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NASA Is Offerring $1 Million To Turn CO2 Into Sugar (space.com)
NASA is challenging people in the United States to come up with an efficient method to convert carbon dioxide into glucose, a simple sugar. The atmosphere of Mars consists predominantly of CO2 (95%), and glucose is a great fuel for microbe-milking "bioreactors" that could manufacture a variety of items for future settlers of the Red Planet, NASA officials said. Space.com reports: The new competition consists of two phases. During Phase 1, applicants submit a detailed description of their CO2-to-glucose conversion system. Interested parties must register by Jan. 24, 2019 and submit their proposals by Feb. 28, 2019. In April, NASA will announce the selection of up to five finalists from this initial crop, each of whom will receive $50,000. Phase 2 will involve the construction and demonstration of a conversion system. Winning this round is worth $750,000, bringing the competition's total purse to $1 million (assuming five finalists are indeed selected from Phase 1). You don't have to win, or even participate in, Phase 1 to compete in Phase 2. The challenge is open to citizens and permanent residents of the United States; foreign nationals can compete if they're part of a U.S.-based team. To register or learn more, go to the CO2 Conversion Challenge website.
To turn CO2 into beer. And pay $1 Billion.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Where do I claim my prize ?
trees?
.. and when the microbes thrive and the CO2 declines... the temperature will go down as well due to loss of a greenhouse gas. Then mars will be too cold. Why screw one planet when you can screw more?
Glucose has Carbon Hydrogen and Oxygen.
For every 6 CO2 molecules and Water molecules you put in, you get 1x glucose molecule, and 1x O2 molecule.
That's at 100% efficiency.
Water and CO2 are the two lowest energy states for those atoms, so it takes a lot of energy too.
With unlimited solar, anything's possible, but it will be interesting to watch.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
If a very efficient method for this was found, it would be worth so much more on Earth. The sugar could be used as a relatively high-density, stable, easy-to-transport energy storage - and if not viable directly, then for could be used for example through fermentation to alcohol as well (though I don't know how efficient that process is).
If a chemical process works on Mars it will almost certainly work here. It's also possible that this is Mars-focused to avoid the inevitable political wrangling if it was directly aimed at climate change.
Rational thought is the only true freedom
The only way something like this works is if there's a good source of Treatable water.
If you have to run it thru a desalination plant, that likely includes perchlorates, it's going to be even that much harder.
A rocky mountain stream might be easily usable; ice dissolved into rock formations, or even covered with mars soil, is another problem.
It's true that vacuum stills would work pretty well, so it's not impossible, just Almost impossible. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
remember kid, don't do drugs.
passphrase === 'patriots'
Newsflash, 09-Sep-2021: In a major announcement today, McDonald's has perfected the process by which to convert CO2 into sugar. They are now scrubbing the CO2 out of the air in their restaurants and, using the new process, producing sugar which is going directly into milk shake production. Oh, and NASA may use this system on Mars.
*** Don't be dull.***
Pick a plant. They all convert light and CO2 to sugar. In terms of efficiency it depends on what is being measured. If it is the object's size vs their output over time, that it one way to look at efficiency. If it is a huge forest of maple trees, a field of sugar cane, or beet plants, they don't need much maintenance. Entire forests exist without any human effort, electricity, chemical additive, etc.
Anyway, the research seems kinda pointless after NASA just announced Terra-forming Mars won't be possible for many reasons. I will let NASA explain why...
https://www.nasa.gov/press-rel...
Mars just happens to look like an Earth desert in pictures. It doesn't mean it just needs oxygen and water and then go.
Sugar cane is the answer, or sugar beets, or wheat and corn and a bit of crushing and salavia.
Eating other animals has been common for 2 billion years or so. Seems pretty damned natural to me.
There's cost implications too. On earth it might not be the cheapest way to farm sugar, even if it is more efficient. Sugar beet, cane etc grow just fine for example. On Mars it would be essential to do it as a chemical process as the crops won't grow there.
Since making alcohol is pretty much get a bunch of sugar, dissolve it in water, and then get yeast to convert it for you.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Brown sugar IS cane sugar you idiot.
atmosphere of Mars consists predominantly of CO2 (95%)
If Mars' atmosphere is 95% CO2, and according to the scientific consensus CO2 is so powerful a molecule that 1 out of 2500 can raise the Earth's temperature by anywhere from 1 to 5 degrees C, how the hell is it that Mars is not roasting?
