
News flash from 25 years in the future...
Global problems as all the trees are dying because there is no CO2 in the atmosphere since its all been converted to power cars...
Electronics giant Panasonic is showing off its ambitious attempt to tackle global warming – with a plant-like machine that uses light to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere. The Japanese biz's Artificial Photosynthesis System, which turns the greenhouse gas into organic material, differs from other attempts to mimic the behaviour of …
More likely to produce methanol than ethanol at a guess.
My reasoning is that it current mainly produces formic acid. In humans formic acid is produced from the chain:
methanol -> formaldehyde -> formic acid
The reactions being triggered by the enzymes alcohol dehydrogenase and aldehyde dehydrogenase respectively.
The chain for ethanol (non-tramp booze) is:
ethanol -> acetaldehyde -> acetic acid.
So from only my hazy memories of how hangovers work and why tramps go blind I deduce that it is more likely to produce meths than single malts.
Of course meths can run cars. There's a campaign for it somewhere. It's not a top tipple though.
" you shouldn't use E-15 (gasoline with 15% ethanol) and car makers are saying if you do it will void your warranty"
Going out on a limb here, but perhaps better advice is to restrict yourself to the fuels your engine is engineered to work with. The same reason that you should not use petroleum in a car designed for diesel. Brazil use 85% ethanol blends.
No CO2 from cars is good though surely? What's the greenhouse effect of drinking booze? Beery-farts smell like the end of the world to me.
Also, I think the efficiency might need improving a touch to make this a cheap fuel for cars.
And farts for that matter.
Net removal zero is far better than adding to the total which is what things like digging up coal or fracking do, natural processes remove the stuff eventually. Anyway I'm glad to see the Register publishing something that mentions climate change that isn't complete bollocks.
What I cunningly did, was put a glass container out into daylight. It soaked up CO2 and after a few days I had a lovely green biological material in the container. One that could be turned into foodstuff or with further processing alchohol.
Should I patent this unique process?
...a wind turbine should be able to exceed 0.2% efficiency.
Could that be harnessed via this gizmo to produce methanol/ethanol/something?
Because then the turbine could be attached to a storage device and a generator of some description (or even pump the product to a different facility).
Thus wind over-production (when/if that ever happens) can be chemically stored in a means we are already familiar with.
Why do I have a nasty feeling the loses will be huge?
http://www.itm-power.com/energy-storage/
Electricity from unreliable renewables can be stored as hydrogen. There are now hydrogen filling stations in California, and vehicles available for lease. There are also hydrogen powered vehicles under test in the UK in non-road situations (again, see the website).
Conversion efficiency isn't massively important if you're harnessing a "free resource" such as wind, as long as the you're covering the cost of the infrastructure.
*(I have no connection to ITM Power)
This is apparently nothing new. Once upon a time there was no fungal decay, so dead trees just lay around locking up carbon, and eventually turning into coal. The result was a much higher proportion of oxygen in the atmosphere, which allowed things like six-foot dragonflies to exist. This sounds very nice, but I suspect the four-foot cockroach and the two-foot ant would be a concern.
that "Once upon a time" was before 1.5 billion years ago, when fungi developed .. trees have been around for about 400 million years .. and currently lock up about 80% of the above ground Carbon
The last plant family to evolve .. interestingly enough .. were grasses about 40 million years ago .. able to deal with the lower and decreasing CO2 levels below 1000ppm starting 60 million years ago .. between 250 million years ago and 60 million years ago .. CO2 levels swung between 1000ppm and 2500ppm
over the last 600 million years there was about a 50 million year period when oxygen levels were as high as 25-28% .. 100s of millions of years that it was below 15% .. today it is about 21% ..
the largest dragon fly species had a 30 inch wingspan .. Late Permian . about 280-260 million years ago when both O2 and CO2 levels were similar to today's .. more likely ... those large insects had no predators like birds, allowing the large sizes ..
"...which allowed things like six-foot dragonflies to exist. This sounds very nice, but I suspect the four-foot cockroach and the two-foot ant would be a concern."
