Sandia’s Next Fuel Source: Thin Air
A research team from Sandia National Laboratories is trying to reverse the combustion process and turn carbon dioxide into liquid fuel.
The process works something like this: concentrated solar power from a giant solar furnace is used to superheat a set of catalytic cobalt ferrite rings that, once activated, literally rip carbon dioxide (CO2) molecules apart. As a result, CO2 is transformed into carbon monoxide, which can be converted into methanol, jet fuel, or even gasoline.
Sounds a little too good to be true, but researchers say it works and claim a prototype facility will be completed by April.
The idea of recycling carbon dioxide is not new, but has generally been considered too difficult and expensive to be worth the effort. But with oil prices exceeding $100 per barrel and concerns about global warming mounting, researchers are increasingly motivated to investigate carbon recycling. Los Alamos Renewable Energy, for example, has developed a method of using CO2 to generate electricity and fuel.
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Splitting CO2 makes a little more sense once you understand that the original intention was to split water into hydrogen and oxygen for use in the proverbial hydrogen economy. The concept of recycling CO2 has a nice ring to it too, especially if the technology is combined with a coal power plant. CO2 from the plant’s exhaust gases could be captured, reduced to carbon monoxide, and then turned into liquid fuel.
On the other hand, this sounds like a big waste of solar energy when so many other options are available. Don’t expect to see CO2-to-fuel centers any time soon, either:
“This invention, though probably a good 15 to 20 years away from being on the market, holds a real promise of being able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions while preserving options to keep using fuels we know and love,” she says. “Recycling carbon dioxide into fuels provides an attractive alternative to burying it.”
Yeah, you got that right.
For more information:
CSM (01/04/08): Scientists Use Sunlight to Make Fuel From CO2
SNL (12/05/07): Sandia’s Sunshine to Petrol project seeks fuel from thin air
Photo Credit: Sandia National Laboratories
That is amazing I hope it is not sot down. this could solve a lot of problems
I like the idea of repurposing coal plant emissions. If they’re going to be around, why not make use of what they do produce?
[...] 2-12 hours of energy for a week. We’ve heard from Sandia before, read about their “energy from air” scheme or their solar efficiency world record - both use [...]
[...] compete with scientists and businesses to reach this goal. The Green Options network has featured promising technologies from Sandia National Labs before. While many are still in design or [...]
Cheap coal is almost the only thing that is paying the salaries at Sandia and the rest of the US. Europe is forcing all countries not to use lead in electronic products while millions in africa are starving and trying to get to europe where the government has not quite ruined the productivities of the economies.
The major cause of C02 releases are Humans. Get rid of them or keep them and the earth will not stop turning or going around the sun in its orbit. High ocean levels are only a problem for humans. Other Creatures start to move if their feet are getting wet. The ocean has been much lower in the past and it is only fair that it get higher for a change. But if the US tries to increase the cost of energy by limiting the release of CO2, people will lose pay or their jobs and they and their children will go hungry and not get medical attention. We have exported our pollution to China along with our jobs and money. How long can we continue to believe that everyone can sell French fries and drinks at McWhatits while we insist on no CO2. Global warming is not the only “inconvenient truth” the US gets to face; a flawed economy is one of the others.. …HG..
CO2 is not the issue, A clean energy source is, If the U.S. had chosen to be a moral people, and leaving Iraqi oil alone, and following Al Gore, decided to develop the South Western deserts, with the technology of the times - solar/thermal-molten sodium - electricity installations, for the same amount of money as that war cost, ($650 Billion), today, we would be tapping into the largest, renewable, sustainable, energy source the world has ever known. It would have paid every energy bill in the U.S.A. for maintenance fees only - FOREVER! It would be equivalent to an oil field that can NEVER run dry! Low cost electric power, and storeable hydrogen gasoline replacement from the electricity, for all!
After the millions of murders, and $650 billions of dollars, borrowed from our children’s futures and pissed away, with thousands of our own and others maimed and disfigured for life, millions of families utterly destroyed, ours and theirs, we are no closer to Iraqi oil production than the Iraqis are!
The next time you hear a blithering idiot spoiled brat, drunken, drug addicted, sociopath, rich Arabic saber dancing daddie’s boy oilman, stand at a microphone and threaten YOUR safety with someone ELSE’S weapons, remember what you lost America, remember, and weep! (also see http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan)
solar energy is used to lower costs only?
I suppose it’s enough strange method of heating.
I have a few qustions for everyone
If we can convert a monoxide into Co2 like we do using the C A T on a vehicles exhaust, why cannot we convert the monoxides from before the cat into another fuel why does it work one way round and not the other, the fumes coming from the end of that cars exhaust is the main greenhouse gas.
It is widely known that 80 percent of every gallon of Gas is wasted burning it in the internal combustion engine in the form of heat, if you could capture that heat convert it into a renewably then, what is by far the most wasteful invention we have ever invented, could become the most efficient, someone somewhere must have an idea, we can go to the moon and back, see universes billions of light years away but not come up with an alternative for oil, there must be something that works.
As I see things, burning oil is wasteful but not as wasteful as burning gas to make electricity or burning coal to make steam to make electricity, burning one fuel to make another is where our problems lie, take away the fuel and where will we be.
The sun shines down on us every day and makes everything we have, all our food, creatures the lot depends upon it, one days sunshine upon this planet supplies or gives enough radient heat to supply our daily global power needs over 20 times in 24 hours, surely this is where we should be looking to get our renewables from, its non polluting and free and constant somewhere on the planet every day, please lets not let the oppertunity pass us by before the end of our oil.
If everybody on the planet walked their kids to school for one month, it would give us enough energy to build a nuclear power plant.
If we made our cars last one extra year it would give us another, I think you can see where the angle is pointed here, we all need to start wanting less and then we could have so much more.