51–60 of 71 posts
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The main question is whether there's a carbon sequestration process which can be industrialized so that it's more effective than planting trees.
Not sure we want to start competing with trees -- what if we get better than them at it? Do trees start dying for lack of CO2?
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1.) electric vehicles are also vastly simpler mechanically, so what you gain with energy storage efficiency in gasoline tanks you loose with their complex motors. 2.) if cheap energy density is the problem they want to solve, then this process at least needs to be compared to using the land to grow plants in order to turn them into ethanol fuel. So a comparison like "wind farm under average conditions + ethanol farmi…
Many people dislike growing plants for Ethanol production because they compete for arable land that can be used to produce food. Solar and wind farms can be built in places where agriculture is not viable.
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1.) electric vehicles are also vastly simpler mechanically, so what you gain with energy storage efficiency in gasoline tanks you loose with their complex motors. 2.) if cheap energy density is the problem they want to solve, then this process at least needs to be compared to using the land to grow plants in order to turn them into ethanol fuel. So a comparison like "wind farm under average conditions + ethanol farmi…
Many people dislike growing plants for Ethanol production because they compete for arable land that can be used to produce food. Solar and wind farms can be built in places where agriculture is not viable.
Except it also generates CO and methane in nontrivial amount (something like 5-10% apparently), one of which is a highly toxic pollutant and the other is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2.
CO is more troublesome as it is converted into ozone in presence of sunlight and hydroxide ions.
Something that annoys me with these articles is that such processes are usually praised as carbon capture at the same time as it is energy storage. Well yes, but not both at the same time. And I really doubt its effectiveness as energy storage in the first place - why would you burn fossil fuels (with a loss), then gather energy with renewables to capture back the CO2 (with a loss) and then use the energy of the etha…
One idea goes like this: We use nuclear or renewables to power a process to capture extant CO2 to be used as fuel, which turns it back to CO2, which will be recaptures, so run-away processes are reigned in. (I can tell by your comment that you get this.) Here's the kicker: the energy density of liquid fuels is super-hard to beat. Batteries (and super-capacitors) are getting better, but relatively speaking, on a whole…
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One idea goes like this: We use nuclear or renewables to power a process to capture extant CO2 to be used as fuel, which turns it back to CO2, which will be recaptures, so run-away processes are reigned in. (I can tell by your comment that you get this.) Here's the kicker: the energy density of liquid fuels is super-hard to beat. Batteries (and super-capacitors) are getting better, but relatively speaking, on a whole…
Energy density is great, but for most current usecases I'd argue it's not really necessary. It's neither needed in your home (lots of space to put batteries, is connected to a power line), nor for your daily commute, nor for agriculture, nor for heavy industry (even better power lines), nor for long distance land based transport (trains are just as good and can be electrified easily) which covers the largest energy c…
>potentially creating a new technology to help avert climate change >The reaction turns CO2 into ethanol, which could in turn be used to power generators and vehicles. I am no scientist, my question is this: wouldn't it be a zero sum game at best? You are taking C02 out of the atmosphere, turning it into fuel, which then is used in C02 emitting engines.
> I am no scientist, my question is this: wouldn't it be a zero sum game at best? Worse than zero sum.
> This process has several advantages when compared to other methods of converting CO2 into fuel. The reaction uses common materials like copper and carbon, and it converts the CO2 into ethanol, which is already widely used as a fuel. > Perhaps most importantly, it works at room temperature, which means that it can be started and stopped easily and with little energy cost. This means that this conversion process coul…
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The abstract of the article includes : >Herein we report a common element, nanostructured catalyst for the direct electrochemical conversion of CO2 to ethanol with high Faradaic efficiency (63 % at −1.2 V vs RHE) and high selectivity (84 %) that operates in water and at ambient temperature and pressure. I am not exactly sure how to understand the 63% efficiency but I assume that this is the rate of conversion from el…
So basically: this is nice, but there's no reason yet to think that this could be the way we slurp carbon out of the atmosphere and avert climate catastrophe. Right? Drat.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The abstract of the article includes : >Herein we report a common element, nanostructured catalyst for the direct electrochemical conversion of CO2 to ethanol with high Faradaic efficiency (63 % at −1.2 V vs RHE) and high selectivity (84 %) that operates in water and at ambient temperature and pressure. I am not exactly sure how to understand the 63% efficiency but I assume that this is the rate of conversion from el…
So basically: this is nice, but there's no reason yet to think that this could be the way we slurp carbon out of the atmosphere and avert climate catastrophe. Right? Drat.