Tuesday, May 3, 2011 - 11:19am
UD chemist want to make fuels out of thin air
By Mellany Armstrong
http://www.wdel.com/story.php?id=34328
How can what’s in the air you breathe power your car? A University of Delaware chemist is working to take carbon dioxide in the air and turn it into gas and other fuels.
Joel Rosenthal says the process could also help get rid of some of the greenhouse gas.
“What we’d like to be able to do is use renewable energy inputs like wind energy or solar energy to convert that C-O-2 that’s in our atmosphere and leading to global warming back to useful fuels.”
Rosenthal says the principle is much the same as a leaf using sunlight to change carbon dioxide into sugars. His team is trying to figure out what metals react with carbon dioxide to break it down into more usable carbon monoxide or methanol. Rosenthal says perfecting the science is still years down the road and won’t help you right now with $4 a gallon gas.
Well, green water algae does that in my tanks, just fine. to do it syntheticaly would also need a catalyst to break down water, releasing hydrogen and an OH radical, or just H2 and an O , so as another catalyst can combine them into some C-O-H chain config for a carb.
But if we could break down water cheaply with a simple catalyst, we would make lots of hydrogen to run fuel cells and drive happily ever after in electric cars.
Carbon bonding using organisms such as algae are fundamentally doomed . . . most C-X (X = halides, or “OH” acts as a halide such as in a C-O-H compound) reactions need heavy metals to complete what’s called a Grignard reaction. C-X acts as a nucleophile, and attacks C-O2 and you end up with a certain percentage of CH3-CH2-OH, Ethanol (obviously other chemicals in the “soup” are at play here). (correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t know of any other simple C to C reaction) Problem is, most everything on earth contains a large percentage of water, H2O, which inhibits this reaction to limited yield. To create carbon-carbon bonds using organic matter, you would need literally THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of acres of land to produce enough end-product to provide substantial power generation for a very small number of people (with algae, roughly 1000 acres for 1500 homes). To top it off, the upfront investment is substantial, and these facilities due to bureaucracy will never turn a profit.
Let’s not forget the other players in this game . . . Automotive and Oil companies bought up most public transit systems in this country, and shut them down. Whether they lobbied to shut these rails down, or physically purchased them and ran them into the ground, Politics has been keeping us dependant on foreign oil.
Hydrogen is the way to go, I completely agree with Ken. It’s the most abundant chemical in the universe, very reactive, can be made through MANY different methods, and it’s cheap.
Consider if the microbes in question were engineered to produce increased amounts of glucose.Wouldn’t increasing the metabolic efficiency of the microbes offset the inhibitions of the bonding yeilds? . I agree with the politics/lobbying systems within our country are the main inhibiting issue keeping us dependent on oil.
“Consider if the microbes in question were engineered to produce increased amounts of glucose.Wouldn’t increasing the metabolic efficiency of the microbes offset the inhibitions of the bonding yeilds?”
Overly simplistic answer = no. Organic conversion methods are dependant upon surface area, needing as much exposure to sunlight as possible to drive the reaction. Even if you were able to engineer an organism (probably algae) to produce 300% of it’s origional production capacity, you’re still left with a plant that’s 50X bigger than a coal fired plant with similar potential energy output, not to mention unreliability due to weather and potential feed-stock die off. It’s not looking good for organics . . .
There are membranes and material out there which separate hydrogen from the oxygen in water molecules. This removes the need of energy input in the form of electrolysis, and is one of the driving forces behind fuel cells in hydrogen powered cars. Hydrogen is cleaner, safer, and it’s theoretical output is pure water. Carbon fuels have nasty off-gasses such as carbon monoxide, carboxylic acids, carbon dioxide, and sulfur compounds (carbon is often found with sulfur, there’s no getting around it. Ask Valero, they’ve designed their business around sulfur extraction from crude).
:~S carbon
YahoO hydrogen
Terrestrial plants have different photosynthetic structures which aren’t orientated to allow for total light absorption on all surfaces.Compared to algae which can use their entire surface area to efficiently capture photons. I am in agreement with your surface area point; but I think you cannot completely discount biologic carbon reactions. I have seen multiple techniques to enhance surface areas for algae cultures. Hydrogen is clearly a viable option for our energy. And I would rather see Hydrogen powered vehicles emitting H2O opposed to more combustion of carbon based fuels.
We make lots of Hydrogen gas by steam reforming methane and water.
But Hydrogen is just a carrier not a fuel. like charging a battery. it takes a lot of energy to make a unit of H2 energy. and burning the H2 in a fuel cell also has an energy slip. so the output is costly in terms of energy input for transformation of the carrier fuel hydrogen. Something to do with thermodynamic balance. ineficiency. and the process still produces lots of CO2.
Might as well just burn the methane directly in a fuel cell and save the energy of transformation. like in these ceramic fuel stacks made for the home.
http://www.cfcl.com.au/
I want one. runs on nat gas. it still makes CO2 from the carbon in the gas. but its a lot less than burning coal or gas with it’s efficiency of producing electricity. saves the CO2 produced by making heat to reform gas.
or a bloom fuel cell.
http://www.bloomenergy.com/products/data-sheet/