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$20 Million XPRIZE Takes On Carbon Emissions
An anonymous reader writes: XPRIZE has announced a new, $20 million competition that aims to tackle carbon emissions. They're not looking to reduce emissions, but rather to convert them into something useful. They provide examples: "products like new and sustainable building materials; low-emission transportation fuels; and alternative chemical products that can be used to make everything from clothing and running shoes, to safer, stronger automobiles and breakthrough medicines." Awards will be given for making use of emissions from two different sources: coal power plants and natural gas power plants. "The winning team will convert the most CO2 emissions into the highest value products. To be competitive, teams will have to make the business case for their approach as well as minimize their use of energy, water, land, and other inputs that have consequences for the environment."
I question whether there could ever be enough demand for these products to put a real dent in carbon emissions.
Geopolymer Concrete
What ever they make, needs to resist biodegrading, or it's just going dump all that shit back out.
If you combined hydrogen and CO2 to make some kind of plastic, but when you dump it bacteria turn it into methane, you've just made the problem worse.
In World War II the British government once asked civilians to turn in extra pots and pans to be melted down for materials for the war effort. They received a small mountain of them. I don't know what they did with them but the materials were all but useless. It was a propaganda effort, intended to make the British people aware of how serious the war effort was.
If this CO2 product plan actually makes the slightest dent in CO2 storage I'll be shocked. It's a propaganda measure, and a mis-aimed one at that. Even if the media decides to loudly announce it the common man won't care about a new thing that can be made from CO2. And such propaganda aimed at nerds, makers, and the informed would be pointless as well. Most of us already have set feelings about global warming and already know how big the atmosphere is.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Diamonds plus o2 - Not telling though
"products like new and sustainable building materials; low-emission transportation fuels; and alternative chemical products that can be used to make everything from clothing and running shoes, to safer, stronger automobiles and breakthrough medicines."
Hemp sequesters more CO2 than almost all other plants at 22 tons per Hectare.
From it you can make
Building Materials
Diesel fuel
Cooking oil
Clothing
Shoes
Paper
The list goes on!
From some select strains of the plant you can make lots of different medicines.
Now that I have provided the answer to your question, I request that you donate the award to the repeal of these stupid drug laws.
As if I would submit an idea to them. I'd patent it and make a lot more money than any prize through them.
VW has a script that converts CO2 to anything you want while you are in testing mode. Does that count?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
"A German chemical company, BASF, and a US company, Novomer, are capturing CO2 from power plants or other waste sources, using novel catalysts to make polypropylene carbonate. This plastic can be used for coatings, adhesives, foams and packaging and can replace other plastics in these applications that are currently made from oil. Both companies are moving towards commercial processes. Bayer, another large German chemical company, is also advancing a process to make polyurethane foams using carbon dioxide."
"A more brute force approach is that taken by the Solar Jet programme in Switzerland, led by Dr Aldo Steinfeld of ETH-Zurich collaborating with Shell. They designed a clever reactor that generates very high temperatures from solar energy to break down carbon dioxide and water, converting them to hydrogen and carbon monoxide. From this mixture they can make kerosene for jet fuel using well-known chemical processes. This is still at an early stage – so far they have made one litre of fuel – but sometimes these high temperature processes are more straightforward to scale up than catalyst-based approaches."
- http://www.theguardian.com/sus...
I would have thought that finding a way capture CO2 emissions and convert to liquid fuel would have been the ideal option if you can do it with some, not insane amount, of energy. Solar would be ideally suited to this as it doesn't matter that much if the power levels vary during the day and the fuel essentially acts as your energy storage.
It doesn't solve carbon capture and storage but it would replace burning fossil fuels whose carbon is still stuck in the ground. I believe Solar Jet is looking at something like this now.
A car dropping Lego bricks from its exhaust.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Turn carbon to diamonds for the screens of iDevices, for Tesla windshields, for hyperdrive exhaust nozzles, for polychromicanderlids... For your girlfriend, for the soles of your shoes, for the poor and disenfranchised, for data storage. Diamond is a controlled substance currently and it would be beneficial to the economy and to industry to have an unlimited supply.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Yep, that's the real problem right there!
My invention just transforms the carbon into diamonds, nothing useful like running shoes.
As if carbon is some sort of terrible poison that we need to eradicate from the planet. Fucking idiots.
There is no such thing as 'catastrophic man-made global warming'.
www.climatedepot.com
www.wattsupwiththat.com
I planted a tree. Where's my money?
OK, all those that want to eliminate all CO2 from the atmosphere, raise your hands...
Everyone that raised their hands wants to kill all life on the planet. CO2 is plant food. Without it, all plants will die. Soon after, all other life will then die.
So many people with ideas and technologies in mind. That is the reason for the competition, to get good techs to emerge and be proven.
We're almost at the lowest point in the history of Earth already. Plants start dying when it drops below 300 ppm. The single dumbest thing we could be doing right now is trying to reduce CO2 emissions.
PS. It has nothing to do with "global warming". Data from the Vostok core clearly suggests that what follows sharp increases in CO2 in the atmosphere are always invariably "Ice Age" periods. Don't trust the globowarmthinkerists, they're idiots who can't tell their asses from a hole in the ground.