Dragonflies generally do have six feet. Personally I'd prefer cockroaches with only four feet, they'd be a bit slower and therefore easier to stomp on. An ant with two feet would have serious trouble carrying twenty times its own body weight and this could lead to problems with numerous ecosystems which rely on ant's garbage disposal work.
>Would that lead to excess O2 in the atmosphere?!?!
No, it wouldn't.
The article suggests these systems will be placed next to conventional power plants, which take oxygen from the air and combine it with carbon to produce CO2. The oxygen released from the CO2 by Panasonic's machine is only that which was combined with carbon by the conventional power station.
Conversely, there was a local brewery which kept having environmental officers turning up and complaining that the brewing process released CO2... until someone explained to them very slowly that the the CO2 being released had only recently been absorbed from the atmosphere by the barley when it was growing- it was merely being cycled. (Obviously the brewery used fossil fuels too; gas to heat the liquor and diesel to distribute the end product)
(Apologies for not being arsed to format sub-script for the 2 in CO2)
Re energy storage - the single best store of energy we have available is hydrocarbons. Energy Density higher than H2 and MUCH higher than batteries, it's relatively easy and safe to reansport, ans best of all, we already have all our equipment and infrastructure designed to use it so no need for massive global retooling.
Ideally all renewable power sources in out-of-the-way places that can't practically be hooked to the grid should simply convert water + CO2 into petrol*.
Why get 0.2% efficiency when you can combine solar (approx 20% efficient) and electricity-to-petrol (which surely is more than 1% efficient)?
* I believe some German researchers (Fraunhofer?) already have some working prototypes.
In principle these CO2s-to-hydrocarbon technologies could run on anything, although running them on fossil fuels would obviously be stupid.
For example, hydro, wind and geothermal power generators run all the time. You can use a technology like this to effectively store the excess energy produced when there's little demand (e.g. at 3am). Heck, you could even use nuke plants, although that seems somewhat perverse.
Clearly, there's some assembly required here. But if someone can produce a CO2 sequestration unit that runs on electricity, then it might just be a case of plugging it in to the mains somewhere..
quote: "In principle these CO2s-to-hydrocarbon technologies could run on anything, although running them on fossil fuels would obviously be stupid."
I disagree; running them on fossile fuels will initially overshadow the CO2 absorbtion with CO2 production from the fuel, however it will also use up the fossil fuels quicker. The quicker we run out of fossil fuel, the quicker we have to come up with a viable alternative.
You just need to balance your personal belief on the viability of AGW based Carbongeddon versus the utility of forcing the world off fossil fuels, because we've used them all up so nobody has a choice in the matter ;)
quote: "But if someone can produce a CO2 sequestration unit that runs on electricity, then it might just be a case of plugging it in to the mains somewhere.."
Err... if you want the end result of carbon sequestration then that one is a bit silly, given in most countries a majority of the grid is run on fossil fuels. Much easier to run it off cheap 10% efficient photovoltaic panels, surely? ;)
quote: "Conversely, there was a local brewery which kept having environmental officers turning up and complaining that the brewing process released CO2... until someone explained to them very slowly that the the CO2 being released had only recently been absorbed from the atmosphere by the barley when it was growing- it was merely being cycled."
This brings up one dichotomy I've often had cognitive dissonance over; in the brewery example mentioned above, the CO2 production is fine because it is from a plant source, and therefore previously sequestrated by the plant, from the atmosphere. This is the Carbon cycle, and therefore perfectly acceptable.
However fossil fuels are also initially a plant source, and therefore also initially sequestrated from the atmosphere. I don't think I've ever heard of them referred to as part of the Carbon cycle though. Are they not just part of a geological-timescale (temporally displaced?) Carbon cycle?
Atmosphere -> plant -> fossil fuel -> atmosphere does not look all that different from atmosphere -> plant -> brewery -> atmosphere, except in how long it takes to get back in the air. Everyone I've mentioned this to tends to skirt the issue though... are they also experiencing the same cognitive dissonance?
