Not content with using hybrid artificial photosynthesis to turn CO2 emissions into plastics and biofuel, researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) now claim to have produced an enhanced system that uses water and solar energy to generate hydrogen, which is in turn used to produce methane, the main element of natural gas, from carbon dioxide. Generating such gases from a renewable resource may one day help bolster, or even replace, fossil fuel resources extracted from dwindling sub-surface deposits.
Simply put, the process of photosynthesis turns light energy into chemical energy. In plants and certain types of algae, energy from incoming sunlight is used as the power source to synthesize simple carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. In the original Berkeley Lab hybrid system, a membrane arrangement of nanowires created from silicon and titanium oxide harvested solar energy and transported electrons to microbes where they used that energy to transform carbon dioxide into a range of chemical compounds.
Produces methane...Sorry, cows, you have been rendered superfluous.
Hybrid bioinorganic approach to solar-to-chemical conversion [abstract]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TrumpetPower! on Thursday August 27 2015, @12:41AM
No clue if this particular method will pan out, or some other...but it's of vital importance that we develop a solar-powered way to make hydrocarbon feedstock from atmospheric CO2.
Never mind gasoline for passenger vehicles; basically all of civilization is utterly dependent on petroleum in countless ways...lubricants and plastics and fertilizer and pesticides and even pavement and roofing materials...without petroleum or something similar, that all goes away. Civilization, in other words, goes away.
And we're fast running out of petroleum. We've used up about half of what was in the ground to begin with -- and, as one would expect, we first went for the high-quality easy-to-get-to stuff. Now we're literally scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Petroleum has been fantastic for civilization as an energy source...but we're drawing in on a time where it'll take more energy to get it out of the ground than you can get from burning it. Long gone, after all, are the days when you had to be careful with a pickaxe in Texas lest you set off a gusher...today's premium wells are miles of pipeline miles beneath the ocean waves -- and we're even going after Canadian tar sands and shale oil, the proverbial bad jokes of last-ditch desperation.
We're headed for the proverbial interesting times of the curse...but all hope is not lost. The market already seems to be shifting towards all-electric vehicles at least as fast as it previously shifted to Prius-style hybrids, which will free up that much petroleum for non-transportation uses. Never mind that EVs are overwhelmingly powered from green sources, especially rooftop solar; simply freeing up that petroleum will be critical, even if the electricity generated comes from dirty coal (which is also finite but we're not quite as close to running out of).
Solar is already competitive with if not cheaper than all other utility-scale generating techniques for new installations, which means that we'll increasingly shift power generation to solar. If we can do that at an accelerated pace that includes enough surplus to run these types of CO2-into-petroleum-replacements...well, we just might maybe perhaps slip under the wire....
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @01:40AM
Solar has a problem of not working at night. We still want power then. So things like this will act as a storage. In most cases you would be better off just using the power directly from the panel than converting it into something else.
Also do not confuse the price of oil with anything about supply. It is a manipulated commodity. We even elected a president at one point on breaking up the cartels. OPEC got in on the action in the early 1970s.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 27 2015, @02:17AM
Uhhh - that whole embargo thing in the '70's? It wasn't about price fixing, or anything so simple. It was a protest over the US going off of the gold standard. Members of OPEC insisted that the price of oil should be tied to the price of gold.
I've posted links in the past that shows that the price of oil in relation to the price of gold has been remarkably stable over the past century. Yes, in terms of gold, you are paying nearly the same price that your x-Great-Grandparents paid back in 1910. The fluctuations come from short term manipulation, and inflation.
Fiat money has no stability to speak of.
