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Using Enzymes to Help Fight CO2 Build-Up
A reader writes to us: "There is a story in the New Scientist that details efforts to use enzymes that destroy ethanol as catalytic converters, turning noxious carbon dioxide into methanol. " The enzymes in question are actually those that are found in the liver - the same one that helps break down alcohol. Cool application of it, if this ever becomes reality.
A couple of points...
Methanol can more efficiently be used as a fuel in fuel cells than by simply burning it. Yes, they won't be released commercially until 2004 but they've been independently predicted to take over a hefty slice of the market pretty soon.
Methanol can more efficiently and easily be obtained a load of other ways such as from the natural gas that's burned off (read 'gone to waste') at oil rigs everywhere or from domestic and agricultural waste.
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
Basically, they're advocating using CO2 as what amounts to a chemically-based energy storage unit. Methanol may not be the most human or environmentally friendly substance, but it IS easily convertable back into energy, stable and easy to transport, etc. I could see this technology being used (in conjunction with solar or other more convential power systems) as a method of extracting portable energy to fuel rovers and such on Mars, where there's an abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere waiting to be harnessed.
All very 'blue sky', of course. I'd expect that there's other fuel source methodologies that would be more efficient than this process too.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
Not to mention that global warming causes ocean levels to fall and not rise. This is the biggest misconception they try to pullover on you. take a glass with 3 or so ice cubes and mark the water level. cover it and let it set a few hours. When you come back you'll find the level has sunk. "Well gee Mr. Wizard, why is that?"
A glass? Evaporation!
Floating ice won't change the water level at all. Sure - the ice shrinks as it melts, but the shrinking is exactly the part of ice that was above water before melting.
So melting the north pole ice won't change the water level at all. Melting glaciers resting on land, such as the south pole icecap, will definitely raise the seas, but nowhere near a "waterworld" scenario.
I'm going to be childish and quibble that vapour isn't really a gas. :)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Not to mention, this has absolutely nothing to do with the article, which was about converting CO2 to CH3OH.
Sorry to rant, but I get annoyed when people post stuff they don't know anything about, which has nothing to do with anything.
Step 2: CHOOH
Step 3: CH2O
Step 4: CH3OH
I can't be the only person who noticed that the step from 1 to 2 added 2 hydrogens, step 2 to 3 deletes an oxygen, and step 4 adds 2 more hydrogens... without any mention of where these things are coming from and going to! I'm not a biochemist so I don't know anything about the chemistry of NADH, but a science article ought to at least explain how the equations are balanced.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Said SO2, NO2, and H2O all combine in the atmoshere to form H2SO4 and HNO3 and promptly rain down on some forest somewhere, killing it. CO2, is much less water soluble, and accumulates in the atmosphere much easier. CO2 does have the distinction of being the primary control of pH in most bodies of water on the planet.
The problem with burning fuel in an air atmosphere is that you can't exclude nitrogen from the combustion chaimber (I.C.E., not a fuel cell) and always seem to end up with a teeny bit of NO2.
Temkin
1) CO2 scrubber produces methanol
2) Methanol is used to provide more power to a fuel cell...
(Obviously, not in violation of the 2nd law of thermodynamics, just squeezing out a little more fuel efficiency..)
I *don't* know if this would be practical (i.e. use more energy to power the CO2 scrubber than the fuel cell would produce... That would be kind of pointless...)
coral reefs are much more important as carbon sinks.
That makes sense, since coral reefs build upon themselves, so the removed carbon is accumulated in lower levels of the reef. Trees, on the other hand, have a relatively fixed level (you do build up soil, but I doubt at the same rate), and as trees die they decompose and the CO2 gets released.
My favorite alternative energy generation technique is off-shore wind generators, as there's plenty of ocean room for them (even on the shelves), and they would provide residences for waterlife. It seems like they would also provide bases for coral reefs, at least in the right water conditions, making them even better environmentally.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
*holds hand up high*
Yep. Pissed out of my tiny mind. Had to type with 2 fingers, and close one eye, because depth perception of vision had gone.
Doesn't sound too hard? I was on call overnight for a trading system at a _large_ international merchant bank at the time.....
Fixed the problem, the got a free taxi home !!! Hehehehe!!!!
Anybody else got tales of drunken support?
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Water vapor causes 98% of the Earth's greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide gets called "major" because environmentalists love water and can't do anything about it. Imagine what the next ice age will do to the present environment.
nt
.oO0Oo.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
'cos I sure hate fish
.oO0Oo.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Hmm, actually with the proper filtering in place, you would be able to repeatedly use the same batch of fuel, but it wouldn't last forever as only a portion of the byproduct of the reaction is CO2, the rest being useless crap as far as this cycle goes. This would be an awesome method to use on a CO2-rich planet to provide power, though, as fuel wouldn't be an issue. :)
Deosyne
There is a story in the New Scientist that details efforts to use enzymes that destroy ethanol as catalytic converters, turning noxious carbon dioxide into methanol.
Enzymes that destroy ethanol... noxious CO2 -> methanol...
So basically they're the kind of like me. I break down ethanol with my liver,
and then produce noxious methane (you know what i mean)
=D
On the other hand, if you made yourself an -edible- Silicon-based life form, it could be open-sauced. :)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Carbon Dioxide is not 'noxious', any more than our exhaled breaths are. The threat it represents is that of a greenhouse gas, effectively operating as a heat retainer for our planet.
