Scientists Recycle CO2 with Sunlight to Make Fuel

An anonymous reader brings us this article from Wired about a new method to produce fuel with the help of concentrated sunlight and carbon dioxide. The process "reverses" combustion, breaking down the CO2 into carbon monoxide, which is then used as a building block for hydrocarbons. Quoting: "The Sandia team envisions a day when CR5s are installed in large numbers at coal-fired power plants. Each of them could reclaim 45 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air daily and produce enough carbon monoxide to make 2.5 gallons of fuel. Coupling the CR5 with CO2 reclamation and sequestration technology, which several scientists already are pursuing, could make liquid hydrocarbons a renewable fuel."

More Technical Info

[jcaldwel]

Here is a link for more technical information on how this works http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/12/sandia-applying.html [greencarcongress.com]

Re:Grampa's biotech solution

[arivanov]

Not a lot have changed. Then the economics were perverted by the prohibition, now the economics are perverted by subsidies. In either case the process does not make sense neither for booze (grapes are better) nor for fuel (oil plants are better).

Re:underwhelming

[Anonymous Coward]

2.5 gallons of fuel produced per plant, per day, per installed Counter-Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5).

Re:Doesn't make sense

[Timmmm]

The problem with clean vehicles at the moment is energy storage. Batteries are expensive, complicated and not very good. Fuel cells are still developing and not very efficient. Petrol on the other hand is a proven energy storage technology. If you could manufacture petrol (or something similar) just using atmospheric CO2 and solar energy, you would effectively make all cars 'green'.

Of course it will be impossible to get enough energy to do that from solar energy. Oh well!

Not carbon neutral

[Joce640k]

All it adds up to is getting a bit more energy out of the coal.

In the middle of the process there's a small C02 -> CO ->CO2 stage.

Probably better to use all those mirrors to heat some water and drive a turbine.

Re:underwhelming

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh... I think you need to re-read the quote.

  "CR5s are installed in large numbers at coal-fired power plants. Each of them could reclaim 45 pounds of carbon dioxide from the air daily and produce enough carbon monoxide to make 2.5 gallons of fuel"

Each of the CR5s produce 2.5 gallons... large numbers of CR5 means 2.5 x "large number" per plant per day.

A New Kind of Cracker

[TheHawke]

Instead of attempting to make hydrocarbon based fuels the article toots about, crack CO down even further using an Old School catalytic cracker containing platinum, breaking CO into the base components of ultra-pure carbon (graphite) and high levels of oxygen.
Now I'd release the oxygen since atomic oxygen is the most corrosive element on the table, recover the graphite and sell it off.'
This would give the high polluting coke refineries something to grieve about since this would put a ding in their profits.

Re:underwhelming

[Diego_27182818]

Not only that, but the size of a dish required to focus the sunlight on the "barrel" is not mentioned.

It is mentioned, from the article

An 88-square meter solar furnace will blast sunlight into the unit, heating the rings to about 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit.

Re:This is

[x2A]

Seems to be a couple years old though, this page [sandia.gov] (second story down) which includes the same photo is dated feb 2006, and includes a much better description of how it works, including how they use alternate direction rotation rings for heat conservation within the drum, although it looks like they've more recently been trying it with CO2 instead of H20. This page [greencarcongress.com] contains more info and diagram [typepad.com] of the counter rotating drum. Very interesting stuff though.

Re:What could possibly go wrong...

[Cyberax]

You can immediately use CO for synthesis of more complex chemicals. No need to store it.

BTW, chemical plants have a lot more nasty compounds than CO.

Summary a bit too rosy ...

[ScrewMaster]

Scientists Recycle CO2 with Sunlight to Make Fuel

They're leaving the production of actual liquid fuel to other people ... all this thing does right now is produce carbon monoxide.

Urban myth

[MyNymWasTaken]

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp [snopes.com]
Claim: NASA spent millions of dollars developing an "astronaut pen" which would work in outer space while the Soviets solved the same problem by simply using pencils.
Status: False.

Short term, long term, one size doesn't fit all

[Per Abrahamsen]

At the short term, it seems to make coal based energy production more efficient. That is significant, no matter what your long time goals are, coal is going to be a very important source of energy for the next many years.

At the long term, they hope to develop the technology further so it can extract the CO2 needed directly from the atmosphere, and then it will be a renewable if successful.

A problem with the energy and climate discussion is the idea that we should have one solution to all our needs. Short of a dramatic breakthrough in fusion, I don't see that happen.

We are going to see an increase in renewable energy. Different kinds in different places, there are good reasons why "wind" is more relevant than "solar" in my country (Denmark), and why "water" is dominating in Sweden. Fission to ought get a renaissance. Use of fossil sources should decrease. if nothing else then for economic and geopolitical reasons. Biofuel will hopefully not be significant, until we get global population growth under control. There is a huge potential in efficiency, just proper isolation would make US consumption much closer to other industrialized countries.

And we are going to have to adapt to a changing climate, that is a given.

Re:Summary a bit too rosy ...

[IamTheRealMike]

Right. IIRC you'd need to split water to get hydrogen, and then combine the CO and H2 in the Fischer-Tropsch process [wikipedia.org] to actually get liquid fuels. So it'd take a lot of energy to do, but if you can suck CO2 out of the atmosphere (a hard, hard problem), voila, you have renewable petroleum.

Re:More Technical Info

[anexkahn]

If this were combined with a "Clean Coal" power plant and the gasification process, they could reduce a step. one of the by products of a clean coal power plant is carbon monoxide...

See:
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/gasification/index.html [energy.gov]