Mar
7
Making Fuel From Air
March 7, 2008 | | 1 Comment
by Carol Zhou Yan
Scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory say they have developed a way to produce truly carbon-neutral fuel and useful organic chemicals at large scale using water and carbon dioxide removed from the air as raw materials. There are plenty of schemes brewing to capture carbon dioxide, both directly from the atmosphere and from the stacks of power plants.
Two scientists F. Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kubic Jr. say that people will still be driving gasoline-powered cars 50 years from now, churning out heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So they are proposing a concept, named Green Freedom, for removing carbon dioxide from the air and turning it back into gasoline.
In their proposal, “During this process, air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel: methanol, gasoline or jet fuel.This process could transform carbon dioxide from an unwanted, climate-changing pollutant into a vast resource for renewable fuels. The closed cycle would mean that cars, trucks and airplanes using the synthetic fuels would no longer be contributing to global warming.”
Dr. Martin says, “Everything in the concept has been built, is operating or has a close cousin that is operating.”
I agreed this idea, it’s a incredible idea which is dedicated to solving the climate changes problem.We need to explore all alternative energy options. But I have some questions about the idea.
From“Green Freedom”, we need to built a synthetic carbon-dioxide-to-gasoline factory which requires a great deal of energy. It means to continue to dig coal and oil and use huge amount of energy from nuclear, these make this idea lose advantage much. We want to go sustainable way then we try to use renewable energy, as Dr. Juff mentioned before, we can use electric or solar energy or hodrygen car, jet still can fly use hodrygen and some other idea. Coal and oil will finish up on the earth, even nuclear’s uranium is limit on the earth, will be use up, too. Because these reason, people try to find energy from nature, in the far future, people will 100% depend on natural energy. From this point of view, continue to dig coal and oil and build dangrous nuclear power plants to make fuel from carbon dioxide is reverse the world developing trend. When the coal, oil and uranium use up, this tecnology will no meaning, but in order to develop this technology, people will use much energy and financial, we should ask us is it worth? Now we want to change to low carbon, green economy, but this tecnology is keeping us in high carbon economy. Even if use CO2 to make fuel, but the reallity is keeping coal, oil and uranium business.
Comments
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I agree- this does not look like a long term strategy, if the carbon-dioxide to gasoline process involves using large quantities of fossil fuels.