Although, now that I think about it, some people's exhalations are pretty noxious... ;)
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
A glass? Evaporation!
I said cover it. Earth is a closed ecosystem.
Lowmag.net
The morning after tying one on, you could now help your liver out with ''hair of the CAT'' :)
. But pretty much every credible scientific organization now agrees that warming is happening.
With due respect, qualifiers like "pretty much every" and "organization" do not take into consideration WHICH organizations there are out there supporting it. I have seen a a paper denounching GW theory signed by 15,000 scientists, independant and otherwise, all qualified in this field. The problem comes from the scientific method and not following up on the last few steps. These days, they make a theory, sign a treaty and gather no further evidence of impact. Its quite painful to be honest.
Lowmag.net
They go on about how great this is, and how you can cut down on the amount of C02 into the aptmosphere, and it sounds perfect. Until they get to the fact that you need a lot of electrons to make this work. Hess's law states that you can go through any pathway for a reaction, but that the amount of energy is the same in the end. This means that whatever you are burning to create this CO2 must release more energy than the ethanol that you are producing. Seems to me that ethanol releases a lot of energy when it burns. I want to know what type of fuel's CO2 they plan to convert.
You assume that all the ice on Earth is floating at sea level.
~70-90% of bergs are sub-surface. I know that. Scientists refer to the atmosphere warming the oceans, where most of the ice in the world resides. At a height of 14,000 to 29,028 feet or so, no matter how much "global warming" occurs, the ice on top of mountains generally either sublimates, or stays put. Go on top of Everest in the middle of its warmest season, and look at all the lovely snow and ice. Now think of raising the temperature 5 or so degrees. And think about the ice still being there.
Lowmag.net
Note: I'm not a biochemist, and my organic chem is really rusty. But if I had to hazard a guess, this would be it.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Hey, if we put this together with that methanol based fuel-cells we'd have batteries that recharges when you breath on it!
Now would that be useful! Humm, I wonder if I could get a patent on the concept...
By far the nastiest gasses are NO2 and SO2. These give you that icky brown and yellow smog, which you can see over many industrial cities and major roads during a temperature inversion. They are also the predominant gasses on Venus and are the primary cause of the hellhole nature of that world. They also contribute FAR more to the greenhouse effect than carbon dioxide.
Now, if the enzymes could do something useful with those, I'd be impressed. Clean up smog AND remove the greenhouse effect in one easy sweep. Anyone want to develop a sulpher-based life-form?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Actually, now you're essentially just burning coal in order to create electricity AND run a car (by capturing the CO2 that would have ended up in the atmosphere anyway) instead of burning both coal and gasoline.
Yeah, you still burn methanol, and the energy to produce that has to come from somewhere (so I guess the above statement is a bit misleading, kind of like saying that electric cars are ZEV's since they don't burn anything), but if the energy required to create the methanol is significantly less than that required to create gasoline, then you have reduced the net CO2 emissions. If I read the article correctly, that is the thing they still need to find out.
"... message passing as the fundamental operation of the OS is just an excercise in computer science masturbation."
Back in 1994, there was much discussion on usenet about introducing a bill to outlaw internet usage while under the influence. My reaction was such an idea was absurd, but those people seemed serious enough to try and push for it. Laughable now, but you should see some of the laws on the books.
Oh yes, drunken surfing! Sure, what you see when drunk might cause your eyes to bug out, but the only thing that might crash is ill written code or operating system. Back in the old days when the pooter crashed, one could often see pretty colored characters dancing across the screen. And that was fun.
Coding while drunk often brings out the most lines of code and arguably the most productivity. I once wrote 200 lines of daring assembly language for a Z80 GUI with mouse and keyboard support on such a binge. The rest of the weekend was spent just to get the damn thing to work!
Methanol is not ethanol. Methanol is toxic when drunk, toxic when the vapor is breathed, toxic when absorbed through the intact skin, and really bad news if you squirt a couple of drops in your eye.
Don't forget 100% miscible with water. Spill the stuff and any ground water or reservoir it gets into is going to be poisonous....
Methanol is a perfectly fine chemical, as long as you take good care of it. As a large scale fuel, its toxicity makes it Right Straight Out.
Ideally, they could do the same thing to produce ethanol, which is essentially harmless. Unfortunately, that attracts the attention of Mister Tax Man.
..run a methane powered fuel cell battery (as referenced in /. recently, developed by Motorola I believe). The components of it could be build into the enzyme holding structure, and could react with just enough of the methane to recycle an appreciable amount of the NADH.
Someone run with this idea.. please..
--
Sean Dunn
DigitalAnvil.com
I believe your logic behind weather prediction is somewhat flawed. Short term weather prediction is extremely flawed through chaos theory (sensitive dependent on initial condiitons). It is impossible to absolutely predict what will happen tomorrow, but using sophisticated mathematical models general trends can be established. The difference between being able to predict snow in winter and being able to predict the amount of snow in a given winter is an example of this. Although long range climate forecasting is by no means perfect, advanced mathematical models and computing power allow it to be much more accurate than the nightly news.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The Co2 that is in the atmosphere is a tiny fraction of the CO2 that is dissolved in the ocean, and the ocean is not ven close to being saturated (think carbonated water :-)
;-) oceans are absorving CO2 too slowly.
