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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 ?
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
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.
Could be dependent on factors different on Mars like ubiquitous perchlorates just lying around in bulk.
--- Mercutio was right.
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 ]
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
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
I can turn caffeine into code, but CO2 to Mt Dew ingredients? That's black magic...
Already given 30 posts above yours.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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.
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.
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