I am so lost in all this now, one minute I think I understand then someone comes and screws up the information I had.
Global warming solved!
Not only do we get rid of the extra CO2, we finally get the Big Rock Candy Mountain that I've always dreamed about!
Could be dependent on factors different on Mars like ubiquitous perchlorates just lying around in bulk.
--- Mercutio was right.
Great, instead of dying intoxicated, we'll die of diabetes.
If a chemical process works on Mars it will almost certainly work here. It's also possible that this is Mars-focused to avoid the inevitable political wrangling if it was directly aimed at climate change.
Dang straight. We need to teach CO2 not to greenhouse, not sequester it!
And which boiler room and basket of cryptocurrencies will they use to pay for it?
What good will it do them?
basically yes, that's the plan.
this NASA project is about "sciencing the shit out of" all the tiny details that go behind the general word "tree":
- how to deal growinv something in a soil that is mostly perchlorate (not exactly a rich soil)?
- how to deal with an atmospheric pressure that is a tiny fraction of earth's?
- how to deal with sun's output which is a lot less (in terms of useful light) but higher (in term of radiations)
- and which exact plant are you going to use as "tree" ? (probably some cyanobacteriae)
it's the detailled answers to these questions that is going to cost this budget
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Hey, why don't you go tell the lions, and if you make it crocodiles also, that they need to stop eating animals
Mars colonization is many, many years away. Since we humans here on earth are belching out CO2 like it's going out of style, why don't we start doing some of that here? Let's make earth more inhabitable.
That was one of my main interrogations with The Martian: would growing potatoes be the best way to avoid starvation on Mars, or is there a way to bypass the potato phase?
" The challenge is open to citizens and permanent residents of the United States; foreign nationals can compete if they're part of a U.S.-based team."
Well then, I'll just go burn the blueprints to my SugaFyer9000.
I not sharing my retirement fund with some flag waving intern.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
This article from the Economic Times of India explains the difference.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/definition/gur
I love this explanation because it is reminiscent of so much that is India.
They abandoned their CFD bugfix challenge because too many applied. That doesn't give me confidence in their crowdsourcing ability.
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)
I do also question why the GP thinks animals produce milk as well.
Turn something the US has far too much of, but doesn't git two hoots about into something they're all addicted to, but could quite honestly do without?
Still, turning CO2 into anything other than CO2 is a useful endeavour. Shame you don't let foreigners in to the competition, after all you're exporting all your CO2 to us without our consent - maybe someone's already turning your CO2 into a 'beautiful wall'?
To turn CO2 into beer. And pay $1 Billion.
Easy, plant some barley and hops, these will grow absorbing CO2 and then use these to make beer. Can I have my $1 billion please?
Obviously plants and blue-green algae turn co2 into sugar. Just not very quickly.
We can extract, modify and synthesize DNA, so we can modify cyanobacteria to be faster, more efficient, rapidly multiplying sugar producers.
Then it's just a matter of not reading A For Andromeda.
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)
Where is my million dollars?
I offer 1 trillion USD for a method to cheaply turn Co2 into diamonds, or gold
Up here in the midwest, beets grow well.
Of course NASA might ne able to grow sugar cane om its properies in Forida
... dreams are made of these CO2.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Are sharks natural? Alligators? Dinosaurs? Bears? Whales? Pretty much eating other things is about as natural as you get, and has been going on for a hell of a long time. How can you claim that eating other things isn't natural when the rest of the animal kingdom does it?
Like it or not, we are evolved to be omnivores, and that sure as hell included eating other animals .. that's what it means to be an omnivore. Humans are just smarter animals, and don't try to pretend otherwise.
Maybe not from an evolutionary perspective, but humans have been really good at finding food sources. But people have been domesticating cows for literally thousands of years .. the modern cow would not exist if it hadn't been kept around and taken care of by us.
When people reach Mars, they won't have the luxury of planting sugar cane, and their waste CO2 is going to have to be turned into something or filtered out of the air, because they won't be able to carry everything they'll need.
This is just saying that if we are going to have an inevitable waste product of simply breathing, we're going to need to learn to use it. When you're in a sealed environment with no new inputs, you need to work with what you have.
Coca-Cola is water + sugar + co2 + another additives.
Shit.
That does make sense.
It's kind like the parallel argument, "To prevent more handgun violence, we need more handguns," when in fact it's, "The gun industry wants to broaden its consumer base."