;-)
So, the real problem is that because the contact surface between the ocean and the air is too small, (and the temperature too cold?) and the air is above the ocean
Solutions:
What, you thought I actually had one?
Who knows, maybe when the CO2 concentration in the air rises, oceans will start absorving quicker (I am no chemist) and it will all self-regulate in such a way that Siberia is a nice place to live, and we can open resorts in Antarctica (the peninsula must have some nasty surf waves!)
Yes, I recognize the satire of the posting I'm replying to.
No, Earth is not covered and is not a closed system. The top of our atmosphere leaks, and we're venting gases just as Mars did. Fortunately we've got more gases, have greater gravity so leak more slowly, and might be reabsorbing more snowballs (if we are indeed getting hit by ice from space...some of that would be our own leakage). Warmer gases will expand the atmosphere and more will leak away more quickly (in addition to dragging more on Mir). Not a problem as long as we've got enough water to keep making enough water vapor to keep us above the freezing point (where we'd be without the water vapor greenhouse).
I don't know if global warming will cause an overall rise or decline of sea level, but I find it hard to believe it will fall for the reason given above. Since an object floating in water displaces its weight in water, if you remove an ice cube (or iceberg) from the water and replace it with its weight in water, the level of the water should not change (ignoring the changes that happen while doing the removing and replacing). When an ice-thing melts, it essentially replaces itself with its weight in water, so there should be no change in water level. The expansion is seen in the ice that rides above the water. I've never done the icecube experiment, but if it does, indeed, work as described, there must be some further explanation than the expansion of water as it freezes.
Also, don't forget that all the ice that's sitting on land (e.g. on Greenland and Antarctica) will end up in the oceans if it melts. The ice will go to the seas, the land masses will rise because of the removal of the weight of all that ice. Will that cause a net rising or lowering of sea level? I sure don't know.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Information is not Knowledge
If that's the case, then we're really just along for the ride and the planet's at the wheel. We know the earth has undergone radical climatic changes in her past (egypt was relatively fertile back 6000 years ago, for example). Perhaps our latest climatic changes are just symptomatic of the 'next big swing'.
When it comes to weather on a geological time scale, we are pretty clueless. Good theories may abound, but unless someone can tell us with certainty when the next ice age is coming or when we're gonna go venusian most people will ignore the situation until it's "too late"... particularly when we can't even say with certainty that pollution we generate is the deciding factor in it all. In that case, is there such a thing as "too late" when really you don't have a significant ability to control it anyways?
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
Not to mention that global warming causes ocean levels to fall and not rise. This is the biggest misconception they try to pull over on you. take a glass with 3 or so ice cubes and mark the water level. cover it and let it set a few hours. When you come back you'll find the level has sunk. "Well gee Mr. Wizard, why is that?" "well Timmy,(or Tommy or whichever one he didn't blow up last week) that is because water expands when it freezes.
But like the above post states the greenhouse effect is what keeps us alive!
that and they keep saying global waming over and over. Last year was the 15th warmest on record for the 21st century. If GW were a serious problem, the last 50 years would be the warmest in a slow progression upwards.
Besides, I think the article is likely incorrect. CO2 is not noxious, CO is.
Lowmag.net
Step 1: C02 + H2 -> CHOOH
Hydrogen cleaves one of the C=O bonds, with one H attaching to the C, the other attaching to the O.
Step 2: CHOOH + H2 -> CH2O + H20
One H and the OH group combine to form H20, other H attaches to the C.
Step 3: CH20 + H2 -> CH3OH
Hydrogen Cleaves the C=O Bond, with one H attaching to the C, the other attaching to the O.
This balances the equations, but I'm not sure which reacions would need to be done. Needless to say, without the enzymes, they're probably pretty hairy. This particular synthesis was very likely not practical before they started using enzymes as catalysts.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
Shessh!
Last time I checked, Animals had a nice symbiotic relationship, we breath O2, and exhale CO2, Plants breath the CO2 and "exhale" O2...
Until we invented automobiles that burn hydrocarbons...
Our lovely vehicles spew out Carbon Monoxide(CO). Thisis both deadly to plants and animals.
Yeah, this article is nice, but it's not the levels of CO2 that we should be trying to reduce from our cars, it's the levels of CO. (Of course, reducing CO2 would help reduce the greenhouse effect, but that's a different story..)
H.
Suppose you have a fuel-cell hybrid car. The fuel cells run at high pressure, so you can store the CO2 in tanks (perhaps along with the water, all dissolved as soda water). You can either dump the soda-water and buy more methanol (expensive, perhaps, if carbon taxes are imposed) OR you can hook up to the wind genny, solar panel or wave-power machine somewhere and use the CO2/NADH reaction to regenerate methanol and oxygen from the CO2 and H2O. This effectively puts the exhaust back into the fuel tank. You wouldn't necessarily have to do the regeneration in the car; you could dump the soda water into a tank at home or a station and regenerate it there.
This is equivalent to a battery-powered car, but without any effective daily-range limitation and "recharging time" of a few minutes.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
CO2, on the other hand, is food for plants.
