a vital breakthrough. Carbon Engineering had succeeded in using captured CO2 to synthesize a mix of petrol and diesel.

The individual technologies, such as carbon capture and fuel synthesis, are not new. But combined, scaled up and powered by solar energy, they could clean up the planet while offering a new source of carbon-neutral fuel that uses less land and water than biofuels. Carbon Engineering estimates that once scaled up, the technology could produce fuels for less than $1 per liter.


Image: Carbon Engineering

Their process, known as “air to fuels” (or A2F) consists of three main steps.
First, CO2 is captured from the air and purified. The facility in Squamish already removes one tonne of CO2 per day from the atmosphere, but previously, this was simply released back into the air as the rest of the process was not developed enough.
Next, clean electricity, such as solar power, is used to split hydrogen from water.
In the final step, the CO2 and hydrogen are synthesised into fuel, such as diesel and jet fuel. Fuels produced this way are also cleaner burning than fossil fuels, according to Carbon Engineering.

“A2F is a potentially game-changing technology,” it says on its website. It “offers an alternative to biofuels and a complement to electric vehicles in the effort to displace fossil fuels from transportation”. While electric vehicles are more suited to shorter distances, long-haul transport, ships and airplanes still need the high-energy density of liquid fuels, according to the company.


However, critics argue that the world’s main priority should not be to capture CO2, but to emit less of it in the first place.

In the journal Science, Professor Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, and Glen Peters, research director at the Centre for International Climate Research (Cicero) in Norway, argue that the technologies to remove carbon may not work at scale.

Anderson warns that governments are assuming that these technologies will clean up the atmosphere in the future, according to the Guardian. This gives them less of an incentive to cut emissions now. Anderson points out that it is also a dangerously optimistic assumption given how new and unproven these technologies are on a large scale.

“They are not an insurance policy; they are a high-risk gamble with tomorrow’s generations, particularly those living in poor and climatically vulnerable communities, set to pay the price if our high-stakes bet fails to deliver as promised,” Anderson says. If the technologies are not as successful as promised, “our own children will be forced to endure the consequences of rapidly rising temperatures and a highly unstable climate.”

Bill Gates has argued that governments and companies need to invest in a wide range of cutting-edge energy technologies, from solar fuels to more efficient grids, even though it may take many years for them to work at scale.

“Breakthroughs in energy technologies could reduce air pollution, help people escape poverty, and avoid the worst effects of climate change,” he said in an opinion piece on clean energy last year. “But here’s the tricky part: we don’t yet know which ones will succeed. So we need to explore lots of ideas with investments from both the government and the private sector.”


https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/02/bill-gates-to-strip-c02-from-air-for-clean-fuel/

Yet another method of capturing CO₂ from the air and converting to synthetic fuel.

If they take too much CO₂ from the air then plants might start to droop!!!




Shell-backed startup creates fuel from carbon dioxide and fake sunlight
By Cole Latimer September 6, 2018 — 12.45pm

A startup company backed by energy giant Shell has developed a method to turn carbon dioxide into fuel by adding fake sunlight.

US company Dimensional Energy has developed an “artificial photosynthesis” process with a photoreactor that converts carbon dioxide, using sunlight and water, into synthetic fuels and gases like methanol.


The process turns captured carbon emissions into a usable fuel like syngas or methanol. CREDIT:JONATHAN CARROLL

The company was created at Cornell University, in the US, and aims to turn the former waste CO2 into a new profit stream with the HI-LIGHT solar-thermocatalytic “reverse combustion” technology.

“We want to create a carbon dioxide refinery on an industrial scale,” Jason Salfi, Dimensional Energy’s chief executive, said.

To date, the technology has won a 2017 NASA design contest, with the company receiving funding from the US National Science Foundation and Shell’s GameChanger start-up program.

David Erickson, a co-founder of the company and professor at Cornell University, said the process uses carbon dioxide as a feedstock to create gas using artificial photosynthesis.



The process was designed as a step beyond typical carbon dioxide emissions mitigation such as carbon capture and storage.

“By not viewing fossil fuels and feedstocks through a circular economy lens, we estimate these companies miss an opportunity for approximately $US50 billion per year in potential profit from hydrocarbons, including methanol, that could be made with waste CO2,” the company stated.