Well done.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Yes, meat and milk and any other goddam source that supports survival.
Crap, humans even eat snails **shudder**.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I thought sugars were bad. No pop in schools. No candy bars in the vending machine. No 32oz Coke in NYC. Lo-carb diets galore.
Isn't this creating an obesity crisis for our Mars Colonists?
A lot of the comments here require water as does the current method of synthetic photosynthesis begin developed, and since water isn't compressible it makes it very difficult to transport in quantity to mars (maybe as base elements but still not efficient to use your water supply to produce power on a planet with no water supply).
You could first convert the CO2 to CO pulse dielectric barrier discharge plasma thereby producing oxygen as a byproduct and then tungsten to at as the catalyst to cause the C0 to combine with hydrogen, though to ensure that you don't end up with formic acid you would need mix heavy to hydrogen side.
You could also go the organic route and use a photosynthetic bacteria that produces glucose as a byproduct and uses very little water in the process, but again you are dependent on water.
David S
This would be a impotent step in solving our climate change issues from excess CO2. If we were able to convert the excess CO2 in our air to sugar it would help to remove it and provide a fuel that our civilization could use.
If we put the money wasted on space exploration for the purpose of settling other worlds towards reducing our own population, we'd be better off as a species.
so nasa decides contest only open to Trump citizens
I'd be surprised if a pure chemistry solution to this problem presents itself.
I'd bet good money that they end up doing this with a genetically-modified organism that can be easily cultured without having to set up a whole hydroponic farm or something. Algae seems like a good bet for the chassis; it's already producing sugars from CO2, and algae culture is a reasonably cheap and simple thing to do in a small space. I'd further guess that such a rig would need to supplement natural sunlight with some artificial lighting, and someone would have to develop an efficient process to detoxify Martian soil (or a strain of algae that could survive it), but those seem like comparatively easy problems to solve.
Ever tried them? They're actually tasty if they're prepared properly ... and that is true of many things people might go "eww" about.
As a former vegetarian, I've decided I'm going to be pretty open and fearless in terms of tasting new things. If you are going to eat meat, you should know what it is, where it comes from, and try to use all of it. Not all offal tastes awful, some of it tastes wonderful.
Throughout history humanity seldom has had the luxury of simply discarding the icky bits, and people have learned how to make them taste good. And some of the bits which people turn up their noses at can be turned into some damned awesome food in the hands of someone who knows how to work with it.
Hell, lobster used to be a poor man's food because nobody wanted it and it was considered garbage. Now look at the price of it. Same is true for brisket, it's tough until you know how to cook it. Oxtail, pigsfeet ... hell, even natural sausage casings are pig intestines.
Much of the beloved food around the world comes from using everything available to you, and using all of it, because people had no choice.
You think your hotdogs are the choice meats? I got some bad news for you.
Oh, great. We'll be trading global warming for more obesity.
so soon we'll hear all about how the Evil Government is Subsidizing with Tax Dollars this CO2 to sugar because Big Sugar is in cahoots with the Medical Industrial Complex to give Minorities Diabetes!
But only when Those Other Guys are in power!
(soon to be in play in a game of 'Iluminati' near you!)
Plants do this naturally, why come up with a synthetic way to do it.
Why is NASA in the CO_2 business? Does it plan to run spaceships on sugar? Oh wait, aeronautics. Maybe it will run airplanes on sugar?
The problem with the process mentioned by most people whether it be an organic method like a plant of photosynthesizing bacteria is that some water, even a small mount is needed. Even the most recent advances in Chicago that are creating a synthetic version of photosynthesis are using water. Since water isn't abundant on Mars or compressible it wouldn't be smart to use the water supply as an energy source (you could bring compressed hydrogen and oxygen stores specifically for energy production).
An alternative method would be to use a pulse dielectric barrier discharge plasma with N2 as the carrier gas to peel an oxygen off to create carbon monoxide (and add oxygen to your supplies). Then using tungsten as a catalyst and a heavy hydrogen mix (to ensure you don't end up with formic acid) you could use the Carbon Monoxide to create glucose. You would need a supply of N2 and Hydrogen both of which would probably be in the supplies list already.
The excess nitrogen and water would be useful to the biosphere of the colony to aid in plant growth.
Just a thought
Make the whole fossil fuel issue a closed loop
(at least until the existing autos can be replaced without bankrupting us all.)
I can turn caffeine into code, but CO2 to Mt Dew ingredients? That's black magic...