Only during the daytime. CO2 is used in conjuction with sunlight to produce O2+energy. During nighttime, plants consume oxygen just the same as you and I.
The above equation may be greatly overgeneralized but it's been quite some years since my Biology classes.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Besides, methanol's only uses are as a fuel and as a raw material for making other compounds. When you burn or catalyze the Methanol as fuel, you get the CO2 back again, and when those other compounds are eventually consumed or destroyed, you get the CO2 back again (and other noxious compounds, by the way).
Now, I'm no scientist, so don't yell at me if i get something wrong, here. But wouldn't that mean that if we found a way use that methanol to power whatever it was was we were getting CO2 from in the first place, that we could just use it over and over again?
-- Dr. E --
The article doesn't mention chemical H2, it mentions NADH. I'm assuming that NADH can be regenerated at the cathode of an electrolysis cell, but the article (and your description) still leave me in the dark as to the exact role played by NADH and how it is altered in the process.
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Big Deal
CO2 + H20 <==> H2CO3
(occurs without catalysis, but can be sped up by carbonic anhydrase)
H2CO3 + NADH + H+ <==> HCOOH + NAD+ + H2O
(catalyzed by formate dehydrogenase)
HCOOH + NADH + H+ <==> HCHO + NAD+ + H2O
(catalyzed by formaldehyde dehydrogenase)
HCHO + NADH + H+ <==> CH3OH + NAD+
(catalyzed by alcohol dehydrogenase)
Net reaction: CO2 + 3NADH + 3H+ <==> CH3OH + 3NAD+ + H2O
I think that's balanced. Biochemists are often lax about mentioning hydrogen ions and water molecules in a reaction because it's generally assumed that they're present in abundance in biological conditions.
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
New Scientist is kind of crazy to talk about this as being any possible solution to global warming because the energy requirements are excessive and most likely would have to come from a source that dumped CO2 into the atmosphere. And we may or may not need another source for producing methanol. But having shown that their technique works one can assume that other combinations of enzymes will be tried until something really useful is produced.
This reminds me of the proposal to use CO2 in the Martian atmosphere (and liquid hydrogen shipped from Earth) to generate rocket fuel. (CO2 + H2 = CO + H2O. CO + H2 + catalyst = CH4 + O2 (rocket fuel). Elctrolysis the excess water to extend the process.) It was clever, used largely off-the-shelf products and solved an formitable problem.
Having demonstrated that they can produce organics from raw materials, there are any number of possibilities one could speculate on that they could do next. One possibility would be to combine this catalytic converter with efforts to develope artificial chloraphyll. (I believe there was a slashdot article on that) Chloraphyll traps solar energy to liberate an electron, and this catalytic convertor needs a lot of free electrons. If one could successful pair the two processes together the result would be a methanol producing solar panel, which could be organized into farms out in the desert. Solar energy stored as methanol would be more transportable than electricity from solar panels and be available for a wider array of uses.
Brian Brown (beb01@sprynet.com)
i'll be the first to admit i don't fully understand the chemistry involved here, but i agree with you, solar energy was my first thought when they said they needed electrons to complete the reaction. i wonder, would it actually be feasible, though... i don't seem to remember anything ever being said about solar panels being efficient energy converters (or whatever they technically are). would it be possible that to produce enough energy, there would have to be some impractical amount of panels? and solar panels atop a power plant seems a little silly to me... :)
Crap. Preview box managed to lose my correction to that formula. The correct reaction is
CH2OH + NAD <---> CH2O + NADH
THIS is the missing chemistry from the New Scientist article! Thank you, sir, for the enlightenment. (Someone ought to moderate the parent post up.)
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
- Precipitate carbonates (calcium, magnesium) from seawater.
- Roast carbonates to oxides, capture CO2.
- Dump any undesired oxides back into the ocean, raising the pH, converting bicarbonate ion to carbonate ion, and helping absorb more CO2. (MgO may be worth saving for conversion to metal.)
- Convert CO2 to CH4 or MeOH using whatever process is desirable. Use as fuel elsewhere.
If you have enough cheap energy, this might actually be feasible.--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Why don't they just couple this with, say, glycolysis or the electron transport chain so they can regenerate NADH as much as they want? Couple these to photosynthesis, and you could cut CO2 emissions even further. Use the enzymes out of some archaebacteria, and you could filter out nitrogen or sulfur byproducts as well.
Actually some of those polyps are quite brave! They leap into the water, and hope that the currents will take them into a new area suitable for growth.
For use on earth this seems to be limited by the fact that you need to
put energy in to the system, and most of our energy generation
involves the production of co2.
However, energy is one of the things which is not in short supply when
you're in orbit, but carbon is. This might be a useful part of the
life support system of a space habitat. Allowing co2 to be recycled
as methanol using plentiful solar energy.
The next questions is: what do you do with the methanol?
with cool videos here: http://www.mbari.org/ghgases/deep/release.htm
"Dying tickles!" -- Ralph Wiggum
Since photosynthesis removes CO2 from the atmosphere, The Iron Solution to the global warming problem proposes to radically expand photosynthesis on the planet by fertilizing high nitrogen, low phytoplankton regions of the ocean with the element that limits phytoplankton growth in those regions: iron.
