DailyDirt: Fuels From Thin Air
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Carbon dioxide has been the focus of a lot of discussions on global climate change and energy policy. Certainly, there are other greenhouse gases, but CO2 is the major by-product of our fossil-fueled economy that people have been massively pumping into the air at an extraordinary rate. Over millennia, biology has already come up with an answer to this problem -- in nature, carbon dioxide is part of a carbon cycle that is recycled and/or sequestered into wood or sugars or other forms of chemical storage. Perhaps some clever chemists/scientists can come up with another kind of photosynthesis to save us from dangerously high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? Check out some of these research projects that could turn CO2 into fuels.- A new catalytic system using ionic liquids and carbon nanofibers has been shown to turn carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide, which is could be used to create syngas and other fuels. The real breakthrough here is the discovery of a relatively new class of metal-free catalysis using doped carbon nanofibers. [url]
- The combustion of methanol to CO2 and water is a well-known reaction, but finding catalysts that promote the reverse reaction (CO2 to methanol) is what would be really useful. A novel, very efficient, single-step catalytic system to convert CO2 to methanol has been devised, but the problem is that it uses a borane compound that is actually more expensive to make than methanol (so the process isn't very economical). [url]
- Carbon Recycling International is a company that has a commercially viable process to turn waste CO2 into methanol. The trick is that the company has access to the waste CO2 from a geothermal power plant next to a volcano in Iceland -- giving it access to a relatively cheap source of CO2 and energy. The company brands its methanol as Vulcanol -- to remind buyers that its product comes from a natural volcano source. [url]
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Filed Under: borane, carbon dioxide, catalysts, chemistry, climate change, energy, fuel, geothermal power, ghg, iceland, ionic liquids, methanol, nanofibers, vulcanol
Companies: carbon recycling international
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