Scientists Develop Technology That Burns Natural Gas With No CO2 Emissions (scienceblog.com)

New submitter Ben Sullivan writes: Researchers and engineers in Vienna have developed a way to burn natural gas without releasing CO2 into the air through a combustion method called chemical looping combustion (CLC). In this process, CO2 can be isolated during combustion without having to use any additional energy, which means it can then go on to be stored. The method had already been applied successfully in a test environment, and has now been upscaled to allow use in up to a 10 MW facility. ScienceBlog.com reports: "A granulate made of metal oxide circulates between the two chambers and is responsible for transporting oxygen from air to fuel: 'We pump air through one chamber, where the particles take up oxygen. They then move on to the second chamber, which has natural gas flowing through it. Here is where the oxygen is released, and then where flameless combustion takes place, producing CO2 and water vapor,' explains Stefan Penthor from the Institute of Chemical Engineering at TU Wien. The separation into two chambers means there are two separate flue gas streams to deal with too: air with a reduced concentration of oxygen is discharged from one chamber, water vapor and CO2 from the other. The water vapor can be separated quite easily, leaving almost pure CO2, which can be stored or used in other technical applications."

Comments

Re:Hmmmmmmm

[drinkypoo]

Only problem is that you need an airtight greenhouse, complete with airlocks. Compared to modern greenhouses made out of plastic, it is unlikely to be economical.

No, no you do not. I don't know who told you that, but they were full of shit, and I cannot understand why you are repeating it. There are people all over the place doing CO2 enrichment without airtight grow spaces, and it works. The down side is that humans shouldn't be in the room while it is active. Elevated CO2 levels affect mood and health. They are actively bad for you.

The thing is, we actually don't have a problem growing enough food. Modern farming is already more than efficient enough. What we need is to make it more sustainable.

This part is true. There's more than enough food for everyone to eat. The problem isn't there being enough food. The problem is having the will to feed them.

Re:Problem is the amount of farmland you'd need.

[Rei]

Assuming that your plan is to grow greenhouse biomass to burn for power. Which would be a pretty weird plan.

CO2 has plenty of uses (a big one is in enhanced oil recovery), but yes, the amount produced in generating baseload power is far more than industry needs. That said, the objective is not to have CO2-intensive power as baseload - only peaking. With an ideal generation infrastructure (solar + wind, HVDC links connecting different regions), the amount of CO2 generated drops by 1-2 orders of magnitude. Which puts it more in the range of industrial needs.