A side benefit of this sort of agriculture is that it would tend to lessen agricultural demand for land-based ecosystems that are currently being slashed and burned for agricultural production, such as rain-forests. Phytoplankton is at the base of the food chain for high protein organisms like fish. People would have to get used to eating less pasta and more halibut -- a small price to pay for the salvation of millions of species, except maybe for Italians.
Seastead this.
Well if you solar or wind powered this reaction it would seem like a fairly nice idea; the question is how much would be needed to make any noticeable difference?
Actually to anyone with a biochemistry or organic chemistry background the answer is obvious. The oxygen comes from the water in which the rxn takes place (actually probably in a step 0 where C02 + H20 -> CO3H2 which is carbonic acid). The reducing potential to take the oxygen off comes from NADH being oxidized to NAD+. The actual hydrogen atoms/ions coming from NADH and/or water. Typically the statement that NADH is a co-factor in the rxn is enough to make the above clear to the audience of the New Scientist.
Now I could look up the respective thermal stabilities of the enzymes mentioned here, but I'm lazy :-) What I want to get at is that enzymes are proteins and as such have a finite lifetime at room temparature. They have a nasty habit of denaturing (losing their 3D shape) and thus losing activity. You can store them at 4 degrees C but they don't have much activity then. So you might not want to power your phone with an enzyme-dependent fuel cell.
A solution to this might be to use enzymes from deep-sea vent bacteria, they have evolved to stay active under thermal stress. But they still have a finite lifetime, eventually they will lose activity. In living cells, enzymes have very short lifetimes before they are broken down into amino acids and recycled.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Up until 1750 it was the pattern I'd expect to see in a steady system, more or less steady with random variations about the mean.
Unless you can give a reasonable explination for a steady increase since 1750 (When the industrial revolution dramatically increased the amount of fossil fuels being burnt), your theory doesn't hold up.
AP, Curitiba, Brazil
A team of scientists working on studying the interaction between tropical frogs on rain forest plants may have made an important unexpected discovery.
Dr. James Tertweiller, who has been living and working all over the state of Parana in Brazil for the last 3 years, said there's some indication that plants -- from the mighty, thick vegetation of our rainforests, down to your household cactus -- appear to be constantly converting carbon dioxide into oxygen.
"The implications are enormous," he said. "We've been so worried about the rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere. But if the plant life biomass of the planet is large enough -- and I think we might be able to acheive this in the forseeable future -- we can actually sustain a fine balance of atmospheric gases."
Policymakers around the world greeted this news with enthusiasm, but expressed some doubts about the economic viability of the plan.
Tweet, tweet.
I must admit I haven't done the experiment yet, but I always thought the level was the same (if you assume the starting and finishing temperature of the water is the same). Objects that float in water displace an amount (mass) of water that equals the mass of the floating object. Thus when the ice melts it exactly fills in what it had displaced before. As far as any analogy to to global warming goes, the reason that there might be a problem with sea levels has nothing to do with floating icebergs. I believe it has to do with 1] temperature expansion of water (water expands when it gets warmer too) and 2] melting of ice that is supported by land (e.g. Antarctica). - dara
Now if they will just create a enzyme that will clean my bathroom.
If you want to kill a plant, then putting it in a O2 less atmosphere will do it much quicker than a CO2 less atmosphere, the difference between suffocating than starving.
The entire article is about Carbon Dioxide, yet in their graphic of the chemical reaction, they show a nuclear power plant in the background as the generator spitting out "greenhouse gasses"...
Maybe I'm just picky because I grew up 3 miles from the Limerick Nuclear plant in southeast PA, and was forced to learn about it in HS, or maybe its because I work for a utility company. ;)
-- Scott
My theory: incr CO2 -> more food for plancton -> more food for fish -> more fish in the ocean -> more food for humans -> more humans -> more CO2 -> etc.
I do on the other hand think we should try to limit it somewhat - but not go overboard like the media has (they just love armageddon stuff).
...when I first learned about the wonders of hydro-electrolysis, and found out about the perfect closed fuel circle that could result from the simple seperation of hydrogen and oxygen in water.
My mind spun with all the things you could use it for. Well, I'm a little older, a little less enthusiastic, and maybe a little more efficient. Now I know it's just another way to move energy around, like batteries or gasoline.
If it's as efficient as they make out, combined with the new cheap methanol fuel cells, this could be the clean, portable energy solution of the next century. It has every advantage of the hydrogen energy system (well, maybe it loses a little in simplicity of generation), plus the extremely important bonus of how easy it is to move methanol around. There are plenty of other ways to get methanol, too. Forget solar power plants: fermentation of vegetable matter into methanol is simple; you could fuel your cell phone out of your compost bin.
Just think of what we can do with all that formaldehyde.
O_o
Tough luck:
1. Thermodynamics say that in order to convert CO2 into CH3OH you have to use quite a lot of energy. So whatever you burn like that will be bloody inefficient
2. The only productive thing you can actually do with the CH3OH is burn it so back to CO2. It can be converted into some plastics and stuff but the overall demand for such material is not high to satisfy a massive generation of CH3OH.
