Catalytic Carbon Extraction in Fuel Cell Production?

garyebickford asks: "I've been following the discussions in the media regarding fuel cells & hydrogen fuel. I have an idea (really a set of ideas) for handling the CO2 issues, which could make fuel cells a better solution. Perhaps someone who know about such things can tell me whether it's workable or not. Speculating wildly, if the carbon could be retained in the process (in a discharge tank, for instance), then it might even be useful as a feedstock for plastics, for example. How might a fuel cell process (both production and use), possibly multistage or incorporating a catalytic pre-process, emit carbon in non-gaseous form? What about a fuel cell that just converted ethanol or higher weight hydrocarbons to methanol, or perhaps a nitrite or another byproduct? Consumers could then recycle this waste to the fuel station at the next fill-up. Even this incomplete process can provide more energy per weight or volume than hydrogen, in theory. Would such a process be possible, or feasible?" "Many fuels can be used in fuel cells, including hydrogen, methane/methanol, ethanol, and ammonia. One of the problems with all these, in fact any system that consumes hydrocarbons (either biomass or petroleum), is that at some point in the process the carbon is released as carbon dioxide. For H2 and NH3 the problem is in the production facility; for hydrocarbon fuels the fuel cell itself emits carbon in some form. Perhaps fuel cell research has tended to think in terms replacing the existing combustion model, with the given that output will be H2O and CO2. Is anyone studying the possibility of fuel cells that have other output chemistry?"

Comments

Re:Doesn't Work - Follow The Energy

[BbMaj7]

Maybe if the catalyst was chlorophyl and you used an energy source like, say, sunlight; and provided some fractal-like structure for the carbon deposits to grow in...

Damn! It's already patent-pending! :)

Plastic?

[dredson]

If you are going to get Carbon as a byproduct, why shoot for producing plastics?

Let's making diamonds!

Different idea

[Gothmolly]

I have an idea where we take the CO2 from the air and convert it to sugars and other chemicals needed to sustain the reaction in reactor that I call a Photosensitive Living And Natural Thing (PLANT, for short). The PLANT device catalyzes the carbon into long chains made up of broken down water molecules, so you have chemicals made with H, O and C. Let's call those "hydrocarbons". Then, we extract them, mix them with some other PLANT-derived chemicals (say something like C2H5OH), and end up with an energy-dense liquid. This liquid can then be placed in tanks, pipelines, or directly into some (wise) consumer's vehicles.

We will call this miracle chemical "Bio-Diesel".

45-50 mpg in the VW TDI, and my exhaust smells like french fries, baby!