Allow me to assuage your no doubt painful cognitive dissonance....
The OK-ness about atmosphere > plant > brewery > atmosphere is that on completion it will revert the CO2 levels to what they were before the barley was grown - ie a year ago.
The problem with releasing all the carbon in fossil fuels is that this will revert the atmosphere to the CO2 concentrations of the period before that carbon was taken up by the plants which made the fossil fuel. Since most coal, oil etc was laid down in the Devonian and Carboniferous periods, we're talking about reversion to atmospheric carbon levels of maybe 500 million years ago. Back then (I remember it well) the atmosphere was not terribly human-friendly.
NB I am not a scientist, or -ist of any other relevant discipline. Free free to bat bricks...
" from a plant source, and therefore previously sequestrated by the plant, from the atmosphere. This is the Carbon cycle, and therefore perfectly acceptable."
Due to the wonders of modern agriculture (tractors, harvesters, fertilizers etc), 1 calorie of food requires 10 calories of energy expenditure to produce. Presumably the barley used for the beer is no different. Still, if I had to choose between no global warming and beer, there's a clear winner!
@Blitheringeejit
I wasn't comparing the cycling CO2 in the brewery to fossil fuels- I was directly addressing the OP's concern that Panasonic's machine would lead to excess oxygen in the atmosphere, whilst comparing those concerns to that expressed by local EHOs about the CO2 released by fermentation in breweries. I acknowledged that breweries as a whole are not carbon neutral, but merely the fermentation stage.
Is this a passive system that operates without the use of any electrical components?
How much does it cost to produce one of these, and likewise what is its operating lifespan.
Could these not be just another "Hey we're saving the planet... but we aren't really" ploys?
By that last point what I mean is, do the benefits outweigh the cost. For instance if it took electricity to power these things, did it create more CO2 to create the electricity and send it to the device, than the device absorbs? Likewise if they only have an operating life of 10 years before they need replacing, did the CO2 released during the creation equate to a lower amount of CO2 than these things absorb over their lifetime, or more?
It's all well and good saying "This device absorbs CO2" but if it creates more in the process then it's just a worthless counterintuitive piece of scrap metal.
If the plan is to put these around power plants etc, would it not be just as easy to plant something which thrives in poor environments, with a high CO2 absorption rate and growth rate, which can be harvested as a good source of biofuel, such as switchgrass. Cheaper, and more effective.
The article mentions that the experiment is to mimic photosynthesis, and mentions "sunlight or artificial light", and also a catalyst. The sunlight is the source of the energy, not electricity- unless it is used to power artificial lights.
Obviously it will require energy to build the device.
It isn't clear from the Reg article what advantage this system has over, for example, growing algae in glass tubes in the desert, other than the energy density of the end product (if they succeed in making ethanol) and the lack of post processing required.
The main advantage I can see is that it's probably a lot cheaper to produce an off shore wind farm if you attach one of these with a storage tank attached and send a boat out every few days (or even attach a pipe) and pump it to shore occasionally, than having to process the algae.
Equally, this will (hopefully) produce a usable product directly rather than having to be reprocessed.
Actually, even if the device has every one of the drawbacks you cite, it could still be a net gain, as it could provide another channel for converting carbon from one of its most inaccessible forms, to a more accessible form.
With the passage of time, people will come to realise that carbon is a rather valuable commodity, and that burning any more than the minimum necessary amount is a tragic waste.
That's why I just cut sugarcane.
"Makes a million times more sense than "carbon capture and storage" which is the worst idea I've ever heard."
Sort of. The carbon will still exist in our ecosystem and presumably released again when we use the methanol for fuel. We've inadvertantly released more carbon from the earth than would normally happen, so it's worth trying to get some of it back in again, surely.
While there's oil in the ground, this will never see the light of day, too many vested interests have too much to lose....
Imagine they get this up to a marketable efficiency... you could cover a car or your house roof in a panel of these and have a steady trickle of ethanol, day in day out.