3. Better stop cutting the brazilian forests. I actually check the labels on all the stuff I buy and try not to buy anything that is not:
3.1. Made of recycled paper (this technology is dirty as well but still better than nothing).
3.2. Made out of planted forests in scandinavia or somehewhere else where they plant at least as much as they cut.
In btw: these labels are almost standard on anything sold in the EU.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Can someone please change em so they make ethanol? Please? (Not that I mind the taste of methanol, it just makes you go blind a lot quicker, and if that happens I can't find my glass).
Okay, let's get something straight. Greenhouse effect and Global Warming are NOT the same thing. We need the Greenhouse effect (a misnomer anyway) because the earth doesn't receive enough energy from the sun alone - some of the heat reaching our planet is actually radiated to us from our own atmosphere. Check this URL for more information: http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/BadGreenhouse.h tml Also, trees are NOT the be-all and end-all of CO2 consumption - coral reefs are much more important as carbon sinks. Unfortunately, spineless polyps don't make good press, so the enviro-lobby has taken up tree hugging as a sport.
How do they want to recycle NADH?
NADH is a very important substance of the energy managment in living beings. Nature has invented a way of recyling it, it's called Life. I'd be really amazed if they found a way of recyling it synthetical. (ok, they will, but probably not in my lifetime). My best bet is genetically manipulating bacteria to do this for us.
We all know our bodies don't need any methanol floating around in them, but I can't help but wonder whether this is another step along the way to finding the holy grail of alcohol metabolism: a pill that speeds up the process of alcohol metabolism. The financial reprocussions would be enormous both for the manufacturer and for society at large which would benefit from increased productivity with saying good bye to hangovers. On the other hand, alcohol consumption would skyrocket and we'd become an even greater society of alcoholics than we currently are, not to mention all the idiots who would still manage to induce alcohol poisoning in themselves.
But just look at how societies have always grown up around the simple fact that it takes hours for people to sober up, and imagine a world without that. My cynical mind wonders what hell might replace it.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Wonder if there's any official study done into this... UN, if you're listening, grant me a million quid, and I promise to research faithfully!!!
Hey, come on, I seem to recall experiments done with spiders & how they wove their web whilst under the influence of hash, coke and speed...
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
In your .sig:
>Important Proir cases effecting DECSS, a must read
affecting, not effecting is correct here...
(this particular mistake is one of my pet peeves - really makes people sound/look uneducated. Almost as bad as "your/you're" problems)
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
While the net (final) change in energy levels is the same for any pathway, the length of any chemical pathway (number of steps) and efficiency of each step will have a MUCH greater impact on total energy requirements. While your initial activation energy is lowered by a catalyst or enzyme, once you put that energy in, it will come out as heat in the end (apart from the net energy change). Every time an enzyme accepts a molecule or assists in a reaction, there is some heat loss. Entropy in action.
I will agree that the power requirements for CO2 -> Methanol will be greater than the available energy in Methanol -> CO2.
Darren Schlamp
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
Actually, this is part truth and part myth...
Plants do produce much less O2 during the nighttime, but they do not consume it - they do actually continue the process. Without the added energy of the sun/light source they can only keep this up for so long, but if you check out a book that does a good in depth analysis of photosynthesis and the Kreb's cycle, you should be able to get all of the info there.
Though it used to be common practice in hospitals to remove plants from the patients rooms at night for the very reason you mention - the newer, more accurate research has led to the repeal of these actions.
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
New Scientist does not even bother captioning most of their pictures, which is probably appropriate because few of them are very relevant to the stories in which they are placed. It is not even in the league of Scientific American in that respect. On the other hand, it is a weekly, and it is fairly thick. I've subscribed to it and found it expensive (in US$) but about as worthwhile for the money as Science News (burden of glitz outweighed by volume of coverage).
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Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
The New Scientist article is baffling because it seems to have things backwards. Our livers (in the unhappy event anyone is foolish enough to consume methanol - not ethanol) in fact convert methanol into formaldehyde and formic acid, not the other way round. It is this formaldehyde and formic acid that account for the toxic effects - notably permanent blindness and destruction of the nervous system and cerebral cortex (not real fun). I know the article waves its hands and says, oh, the process is reversible. Maybe...
Not "maybe". You'll notice that the article also says that they drive the process using NADH. NADH, for those who don't know, is a critical metabolic compound in the pathway from glucose to ATP. (ATP is the primary power source for most cellular reactions that require energy.) The alcohol dehydrogenase reaction, as shown in the article, is:
CH2OH + NAD+ CH2O + NADH
When you have high levels of methanol in your body, the equilibrium is driven to the right. The NADH is promptly removed to the electron-transport system of the mitochondria (or to various synthetic pathways), thus keeping the reaction going in the forward direction. If there's nothing in your system which can remove NADH and you add excess NADH, the equilibrium is driven to the left, transforming formaldehyde to methanol. The other two enzymes in this process are also dehydrogenases, and thus probably also do NAD/NADH conversion, and thus the same rule applies. This is not handwaving, it is basic chemistry.
Now. It is true that there is a question of where the hell one is going to get the necessary NADH. It is also clear that they have no clue yet how this will be done, only some theories. However, the basic chemistry here is perfectly sound. Most metabolic reactions are, in fact, reversible; your body likes to keep its options open.