Fellow founder of Dimensional, Tobias Hanrath, said it can help tackle climate change.

“The ubiquitous process of combustion has gotten humanity in trouble,” Professor Hanrath said.

“We’re seeking to develop a reverse combustion process – artificial photosynthesis – where you make carbon dioxide an input and, from that, create a value-added product.”

Dimensional Energy is aiming to produce a larger scale reactor, building a pilot plant with an already identified – but as yet unnamed – partner in 2020.

This is not the first unique carbon dioxide reduction program.

In Iceland, one of the world’s largest geothermal power plants began capturing carbon emissions and turning them into stone.

The operation, a joint venture between Climeworks and Reykjavik Energy, is an evolution of the world's first commercial carbon capture facility - the Direct Air Capture plant which opened in Switzerland in June last year and is also run by Climeworks.

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/sustainability/shell-backed-startup-creates-f...

Sir lastnail wrote on Aug 13^th, 2019 at 5:16pm:

And I suppose you have the statistics to back that up?

Edit: The last one I can find says about 30%.

Hey socko how much tax payers money has been given to your LNP mates to come up with pie in the sky hare brained "clean coal" scams ? Where are the results ??

where's the clean coal technology socko ? LOL

Scunge is having a loony fit which is so typical of loony Greenies who just can't stand to be shown to be wrong and not very bright. And of course she is continuing her HATE session with me. So like a Greeny. They are all the same.

Poor lostnail. all those responses and nothing on his claim that "most people work from home these days". it just goes to show he is full of "it". 

Was scunge dropped on her head as a child ? Certainly sounds like it. How else could she end up so mentally pickled ?

The only trouble with all this sucking of CO₂ from the air is what happens if the plants can't get enough CO₂ ?  Droop ?   Once again catalysts are critical.




Waste CO2 to be turned into ingredients for fuel, plastics and even food
by Anthony King, From Horizon Magazine, Horizon: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine NOVEMBER 19, 2018


The CRI plant sells around 4,000 tonnes of methanol produced from waste CO2 per year. Credit: Recycling International


Scientists are ramping up efforts to turn waste CO2 from industry into chemicals such as methanol in a bid to reduce emissions and provide a new source of raw materials for use in fuel, cement and food production.

It's part of a strategy to halt global warming by cutting down the amount of CO2 we vent into the air and then re-using it—a technique known as carbon capture and utilisation (CCU).

At a facility run by Carbon Recycling International (CRI) beside the picturesque Blue Lagoon in southwest Iceland, water, energy and waste carbon dioxide from a nearby geothermal power station are being used to make methanol, which can be blended with petrol to power cars or turned into a range of chemicals.



This amount is a drop in the ocean for now, since around 80 million tonnes of methanol are made annually. Through a project called Circle Energy, CRI is conducting a feasibility study on scaling up its operations. CRI aims to construct dozens of facilities in Europe that combine renewable energy with waste CO2 gas to make methanol, starting with a much larger facility in Norway, where it will use hydropower to make 100,000 tonnes of methanol each year. The plan is to start building soon and complete the facility by 2021.

Sustainable
CRI's process is far more sustainable than regular methanol production. In Europe and the US, most methanol is made using natural gas, whereas in China coal is used.

The CRI process kicks off by using the renewable energy to electrolyse water, which is a way of breaking H2O molecules into oxygen and hydrogen using electricity. The hydrogen is reacted with the waste CO2 with the aid of special chemicals called catalysts. This yields methanol, which is made up of four atoms of hydrogen, one of carbon and one of oxygen. The only waste gas is oxygen, which is emitted into the air or used in other ways.

In Norway, CRI will use renewable energy and waste CO2 gas from nearby industry to manufacture greener methanol, which will then go into paints, plastics, solvents, glue, fuel components, and more. This way of making methanol reduces carbon emissions by 90% compared to using fossil fuels.

"We are able to sell in the same fuel markets in Europe as other fossil fuel methanol, but we get a premium price," said Sigurbjörnsson.

Methanol can also be stored and transported from renewable energy production sites to where consumers are. "We can convert renewable energy into chemical energy that can be stored for a long time, and it can be moved long distances without losing energy. It has these advantages over say battery technology," said Sigurbjörnsson.