"Oil vs. Gold Chart Analysis
In looking at the chart we can see that the average since 1946 has been that one ounce of gold would buy 14.83 barrels of oil. Therefore, whenever one ounce of gold would buy more than 14.83 barrels of oil either oil was cheap or gold was expensive. And conversely, whenever an ounce of gold would buy less than 14.83 barrels, then oil was expensive or gold was cheap."
http://inflationdata.com/articles/comparing-oil-gold/ [inflationdata.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @01:22PM
Then we can just ignore the oversupply the producers and major consumers are talking about? We can ignore what The Saudis say they are doing. Because of your correlation? The Saudis have basically told OPEC 'we are doing what we want you guys are crazy'. There are 4 major producers of oil. OPEC, the Saudis who are sometimes part of OPEC, the US, and Russia (who are sometimes part of OPEC). The Saudis have enough oil currently they can manipulate prices. They wanted to end the shale/tar thing the US was doing. They also are mad at Russia and the rest of OPEC for some reason (probably pressure from the US).
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-26/ecuador-reveals-the-pain-inside-opec-it-s-pumping-oil-at-a-loss [bloomberg.com]
Price fixing in the oil industry is rampant and been there for a long time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil [wikipedia.org]
Take for example my local area. There are probably 5-10 different gas stations yet they all have similar prices. Why is that? They all get their gas/oil from the same pumping station 1 city over. That pumping station sells gas at a fixed commodity price. Control the distribution and supply and you can control the price.
One guy I know owned a gas station. He could set the price to whatever he liked so long as it was 3 cents above what the oil company told him to do. If you dont think the good-ol-boy club exists you are dreaming. The high freq traders figured out you can skim a bit of money on the arbitrage. But as the Saudis have demonstrated for the past year, THEY control the price.
Oil is not a free market. It hasnt been for a LONG time. In fact it is in your theory. Gold is held to a fixed rate of oil. The 1970s where a reflection of OPEC showing the world who was in control of the oil and they wanted their price fixed.
What you have discovered is 2 things. A measure of inflation. As well as a very nice example of price fixing. I personally like to use cars as a measure of inflation.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gravis on Thursday August 27 2015, @02:13AM
basically all of civilization is utterly dependent on petroleum in countless ways...lubricants and plastics and fertilizer and pesticides and even pavement and roofing materials
- there a plenty of non-petroleum based lubricants
- you should read about bioplastics.
- fertilizer is simply nitrates and we flush plenty of nitrates down the crapper.
- we dont actually need pesticides. the problem we have is having farms stuck in monoculture rather than use horticulture.
- pavement comes in lots of flavors but i'm not against using petroleum for such things.
- roofing materials? solar panels are all you need. :)
you completely underestimate our ability to adapt when something becomes scarce.
Now we're literally scraping the bottom of the barrel.
that word doesn't mean what you think it means, fool.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Thursday August 27 2015, @02:25AM
When I read posts like yours I always think of Romans 1:22 (KJV) "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,"
Its the only verse in the Bible I know by heart, and it comes in handy when someone starts quoting the Bible at me, or in response to posts like yours.
Careful who you call a fool lest you become one yourself.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 1, Troll) by penguinoid on Thursday August 27 2015, @06:09PM
Just post a picture of the barrel which we're literally scraping the bottom of, and we'll all make fun of Gravis.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @09:25PM
fertilizer
The use of a garbage disposal is a sin.
The amount of vegetable peelings and not-quite-perfect stuff that gets shoved down those is shameful.
That biomass could be put into a compost heap and reused to fertilize the next year's growth.
You mix that stuff with equal parts "waste" paper.
The amount of paper products we just chuck out is shameful too.
...and the fact that many people have land space and use that to grow grass and other inedible things just boggles my mind.
pesticides
monoculture
Our species has know about crop rotation for thousands of years yet we've largely let that knowledge slip away.
This also applies to "fertilizer".
"The Three Sisters" [wikipedia.org] is another bit of wisdom that has been ignored for ages.
This also applies to "fertilizer".
pavement
Ever see how much blacktop is torn up and hauled away when they lay down a new asphalt surface.
That "waste" is just thrown into a pit somewhere.
Why isn't is being reused for more road|parking lot surface?
roofing materials
I know of a city in L.A. County that forbids regular old petrochemical shingles. [google.com]
More. [cerritos.us]
The alternatives last much longer as well.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by morgauxo on Thursday August 27 2015, @02:38PM
With fossil fuels we eventually warm the planet enough to lose our coastal cities.
With electric vehicles we strip-mine the planet to get rare-earth metals.