Alik
Not quite - volume is the question here. An object floating in water is supported by a buoyant force. This buoyant force is the same force as the weight of the volume of water displaced by the floating object. By weight I mean the downward force which gravity would cause the displaced mass of water to exert. The difference between the force that gravity exerts on the mass of the object and the force that gravity would have exerted on the displaced volume of water results in the object remaining at or above the water line if the object displaces enough water.
I'm not sure about whether the water line moves or not, though. True, water expands when it freezes, but on the other hand the ice cubes don't float all the way down in the water - they float as far above the water line as the buoyant force can push them (at equilibrium). Perhaps the volume of the ice cube which remains below the water line is exactly the volume of water that you would get if you melted the cube, and the volume of the ice cube above the water line represents the volume which was gained during freezing. In that case, the water line wouldn't move as the ice cubes melt.
This sounds intuitively correct to me, but I don't have a rigorous proof on hand and, alas, I also haven't run the experiment. Perhaps it's time for a trip to the cafeteria to try this?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Besides, methanol's only uses are as a fuel and as a raw material for making other compounds. When you burn or
catalyze the Methanol as fuel, you get the CO2 back again, and when those other compounds are eventually consumed
or destroyed, you get the CO2 back again (and other noxious compounds, by the way).
Methanol actually does have other uses. It makes a great solvent for semiconductor processing (we use it all the time), of course, that is electrical grade methanol, which may not be so easy to get from these little enzyme buggers.
Tying into what another poster mentioned - these coral reefs (along with other remains of sea dwellers) eventually become limestone, which is where another significant portion of C02 is locked away.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
The use of fossil fuels releases carbon that was previously locked up inside the earth for several million years. (I don't remember the exact quote, but Carl Sagan cleverly stated that our society runs on the fossilized remains of our very early ancestors...)
We are cutting down and burning the "lungs" of our planet... the forests that are supposed to keep CO2 at a reasonable level in the atmosphere.
If we can find methods to removes vast quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it into a form that is useful to us as fuel, we may be able to solve two imminent problems: the greenhouse effect, and the exhaustion of our fuel supply.
Of course, if this sort of technology starts going places, the oil companies will catch wind of it and try to stamp it out before it has a chance to catch on.
"On the other hand, the early worm gets eaten."
Make one big @ss coal electric generating plant, Put thoose elctro du dads on the stacks and use the electricty generated from burning the coal to provide the current need to start the reaction, In turn it doesn't matter that we are burning coal because we are recycling the fumes into car fuel. Good idea eh? Here's another I just thought of: Remember that chemistry class in highschool where you seperate water from hydrogen with two electrodes? zinc and something or other? Why don't they put that into a car and you could use it to power your car, The exhaust would be water and that would also be the fuel. get it? In other words. H20 -> electricty -> H and 0 seperates => Burn + exaust into fuel cell and start all over The electricity would come from the alternator and capacitors and what not, And what you now have is the first closed internal combustion engine. Shoot maybe I should patent that. Oh Well.
IT HAS YOU....
would a good practical joke to move from putting a banana in the tail pipe to putting a bottle of aspirin in the gas tank? hehe
The big-assed coal plant doesn't matter 'cause you're just making car fuel anyway? And what are you going to do with that car fuel -- drink it? No, you're going to burn it, releasing CO2 back into the air. So basically, you've managed to engineer it so cars can run on coal via an intermediate process, but you've done nothing to reduce the net CO2 emissions. That doesn't have too many useful applications.
As for your second idea, that's pretty much how rocket propulsion is done, and you can imagine that what's appropriate for rockets is perhaps not appropriate for cars, and in any event it's expensive and still requires a "big-assed" power plant to provide the electricity for the original electrolysis, because your idea of a closed internal combustion engine by definition couldn't do any work on the outside world (which is what driving cars is all about). Heck, you wouldn't even be able to idle the damn thing, since there's still some friction and you wouldn't get 100% yield if you tried.
Maybe you should patent it anyway, since the USPTO seems to deserve patents like that.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
So you can have solar panals generate the electricity for these reactions. Who cares if you need lots of power, the sun supplies more than enough.
This produces methanol which you can then use to power those methanol, air breathing fuel cells that are in developement.
The fuel cells actually burn cleaner than Internal Compustion Engines so you get less nasties in the emmisions, and of course you take the CO2 and start it all over again.
Of course you can also burn it in Gas turbines, which have a nice clean exhaust as well.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
Carbon dioxide is a major contributor to the global warming effect. For that reason, a lot of people equate CO2 with global warming. There are, of course, a lot of other atmospheric effects that effect total heat absorbtion and retention, but bringing up details like that tend to confuse people. Easier for the media to use simple words, like "Too much CO2 = Global Warming. Global Warming BAD!" I always thought that a majority of the worlds CO2 gets fixed into Limestone, but it's been a while since I've done geology stuffies. Of course, the difference between calcification and trees is that trees spit out what we need as fast as they take up what we spit out. Gotta love the symmetry of that. Not to mention that most people have had personal contact with trees (skiiers especially ;) whereas few people will have the luxury of being up close and personal to, say, the great barrier reef outside of a Jacques Cousteau video rerun. BTW, you CAN use <A HREF=...> tags in your comments, like on that Bad Greenhouse Link.