CRI, which has worked out how to use residual gases from industries such as steel and iron making, also plans to put waste CO2 from power plants and cement factories to good use.

"We plan to have more partners co-invest with us, such as power companies, chemical companies and different industries," Sigurbjörnsson said. "Our focus is on developing the technology and licensing and selling the equipment that goes with it."

This can lower emissions but won't swallow all of industry's CO2.

Report
The recent landmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that the world needs to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. This requires many solutions and multiple technologies.

"Since the industrial sector emits 40% of all carbon dioxide, we are trying to capture it from the chimney and do something useful with it," said Professor Patricia Luis Alconero at UC Louvain in Belgium, who has just begun an ambitious project to turn waste CO2 into useful chemicals.

Her project, CO2Life, is inspired by nature. "Our process looks at the way nature takes up CO2 for its own ends. We try to copy nature's use of enzymes, but in a way that is more efficient and which uses membrane technology," she said.

Current technology for capturing carbon uses liquid amines, expensive and toxic chemicals with great affinity for CO2 molecules, but the cost and sustainability of the process are of concern. In order to generate energy and to capture CO2 in a fossil fuel power plant, for instance, an additional 30% more energy needs to be generated.

Read the exciting rest here

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-co2-ingredients-fuel-plastics-food.html

lee wrote on Aug 15^th, 2019 at 11:28am:


No one has considered the efficiency
dividend from direct charging of
batteries compared to making fuel
for an internal combustion engine
except sir Nail and me.
The latter has huge energy losses.

forgiven
namaste

Have they cracked the CO₂ less fuel cell ?



Fuel cell-based system converts atmospheric CO2 into usable electric current
By Stuart Nathan 21st January 2019 11:16 am

Korean and US engineers devise hybrid sodium-carbon dioxide fuel cell that eliminates carbon dioxide and produces electricity and hydrogen

The technology, developed by Prof Guntae Kim at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in collaboration with material scientists and engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, depends on a well-understood phenomenon: the dissolution of carbon dioxide into water to produce an acidic solution, which occurs in nature when carbon dioxide dissolves in the oceans.


Schematic illustration of Hybrid Na-CO2 System and its reaction mechanism. Image: UNIST

Prof Kim and the team realised that this could be used to induce an electrochemical reaction. The creation of an acidic solution increases the number of protons in the water, each of which can attract an electron, and this implies that a battery system can be created.

“Carbon capture, utilisation, and sequestration (CCUS) technologies have recently received a great deal of attention for providing a pathway in dealing with global climate change,” says Prof Kim. “The key to that technology is the easy conversion of chemically stable CO2 molecules to other materials.” He adds, “Our new system has solved this problem with CO2 dissolution mechanism.”

The fuel cell system consists of a sodium metal anode submerged in an organic electrolyte, a separation membrane consisting of a sodium super ionic conductor (NASICON) ceramic, and a catalytic cathode (the researchers used platinum) in an aqueous electrolyte, which could be distilled water, seawater or a sodium hydroxide solution.

The researchers explain in iScience how injecting carbon monoxide into the water triggers a reaction, with gaseous hydrogen liberated at the cathode – which can then be used in conventional fuel cells – and current flowing in an external circuit.

Sodium ions are liberated from the anode, pass through the membrane and recombine with the hydrogen carbonate ions formed by the dissolution of carbon dioxide. In the system’s current form, the conversion efficiency of CO2 is 50 per cent

The “hybrid Na-CO2 cell” continues to produce electricity and hydrogen and does not regenerate carbon dioxide during charging, the team says.

The system has been tested over more than a thousand hours with no damage to the electrodes. “This hybrid Na- CO2cell, which adopts efficient CCUS technologies, not only utilises CO2 as the resource for generating electrical energy but also produces the clean energy source, hydrogen,” said Jeongwon Kim, electrical engineer at Unist and co-first author for the research.

“This research will lead to more derived research and will be able to produce H2 and electricity more effectively when electrolytes, separator, system design, and electrocatalysts are improved.”


https://www.theengineer.co.uk/fuel-cell-based-system-co2/

Now they are copying flower techniques to capture CO₂ from the air as plants do this easily every day.




