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Carbon Dioxide From the Air Converted Into Methanol (gizmag.com)
Zothecula writes: The danger posed by rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide has seen many schemes proposed to remove a proportion it from the air. Rather than simply capture this greenhouse gas and bury it in the ground, though, many experiments have managed to transform CO2 into useful things like carbon nanofibers or even fuels, such as diesel. Unfortunately, the over-arching problem with many of these conversions is the particularly high operating temperatures that require counterproductive amounts of energy to produce relatively low yields of fuel. Now researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) claim to have devised a way to take CO2 directly from the air and convert it into methanol using much lower temperatures and in a correspondingly simpler way.
I see no mention of the energy put into the process vs the methanol output. Unless they are close, this would make no sense.
What about not putting it there in the first place? It takes far more energy to extract the CO2 from the atmosphere than to build an energy chain that doesn't burn fossil sources. And if you really are keen on removing CO2, then just stop deforestation in south america.
timothy are you okay? Post if you are okay.
how about growing and developing trees & plants that capture co2 more efficiently and can grow in places where there weren't any? why is there not much attention to this method? too easy? less news worthy? less grants?
1: Install intake funnels over party caucuses, presidential debates etc etc. 2: Intake hot air > lower temperature > less global warming 3: Intake CO2 > methanol > less fossil fuel burning 4: PROFIT!
Just take their campaign cash from them, it will be easier, more efficient and might actually help the political process....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The process to convert CO2 into long-chain hydrocarbons has been in use since the 1930s. It's not inefficient because it requires high heat. On the contrary, it produces excess heat, and must be actively cooled with water flowing through an internal heat-exchanger. The inefficiency lies in the need to create-and supply hydrogen, which requires some process such as electrolysis of water. Oh, and it does require high pressure, which costs energy. Oh and it does take energy to raise the concentration of CO2 to sufficient levels from the atmosphere while filtering out the nitrogen and oxygen. So it mostly makes more sense to start with a product like wood-gas, coal-gas or natural-gas, and then turn that into diesel. Not as interesting as pulling it from the air, but it does give you a carbon-neutral source of portable fuel, when you use plant material. It also ends up being similar to that whole "anything into oil" idea that Scientific American used to be crazy about, but turned out not to be price-competetive, and the smell of rotting turkey guys upset the neighbors.
Unless user Zothecula is actually Colin Jeffery, the author of the article, then it is disgracefully misleading to represent the content of the blurb as something that "Zothecula writes". Those words were instead lifted directly from the Jeffery's article, and no indication was made that this was done. Where I teach, anyone who shows this little regard for proper attribution gets a failing grade for plagiarism, and a second offense gets you expelled. It's depressing that a for-profit journalistic outlet could be so indifferent to plagiarism. If the article must be quoted in the blurb, then fucking quote it. You have a tag for that, and you also have the power to use quotation marks.
If some one could invent a cocktail machine, powered by wind and solar, that could take in atmospheric CO2 and spit out a daiquiri (no, wait, a Hurricane), how long would it take to get everyone behind the solution to global warming?
Do I have to come up with all the great ideas around here? Come on, let's get some people on this, stat!
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
The Sabatier reaction is being used to convert exhaled CO2 and hydrogen produced by electrolytic decomposition of water into methane and water on the ISS. It is a means to produce fuel on the surface of Mars (copious amounts of CO2 and water ice, and solar power to run the cycle).
The fact that it is a net energy sink doesn't matter here - it saves having to haul a whole lot of fuel to Mars.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
First I want to be clear - wind is a great supplemental power source in some areas. Having said that ...
> they are spread around national grids so the wind is always blowing on some somewhere.
It would be nice if any of those three things were true. In fact, weather systems are generally larger than most countries. Here's the current weather map for a very large country, the United States:
http://sirocco.accuweather.com...
You'll notice there's very little weather in the US today. Next week, a storm system may cover most of the population of the US.
Regarding "national electric grid" - you may recall a few years ago a blackout left the northeast without power for several days, while the nine other power regional grids including had plenty of power. The California grid had a chronic power shortage for decades, while the neighboring grid for Texas was fine. There are 10 regional power grids in the US. There's no such thing as "the national grid", and can't without save a complete redesign of the technology and replacing billions in infrastructure.
Lastly, wind farms are NOT spread evenly around the country. They are located in specific areas where it makes sense to have them. You need steady, predictable wind (the cube power law means high winds destroy them), near population centers, but with cheap real estate. The last two requirements are of course contradictory, so a limited number of locations fit all of the criteria.
In those places where it DOES make sense, wind power allows producers to reduce fuel usage on the natural gas generators whenever the wind happens to be right, and that's a good thing.
Everyone loves those.
We could also start a massive nuclear war, which would have the benefits of greatly reducing the population and offsetting global warming with nuclear winter. It's a win-win.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Crops turn CO2 into things like grain and fruit. Some crops can be grazed, such as spring onions, chives, and other herbs, some only take three months or so to mature. They all do the same thing: lock carbon into a stable and USABLE and USEFUL form.
And it costs fuck-all except a little time and patience.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
But the low-temperature catalyst-driven system has a MUCH BETTER application: fuel generation in places where you can't grow trees, like, say, Mars.
Would it also work within Uranus? I was going to ask whatever a liquid or gas source was preferred but it seems like whatever one prefer or use methanol or methane Uranus would contain them both in all forms from solids to gas. Hot gases seem to be leaking from Uranus.
I'll wait until they sell a machine that can turn air into ethanol, thanks.
Well, I've recently developed a machine to convert atmospheric CO2 into various simple organic molecules known as "sugars", which have the significant advantage over methanol of being relatively nontoxic. My design has been successfully tested for some time and it only requires sunlight, water and a few miscellaneous other inexpensive materials. And best of all, my machine is self-replicating!
You're missing the main point about wind power, the fundamental law of physics that controls everything with wind power. The power of wind is the speed CUBED. Not squared, but CUBED.
If a 10 mph wind has 1,000 units of energy, a 20 mph wind has 8,000, and 40 mph has 64,000. That's right, 10 mph wind has less than 1.5% as much power as 40 mph. At 10 mph, it might, maybe have just enough power to overcome bearing friction, but there's no power left to harvest as electricity. You -might- see it turning, but it's freewheeling, there's no power generation occurring.
Use lighter components that spin more easily, you say? If 10 mph is 1,000 units, the cube power law means 60 mph imparts 216,000 units of force to that lightweight structure, destroying it.
The cube power law is a law of physics, it can't be repealed by your favorite politician, and it mercilessly ensures that wind power comes only when nature chooses, in the amount that nature chooses.
Dirty coal is more expensive than natural gas. Clean coal will be even more expensive and not at all competitive with natural gas. What is killing the coal industry is simple free market economics. Not EPA, not tree hugging enviro nazis, not government waging war on coal.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact