I don't want to poo-poo this achievement, but is another burnable fuel really what we want at this point?
If we had ways to take more CO2 out of the atmosphere, and this was close to carbon neutral, there's no reason to use something like this.
Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
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Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#22So it's 20x cheaper than the noble gas version — what's the absolute cost? I assume it's not cheaper than pumping fossil fuels yet, but I'm curious to know how far away it is.
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#23This development is exciting, but the complexity of the chemicals involved looks scary. I wonder if it will impede the adoption. Anyone with the domain expertise to comment on this?
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#24Key facts: > In fact, he said, the new catalyst is 1,000 times faster than noble-metal catalysts — and about 20 times cheaper. > The combination of water and the ionic liquid makes a co-catalyst that preserves the catalyst’s active sites under the harsh reduction reaction conditions, No mention of efficiency compared to photovoltaic cells.
The efficiency is around 4%, as in Figure 2 from the paper. SFE is solar-to-fuel efficiency.
From the paper, " We also calculated the solar-to-fuel conversion efficiency (SFE) for our photochemical process (Fig. 2C), obtaining a value of ~4.6% limited by the maximum efficiency of the PV-a-si-3jn cell (~6.0%) (13, 20). This SFE is higher than that of the water-splitting reaction (~2.5%) previously measured using an identical triple-junction photovoltaic (PV-a-si-3jn) cell (20). "
https://d2ufo47lrtsv5s.cloudfront.net/content/sci/353/6298/4...
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#25Interesting that it's a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide that it produces. Wonder what the safety implications are.
Could a catalytic converter be used to create CO2 from CO? edit: I forgot what it took as input for a sec there..
> Could a catalytic converter be used to create CO2 from CO?
You don't need a catalytic converter, you can just burn it. But breathing a sigh of relief that we can "safely" dispose of the CO in this way is missing the point rather badly.
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#26Interesting that it's a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide that it produces. Wonder what the safety implications are.
CO is easy to convert to CO₂, just burn it and feed the CO₂ back into the process.
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#27This is wonderful! We're surrounded by life forms that turn water, CO2 and sunlight into energy. I figure there must be some way to harness this process. I wonder how much power a large tree takes in from its leaves. If we could interface with its root system, perhaps we could extract newly created starch, and either store it or burn it off. Image a huge concrete power plant with large trees growing out of it.
No, that's not likely to happen. Photosynthesis is pretty inefficient, typical plants have a radiant energy to chemical energy conversion efficiency between 0.1% and 2%. Most commercially available solar panels have more than 10 times this efficiency.[1] [1] http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/109739/is-plant-p...
Sure, but I bet your solar panels don't manufacture and maintain themselves.
To the GP's point, the total cost of ownership of a plant that makes gasoline-level fuel is going to be more about water and land than anything else.
But the efficiency of solar panels, considering their subsidies, the rare minerals used in their manufacture, their delivery and their maintenance... I'm confident it's a lot less than e.g. coal, even accounting for pollution costs, because if it really were cheaper all-around we'd be using it everywhere!
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#28This is wonderful! We're surrounded by life forms that turn water, CO2 and sunlight into energy. I figure there must be some way to harness this process. I wonder how much power a large tree takes in from its leaves. If we could interface with its root system, perhaps we could extract newly created starch, and either store it or burn it off. Image a huge concrete power plant with large trees growing out of it.
No, that's not likely to happen. Photosynthesis is pretty inefficient, typical plants have a radiant energy to chemical energy conversion efficiency between 0.1% and 2%. Most commercially available solar panels have more than 10 times this efficiency.[1] [1] http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/109739/is-plant-p...
Yes. But on the other hand, oil is extremely convenient for storage and transporting. Perhaps we can achieve a more efficient way of converting atmospheric CO2 to oil than photosynthesis. (And while there, complex oil instead of simple sugars)
Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#29Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel
#30Interesting that it's a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide that it produces. Wonder what the safety implications are.
As it says in the article:
"the artificial leaf delivers syngas, or synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen gas and carbon monoxide. Syngas can be burned directly, or converted into diesel or other hydrocarbon fuels."
Hydrogen and carbon dioxide are the feedstocks for the Fischer-Tropsch process, which produces conventional hydrocarbon fuel:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer%E2%80%93Tropsch_proces...
In other words, H2 and CO are exactly what you want!