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rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
As they point out in the article, for this to work they need to recycle the NAD+ (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide-oxidized form). They say this should be feasible using electricity. Therefore you need to generate the electricity to do this. If that electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels this is a big waste of time as efficiencies will be much less than 100%. In theory you could use solar or wind or hydro generated electricity to convert CO2 into Methanol but then you need some kind of battery in the car/mobile Co2 generating device and we all know about the engineering problems with batteries especially in cars.
In addition they trap the enzymes in some kind of glass matrix which allows small molecules (NADH + CO2) to diffuse in and out yet retains the proteins in the matrix. If this is some kind of flow device and CO2 is being blown in one end then it will drag the NADH/NAD+ through as well, making it very difficult to recycle.
An approach to realistically reduce the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere is to develop catalytic methods to incorporate CO2 into a polymer or other solid that ideally is as useful to people as polyethylene/polypropylene. Recently a group at Cornell led by Jeff Coates generated such a catalytic system but they have yet to find a truly useful polymer.
Hopefully soon!
no sig.
Okay, nice responses on water ice. But you're forgetting evaporation of frozen methane can make sea levels go down when the water warms. Of course, then we've got a bunch of methane in the air too. Got all that in your climate models?
Sulphur-munching bacteria. Just what we need to seed Venus with. Convert some of sulphur and carbon in the atmosphere into piles of bacteria...odd soil, but better than what they've got now.
Does this use Catalase to change from co2 to the acid? because if it does, that can be obtained from the liver of cattle VERY easily and for cheap. (Only a few weeks in bio, our class did a few experiments with this.. turns out it reacts with hydrogen peroxide much like baking soda producing oxygen and water)
We'll be needing all the carbon dioxide in the air we can get our hands on soon, so that nanotech can built all our gadgets and mansions and personal trans-continental pipelines for us.
Leave all that automotive carbon alone --- it's our future feedstock!
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
This is a joke, right? I mean, no one could be so stupid as to think that changing massive quantities of comparatively harmless CO2 into highly toxic methanol is desirable on a large scale.
Methanol is not ethanol. Methanol is toxic when drunk, toxic when the vapor is breathed, toxic when absorbed through the intact skin, and really bad news if you squirt a couple of drops in your eye.
Besides, methanol's only uses are as a fuel and as a raw material for making other compounds. When you burn or catalyze the Methanol as fuel, you get the CO2 back again, and when those other compounds are eventually consumed or destroyed, you get the CO2 back again (and other noxious compounds, by the way).
CO2, on the other hand, is food for plants. If you "cleaned" the atmosphere entirely of CO2, all plants would die, no more O2 would be produced, and eventually all O2 would be consumed and all animals would die. Yes, we are animals, and we would die too.
The New Scientist article is baffling because it seems to have things backwards. Our livers (in the unhappy event anyone is foolish enough to consume methanol - not ethanol) in fact convert methanol into formaldehyde and formic acid, not the other way round. It is this formaldehyde and formic acid that account for the toxic effects - notably permanent blindness and destruction of the nervous system and cerebral cortex (not real fun). I know the article waves its hands and says, oh, the process is reversible. Maybe...
Free-floating phytoplankton are also very important, but hey, trees and reefs are pretty. They look much better on placards than something seen through a microscope (as such things are associated in the public consciousness with 'harmful' or perhaps 'evil mad scientists'). Also, for the majority, trees are closer to home. And yes, I like them too.
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
Just go to hospital, first aid department. Wait til you're first in line. and have some methanol handy...
Nurse: what's the matter sir?
you: I'm about to go blind because of methanol poisoning.
(Now is the time to drink some methanol)
The usual way to cure methanol poisoning: saturation with ethanol. Up to the point of getting poisoned by the ethanol.
Disclaimer: If you actually try this you're pretty stupid, so don't come complaining to me (if you can find me on sound and smell)
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Several people have already commented on the fact that more energy would be needed to regenerate NADH than could possibly be recovered from the methanol produced--this just from simple thermodynamics.
There's a couple of other problems, though. One example--in order to drive the enzymes "backwards" to produce CH3OH (instead of breaking it down as it does in nature), the CO2 probably has to be present at high concentrations, and purifying CO2 from air is energetically expensive.
Another one is the problem of constantly replacing the enzyme. Theoretically, catalysts are supposed to participate in a reaction without being consumed--but in practice, enzymes tend to "burn out" as they break down, react with impurities, etc...
At the Canadian Society of Plant Physiologists meeting I was at recently there was a symposium on dealing with CO2 accumulation. One of the speakers outlined a project to genetically manipulate green algae to perform this task, essentially using atmospheric CO2 to produce alcohol for fuel (you alcoholic AC's out there will be cheered to know that he was planning on producing ethanol though). Basically the algae would be grown in "bioreactors" and would continually produce ethanol that could be distilled from the culture medium. Pretty good idea but I don't think it'd make much of a dent in the excess atmospheric CO2 unless we covered, oh, the _state of Ohio_ with algae tanks...
:-)
WE'RE NOT GOING TO REVERSE THE DAMAGE THAT EASILY, PEOPLE! (so be nice to your planet, and don't leave your monitor turned on all night
Freedom: "I won't!"