Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel • Hacker News Board

Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel

#11

Post by Godel_unicode » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 7:40 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #4

danmaz74 wrote: post #2

Key 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.

I'm more interested with comparison to plants harvested for biodiesel.

The key difference in my opinion is that this process would not be competing for land with existing crops. We could do both.

Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel

#12

Post by sdenton4 » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 7:42 PM UTC

Interesting that it's a combination of hydrogen and carbon monoxide that it produces. Wonder what the safety implications are.

Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel

#13

Post by gravypod » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 7:42 PM UTC

I'd love to see how this would work in my use case. I enjoy brewing alcohol and if I could capture and tap into that with a system like this I'd probably get a better yield then the average user.

It would be cool.

Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel

#14

Post by retox » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 7:49 PM UTC

I don't want to poo-poo this achievement, but is another burnable fuel really what we want at this point?

Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel

#15

Post by maxerickson » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 7:52 PM UTC

retox wrote: post #14

I don't want to poo-poo this achievement, but is another burnable fuel really what we want at this point?

If it captures CO2 and can make something like methane or butanol, hell yes. Hydrocarbons have great energy density and simple ones burn clean. If you take the carbon out of the atmosphere, you are net 0 when you burn it back in.

Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel

#16

Post by deegles » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 7:53 PM UTC

retox wrote: post #14

I don't want to poo-poo this achievement, but is another burnable fuel really what we want at this point?

It could be pumped underground to capture the CO2 permanently.

Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel

#17

Post by eloff » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 7:54 PM UTC

retox wrote: post #14

I don't want to poo-poo this achievement, but is another burnable fuel really what we want at this point?

I'm going to say yes, very much so.

Remember the carbon here is coming from the atmosphere, so it's carbon neutral and won't contribute to climate change.

If the process can be scaled up to produce a gallon of gasoline for less than the costs of extracting crude from the ground and refining it - then it will quickly kill off new investment into the fossil fuel extraction industry. As opposed to alternate energy technologies, like electric cars which will take a long time to replace internal combustion engine cars. It would use all of the existing infrastructure, so all it has to be is cheaper for market forces to work their magic.

That's a very big IF, however, so don't get your hopes up.

Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel

#18

Post by busterarm » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 7:56 PM UTC

retox wrote: post #14

I don't want to poo-poo this achievement, but is another burnable fuel really what we want at this point?

But it's CO2 in, CO2 out...

It's more like using sunlight to recycle CO2...

Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel

#19

Post by eloff » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 7:57 PM UTC

runeks wrote: post #9

This 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...

Re: Breakthrough solar cell captures CO2 and sunlight, produces burnable fuel

#20

Post by pizza » Sat, Jul 30, 2016, 7:58 PM UTC

sdenton4 wrote: post #12

Interesting 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..