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Solar alchemy turns fumes back into fuels
16 September 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Rob Edwards
IT IS the biggest contributor to climate change. Now chemists are hoping to convert carbon dioxide into a useful fuel, with a little help from the sun.
If they succeed, it will be possible to recycle the greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels. The work could also lead to a way for future Mars missions to generate fuel for their return journey from carbon dioxide in the planet's atmosphere.
Chemists have long hoped to find a method of bringing the combustion of fuel full circle by turning CO2 back into useful hydrocarbons. Now researchers at the University of Messina in Italy have developed an electro-catalytic technique they say could do the job. "The conversion of CO2 to fuel is not a dream, but an effective possibility which requires further research," says team leader Gabriele Centi.
The researchers chemically reduced CO2 to produce eight and nine-carbon hydrocarbons using a catalyst of particles of platinum and palladium confined in carbon nanotubes. These hydrocarbons can be made into petrol and diesel.
To begin with, the researchers used sunlight plus a thin film of titanium dioxide to act as a photocatalyst to split water into oxygen gas plus protons and electrons. These are then carried off separately, via a proton membrane and wire respectively, before being combined with CO2 plus the nano-catalyst to produce the hydrocarbons.
Although the nano-catalysts produced two or three times more hydrocarbons than a commercially available catalyst, the process converted only about 1 per cent of the CO2 at room temperature. Centi believes it will be possible to improve on that by using higher temperatures and a larger surface area of catalyst. It will also be necessary to boost the efficiency of the solar water-splitting, he says. With the right research, Centi believes that an efficient solar-powered reactor for converting CO2 into fuel could be available "within a decade".
He presented his latest work, which is funded by the European Union, at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco on 13 September. Other chemists reacted positively, but cautiously, to the findings. "It sounds feasible," says John Turner from the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. "The solar-to-hydrocarbon conversion efficiency is pretty small, but it sounds like they are just getting started."
Ian Plumb, who researches water-splitting reactions at the Australian national research institute CSIRO Industrial Physics, says that unless the efficiency is improved it will be too expensive to implement. "But there is no doubt that what they are trying to achieve is very worthwhile."
From issue 2569 of New Scientist magazine, 16 September 2006, page 30
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actually pretty intriguing, 1% efficiency currently sucks but if they can really improve that as quick as they think they can and scale this up it's actually an ingenious idea.
And to think I always believed those Italian jokes about how they were going to land a rocket on the Sun and they planned to go at night to avoid the heat.
We just happen to have a slightly warmer place to try this right here.
Maybe Arizona will be the next major fuel producing state.
That's the beauty of the whole thing since the planet is about to incinerate anyways we should have plenty of sun to burn up all that CO2. It's brilliant, a closed system.
In all seriousness if they can improve the efficiency and ramp this up it's actually a brilliant idea, it's essentially the flux capacitor on a big scale which has long been my joke about what we really needed to do. Instead of burning garbage in a Delorean we're burning CO2.
Wouldn't that be the ultimate irony? We'll start using the CO2 and then we'll have people saying we need to burn more fossil fuels because we are depleting all the CO2 in the air.
Wouldn't that be the ultimate irony? We'll start using the CO2 and then we'll have people saying we need to burn more fossil fuels because we are depleting all the CO2 in the air.
lol
Newsflash 2035
Ice packs on a rampage!
Caps growing at a feverish pace never before seen.
Polar Bear madness!
What the hell are we going to do with 25,000 Polar Bears?
On a serious note I wonder what the ratio of recovery would be? 1-1 for burned vs converted or what.
Ice packs on a rampage!
Caps growing at a feverish pace never before seen.
Polar Bear madness!
What the hell are we going to do with 25,000 Polar Bears?
On a serious note I wonder what the ratio of recovery would be? 1-1 for burned vs converted or what.
Who knows. The real problem is along the lines of hydrogen, solar is still really inefficient the amount of land you have to cover with solar panels to get the amount of energy you need to burn up all the CO2 would be enormous and much larger than available existing roof space. So do we take pristine land and put solar panel farms there?
that's why I say they have to get those efficiency numbers way up, the idea is genius, but the devil is in the details can they actually get to a point where it's feasible to do it.
Who knows. The real problem is along the lines of hydrogen, solar is still really inefficient the amount of land you have to cover with solar panels to get the amount of energy you need to burn up all the CO2 would be enormous and much larger than available existing roof space. So do we take pristine land and put solar panel farms there?
that's why I say they have to get those efficiency numbers way up, the idea is genius, but the devil is in the details can they actually get to a point where it's feasible to do it.
Yep, but in the industries where there are huge investments and growth, the efficiency is also growing rapidly.
The efficiency of Wind Mills has gone from 300KW to 12MW in only 10-12 years. A 12MW Mill makes it realistic to get 30-40% of all energy from Wind Mills.
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Record of The New England Patriots' before their first SuperBowl!
Yep, but in the industries where there are huge investments and growth, the efficiency is also growing rapidly.
The efficiency of Wind Mills has gone from 300KW to 12MW in only 10-12 years. A 12MW Mill makes it realistic to get 30-40% of all energy from Wind Mills.
Can't use windmills. Environmentalists insist that they are killing off our bird population. Just because it is one of the cleanest energy sources with an unlimited supply of wind (maybe they should put a windmill farm in DC) and have absolutely zero pollution residual, doesn't mean a thing. They might kill .0000001% of the English Sparrow population.
Can't use windmills. Environmentalists insist that they are killing off our bird population. Just because it is one of the cleanest energy sources with an unlimited supply of wind (maybe they should put a windmill farm in DC) and have absolutely zero pollution residual, doesn't mean a thing. They might kill .0000001% of the English Sparrow population.
I can't vouch for the accuracy of this site beyond the comment on the altamont pass which is somewhat local to me and was widely reported in my area when it was discovered.
Fifteen years ago, it became known in the US that windfarms killed a great many birds, including protected species such as golden eagles. A controversy was born, and the wind industry came to a halt. The members of the National Wind Coordinating Committee (NWCC), a powerful lobby with cash to spend, undertook to overcome the obstacle.
They came out with a combination of window-dressing proposals -- such as painting the arms of the windmills, or setting-up radars to warn of approaching flocks of birds -- and moderately effective ones -- such as removing perching sites, or studying bird populations and their movements before deciding where turbines should be placed.
They buried existing bird fatality reports -- especially the famous one published by the California Energy Commission (60 golden eagles and 300 redtail hawks, among others, killed by windmills at Altamont Pass in just one year) -- under new, manipulated statistics. Here are some of the techniques employed:
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