Grow any plant that fruits...the end. I thought NASA was smart.
The atmosphere on Mars has 23 times as much CO2 per cubic meter as Earth's atmosphere.
Before shuddering I really suggest you give it a try. A lovely garlic and butter escagot is a beautiful starter for any meal.
The Gibbs free energy defines the energy state of a molecule. Think of it as the potential eneregy of a molecule on a ladder. The higher the Gibbs free energy of a molecule, the more potential energy it has, so the more energy you can extract from it in chemical reactions. On the other hand, if it's low, then you actually have to put energy into it to change its chemical formulation.
To form one glucose requires:
The H2 and O2 drop out. So you end up with 6*(-394.39 KJ/mol) => -910.56 KJ/mol, which results in a deficit of 1455.78 KJ/mole. That is, the complete chemical reaction is:
For every mole of glucose you make from CO2, you must add at least 1455.78 KJ of energy to make the reaction happen. A mole of glucose is about 180 grams, so this works out to a little over 8 MJ per kg (this is less than its its energy density of 15.5 MJ/kg because we assumed the hydrogen gas was free - on Earth you'd have to use energy to break apart water to create hydrogen).
That's a huge amount of energy. The 85 kWh battery pack in most Tesla S cars is only 306 MJ. So to create 1 kg of glucose from CO2 requires at least as much energy as moving 2500 kg car 10 km. The efficiency of your process is probably going to be 50% at best, so realistically you can double the energy needed. And if you don't have H2 available and need to create it, then it's going to take even more energy (since H2 sits very high on the ladder, it likes to react and form other chemical compounds, meaning you have to put energy in to release the H2).
The only real hope is using some other molecule with a high Gibbs free energy as your hydrogen source. That molecule then gives up some of its Gibbs free energy while releasing hydrogen (what's done in methanol-powered fuel cells). Unfortunately, the most common high-energy hydrogen source is hydrocarbons - petroleum, alcohol, etc. They have a similar ratio of carbon and hydrogen as glucose, so trying to extract hydrogen from them will result in your process using no CO2 - it'll get the requisite carbon from the hydrocarbon instead.
The lone exception is methane - CH4. It contains 4x as much hydrogen as carbon, vs 2x for most hydrocarbons. So it could conceivably be used to create glucose while absorbing CO2. In fact its Gibbs free energy is -50.8 KJ/mol. Resulting in a possible chemical reaction of:
It's still a huge amount of energy, but less (making 1 kg of glucose would require only as much energy as pushing your 2500 kg car 3 km). Unfortunately, I suspect the point of this project is the potential to terraform Mars by converting its atmospheric CO2 into something else, while releasing oxygen in the process. Our methane equation uses half the CO2 as the previous equation, so in terms of scrubbing CO2 it's only 67% more effective per MJ. And it doesn't release any O2 so would be useless for terraforming.
The post was in response to a gratuitous trump joke that had no business in a serious discussion. Whoever missed it down is a child and should be banned.
If you are going to eat meat, you should know ...
how to chew.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I saw it on a menu once ... ONCE!
The restaurant was not full service.
No barf bags.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Why would you barf? It has a flavour mixed between seafood and beef with a strong taste of garlic, and a texture tougher than fish. I've put a lot of things in my mouth, some of them truly horrid (deep fried bat nearly made me barf) and this is IMO one of the more plainer westernish foods out there in terms of flavour and texture.
You should take a trip to France, you'll see it on the menu every time you read the menu (and TBH it's a shitload better than a lot of French food).
I would barf for the same reason I get air/sea sick.
Not exactly, but maybe.
Who knows?
Certainly not me because I ain't gonna try that shit.
Let Mikey try it. He'll eat anything.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Before shuddering I really suggest you give it a try. A lovely garlic and butter escagot is a beautiful starter for any meal.
Said the Klingon.
As if we don't have enough overstimulated glucose addicts already.
-- This SIG is not SAUER
Sweet!
That's the excess O2, left over after the other ones are used up.
That's a technical way to say this will liberate oxygen.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
:)
They don't need Oxygen to burn, and work really well as rocket fuel, mixed with aluminum and epoxy.
Which almost everything we send up there is made of...
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
If you put that bullshit on the table in front of me, I'll bitch slap the fuck outta your faggotty face with the plate they came on, frenchie.
Double the final consonant of the verb stem only when the final syllable is short and stressed. (Exception: verbs ending in -l in British English) src </peeve>