Based on my vehicle usage of 20 miles/day commute (or around 1.5 litres of diesel/chip fat mix - 16yr old Golf so not even the most efficient), after I've invested in an ethanol-ran vehicle, as long as I have enough panels to generate that 1.5 litres daily, I'll never need to visit a fuel station ever again except for 5 litres of lube oil every 6-10k miles.
Shell, BP and Haliburton shareholders lose out, but more importantly a major slice of taxation is lost.
That is why this will be stifled until a full road-usage charging infrastructure has been embedded to make up for that loss of tax revenue.
Ah, well here's the rub. These plants produce ethanol or diesel or some other combustible fuel. So, what exactly are you going to do with all that very pure flammable hydrocarbon you've produced? Well, you burn it of course.. and turn it back into CO2, water and energy.
Now, you'd hope that if you could produce fuel from CO2 sequestration, then there would be an reduction in demand for fossil fuels (for example, one barrel of diesel from CO2 means one less barrel out of the ground). But it isn't necessarily the case - increasing the supply of fuel could simply reduce the price and lead to greater demand, cancelling out the sequestration efforts completely.
I'm not saying that it shouldn't be done.. but often the law of unexpected consequences applies.
But surely if the price reduction/increased demand came about from the sequestration/conversion process, economic pressure would push more and more towards sequestration? Barring a total shift in the way oil is sucked out of the ground, it keeps getting more and more expensive to get at.
There will definitely be unexpected consequences, but if it becomes realistically possible to close the loop and turn our waste fuel products back into fuel with sunlight, then it could be a massive leap forward. Unfortunately this all sounds too good to be true to my ears, I'm still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
...increasing the supply of fuel could simply reduce the price and lead to greater demand, cancelling out the sequestration efforts completely.
In fact this is similar to what happened with home lighting. As the relative price of lighting has dropped, the use of household lighting has increased so that the overall price has stayed much the same.
I was wondering the same thing. But I guess if you somehow hooked it up to the CO2 output of Drax then you would get a lot of CO2 to play with and possibly a higher rate of sequestration. However, if you want a lot of *sunlight* to power it, then it is a different consideration. A nice sunny spot in Spain might be a better bet.
Harvest the sugar, ferment it to between 15 and 20% alcohol and distil, using the dried leaves and stalks to fuel the distillation process. And before some smartarse asks "what about the fuel used to drive the tractor ?", a farming friend of mine reckons that 10% of land would be needed to grow biodiesel to power agricultural machinery, compared to when 25% of agricultural land was needed to feed the horses.
Also when you use the ethanol as personal or machinery fuel, the C02 goes back into the atmosphere.
Trouble is, the world's population is getting bigger, and bio-fuels have lead to a rise in food prices in the past- putting up the price of beer, bread and bacon. Not good.
There is land that is currently not being used for agriculture- deserts, for example- and there have been experiments in using algae and sea water in the desert in glass tubes. Having your ingredients and products in a liquid or sludge form means they can be pumped around- no tractor required. There is also the prospect of genetically engineering (or breeding) organisms to produce the product you want.
exactly .. funnel the exhaust of fossil fuel plants to greenhouses .. mix with enough air to bring the CO2 level to something below 5000ppm .. and you get quite more efficient conversion into biomass than plants at the current 400ppm .. some Algae are very efficient at conversion at 5000ppm .. or grow other plants .. food .. all of which thrive quite well at 2000ppm CO2 levels
fossil fuel .. IE .. HYDROcarbons also release more H2O molecules than CO2 molecules when burned .. so you get humidity and warmth for the greenhouses in the bargain .. perhaps allowing them to work in places too cold for greenhouses normally year round
Plants are passé. You can't make a big "We're saving the world!" splash just by waving a tree at people, you have to be technological about it.
It's all a sop to green investment funds and politicians looking to shovel more subsidy at anything that looks even remotely environmentalist, and never mind the consequences. Or the costs. Or anything.