Shine On: Dimensional Energy Turning Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel
Jeff Kart Aug 30, 2018, 03:08pm


Sunflowers in Spain (Photo by: Mikel Bilbao /VW Pics/UIG via Getty Images)

Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. But what about turning carbon dioxide back into fuel?

A Cornell University startup has reportedly developed a way, by adding sunlight to carbon dioxide to transform it into syngas or methanol. The fuel is said to be environmentally friendly and useful for transportation, energy, heating and cooking. Dimensional Energy is the name of the startup, working on a reverse combustion process, aka artificial photosynthesis.

Cornell officials say Dimensional Energy has joined a university business incubator, McGovern Family Center for Venture Development, to bring the idea to the commercial level. Company leaders hope to produce larger scale reactor prototypes and deploy a pilot with an already identified partner in 2020.

The CO2-to-fuel process happens in a photoreactor where the key ingredient is sunlight. "In industrial uses, we can capture carbon dioxide from commercial entities before it leaks into the atmosphere," according to David Erickson, a mechanical engineering professor and co-founder and partner in the company. "We put it into our reactor, add hydrogen and sunlight. All of this goes into our machine and comes out as a useful fuel."



Dimensional Energy engineer Mihir Gada conducts syngas and methanol research in the company's laboratory at the McGovern Center incubator. CREDIT: JAMIE LOVE

Erickson adds that since the resulting methanol was formed from a process that removed carbon from the atmosphere, it's neutral and "we can use it guilt free."

Talk about breathing new life into the climate change fight. Carbon dioxide would be a feedstock rather than a planetary menace in this scenario.


Read on here

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkart/2018/08/30/shine-on-dimensional-energy-tur...

Sir lastnail wrote on Aug 15^th, 2019 at 9:31pm:


That was't your argument petal. Your argument was MOST people work from home.

Sir lastnail wrote on Aug 15^th, 2019 at 9:31pm:


But you were touting the benefits DIRECTLY powering up the EV.

No one has considered the efficiency
dividend from direct charging of
batteries compared to making fuel
for an internal combustion engine ( ICE)
except sir Nail and me.
The latter has huge energy losses.

An ICE has terrible losses that are understood in terms of thermodynamics.
I have studied that & it was a very difficult subject.

Basically the efficiency is proportional to the temperature difference in the system
& a lot of energy is wasted in heat & friction.
Just turning the camshaft in a motor wastes about 10% of the power!

It takes a lot of energy to split the water molecule of
oxygen & 2 hydrogen atoms.
I don't know what the efficiency is but with electrolysis
& even using the best catalyst I would expect it to be about 50%.
Couple that with the efficiency of a car engine at about 20%
then there are huge losses.

juliar wrote on Aug 16^th, 2019 at 1:37am:



Read my last post above again.
You don't understand it.

The totally wacky loony scunge Greeny shows off her legendary ignorance again.


Bobby just sitting on the armchair waving the arms around and just repeating the same old stuff is NOT very convincing.

You have got it stuck in your mind that something won't work and you get a thrill from saying THAT WON'T WORK.

Quite a few people do this. I think they do this because they are jealous of other people's achievements. The Greenies say NO to everything.

But away from the armchair and out into the big wide world CO₂ processing is happening quite successfully as I have shown.

Thank Goodness the world is not relying on impractical negative people like you for its advancement and salvation.

I wonder why you have such difficulty in reading and understanding what successful people are doing around the world.

In terms of rewards then, if it is true, then CLIMATE CHANGE is a big reward to avoid.

Also there is the inevitable end of easy oil and new energy must be found. THIS is reality.

I shouldn't ask but compared to what if oil is getting scarce and the alternative is horses.

juliar wrote on Aug 16^th, 2019 at 2:31pm:


Juliar,
In the future we'll see a mixture of  electric cars powered by batteries
via renewable energy & also some hydrogen cars.

If energy ever becomes dirt cheap as per via Thorium or Fusion nuclear reactors
then we might see synthetic petrol or kerosene made out of water & CO2 from the atmosphere
to power aeroplanes and internal combustion engines.

lee wrote on Aug 16^th, 2019 at 2:37pm:


No it renews itself doesn't it LOL

Sir lastnail wrote on Aug 16^th, 2019 at 3:38pm:


You really are thick. We haven't reached peak oil yet.