Much easier to handle it as an industrial process. If you have a box that you can fill with liquid semiconductor and later drain the organic sludge that can be turned into fuel, you can scale up to huge boxes and handle the process with tanker lorries and one or two drivers. Getting the equivalent biomass ouput from plants would require manual planting, possibly watering and digging up etc.
or it somehow works out very very cheap cos currently you could beat 0.2% into a cocked hat with solar panels and brute force methods of today. But if it does work out cheap then we'll have to move all the factories into the countryside to get the room and then there'd be no room to park your range rover!
Certainly I am not a scientist, but it seems to me that a 0.2% efficiency -- on par with plants -- is a less than ideal goal. That may be fine for plants which, in addition to soaking up CO2, also contribute to the environment in numerous way: annual plants die-off and decay, perennials shed leaves which decay, and edibles produce grains, vegetables, tubers, and fruits which can be consumed by humans and animals alike. The CO2 conversion efficiency of plants may be low, but their overall contribution is much higher. Still, it's a promising but of progress that deserves further research.
The prototypes for nuclear power cells that can fit inside phones and watches, early power armor being field tested by the army, oil reserves running lower every day, and now a process that could lead to giant insects...
When Apple rebrand themselves as VaultTec, you'll find me heading for the hills.
So they put these "near coal plants"? Mildly idiotic. Let it escape and then pretend to capture it?
How about the well-understood processes that goes approximately like:
Hot CO_2 laden effluent + catalyst + water = methanol.
Divert the CO_2 and just make CH_3OH.
Nobody wants methanol 'cause that's the icky stuff that makes you go blind. AFAIK, FlexFuel cars that have materials which can handle oxygenated fuels like ethanol have no issue with M85.
I mean you could have some sort of algae in some industrial system where you could feed it with the CO2 and fertilizer, run it through some glass tubes under the sunlight, and you filter it out the biomass, either to be used as food, or for other uses.
If these machines are just as efficient as plants, then why not just plant some trees next to the factories instead?
Trees take care of themselves and require hardly any maintenance.
The machines store the co2 as ethanol.
Trees store the co2 as wood.
I'd rather have a pile of wood lying around than big storage tanks of flamable ethanol.
Also, trees are prettier, nicer and create oxygen as well.
You burn some carbon for energy, make CO2, use light to turn it into something with carbon that you can burn for energy, and so on.
Sounds too good to be true?
Basically this is just solar power. Why not put a solar panel in and use it to power whatever you were going to power in the first place?
Of all schemes created by this profoundly stupid war against CO2 , the only one I see making economic sense is algae ponds using the waste CO2 and warm water from power-plants . That seems a much simpler and less costly solution than this , tho quite interesting , research .
BTW in the USA "greens" have prevented some experiments with power-plant fed algae ponds .
We can already just about completely halt carbon dioxide emissions from energy use. Methane from eating meat is a different matter.
AFAIK, there's no way to split carbon dioxide into oxygen and carbon that's as simple as electrolyzing water. I thought this was a big problem, since hydrogen fuelled cars are awkward just as electric cars are with current technology. (My goal is to get all our energy from nuclear power that we aren't already getting from hydroelectricity. But since motor fuel stores energy well, wind and solar are now welcome.)
But then I remembered about Robert Zubrin, and how he used hydrogen to make useful fuel for coming back from Mars out of carbon dioxide. But the Sabatier process makes methane or carbon monoxide, and methane is also on the bulky side as a vehicle fuel.
I turned to the Wikipedia article on the Fischer-Tropsch process. That made, I thought, motor fuel from coal: great for energy independence, bad for carbon emissions. But I was surprised to see that its feedstocks were methane or carbon monoxide - presumably made from coal the way coal gas was made to light Victorian lamps!
Naturally, there's the fine detail of government laws and/or taxes to force people to use expensive carbon-neutral motor fuel instead of the stuff extracted from the ground cheaply by fracking and so on - country X being reluctant to do this and place itself at a disadvantage if country Y doesn't do so. But surely that's easy to overcome if we're all DOOMED otherwise, isn't it?