I'm glad I don't live in a coastal city!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 27 2015, @02:20AM
Most people are looking at the methane as fuel. Hydrogen is fuel too! Using methane as fuel only puts that dreaded carbon back into the atmosphere. Using hydrogen as fuel causes no carbon emissions.
(Score: 3, Informative) by gman003 on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:19AM
Methane is useful as a hydrogen carrier. A 70-lb cylinder of compressed methane has the equivalent of 200 moles of hydrogen, while the same tank filled with hydrogen has only 160mol. Even if you're using it in a fuel cell (where the carbon is useless and unreactive), that's still a win, and then you get better safety (hydrogen embrittlement is a perennial problem, and hydrogen leaks easier than methane) for free on top of that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @04:00AM
But if the carbon is extracted from the atmosphere and then returned, it's carbon neutral and not much of a problem. While it doesn't reduce the atmospheric CO2, it doesn't increase it either.
However, any leaks in the process with add methane to the atmosphere and that is worse than CO2 (there will be leaks). If carbon capture and removal can be used at a sufficiently high level, then that could compensate for added methane.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @05:09AM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:38AM
In my estimation, the hydrocarbon-from-solar route probably is the most viable way into a sustainable energy economy because of two main benefits of hydrocarbons: 1.) they are easily storable and movable, and 2.) they are compatible with the vast infrastructure. This would also be cheap enough to yield prices that are roughly in the magnitude of what we pay for them now in retail. However, they are not cheap enough to compete with dug up dead dinosaurs, and a free market that does not consider externalities will always choose the cheaper fossils, even if they're just minimally cheaper. Of course, players (countries) might try to bend the numbers a bit, but that will always be at their expense without any benefit other than the feelgood factor. Only if it is done near a breakthrough level, it might accelerate that process, e.g. as the German PV subsidies did with the solar module market. The PV market then took off, because PV simply has become the cheapest option for a growing number of use cases. (Unlike that, however, the whole CO2-certificate trading scheme looks to me like a big money shifting scheme for a few players but nothing effecting actual industry).
As a consideration the same mechanism works against nuclear - and fusion. Take a look at the cost for Sizewell C and Olkiluoto III; and that's even with deferring the disposal issues to future taxpayers. For fusion consider you don't have a simple big kettle that warms up through magic rods like with fission, but a monumental contraption of magnets, or lasers, or whatever is needed to confine and ignite a power-yielding plasma. No way this can ever be competitive against just burning mentioned dug up dinosaurs for heat - or, at least during sunshine, for PV.
We'll always need to estimate what an applied kWh will cost to judge viability. E.g. for liquid hydrocarbons, we have about 8 kWh per liter of petrol, or ~1250 kWh in a barrel. At an oil price, of say, $100 for crude, that would amount to a price that can't be lower than 8 cent per kWh. Now take a solar-to-hydrocarbon plant in the desert and assume they get the juice out at 3 cents. Feed water, assume hydrolyzing losses, and you'll have hydrogen at 4 cents, in the middle of the desert. Assume they also grow reed and hydrate that, more losses, you'll have bio-octane at say 6 cents. So, on a very large scale, with infrastructure cost negligible, that might even be competitive at such a high oil price. But as soon as someone would start such a venture, the sheiks will temporarily drop their oil price to $60, their fuel goes into the market at 5 cents, and our venture goes bust. Someone would need a very long breath to hold up against these dynamics. So with new technical schemes like the described one, there's one and only one requirement: they need to be dirt cheap.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:02PM
Add "in comparison" at the end of your sentence, and I'll agree with you.
Oil is dirt cheap today, but nowhere near as dirt cheap as it was not that long ago. As one would expect, we've already extracted all the high quality and easy-to-reach stuff, meaning all that's left is the low quality hard-to-reach stuff -- and that means what's left is more expensive.
Oil prices will rise...but likely not much above double current prices, because pretty much all these alternative hydrocarbon production processes become cost-competitive at that point.
The real question is whether or not our economy can function with oil prices in that range. We may well reach a point where nobody can afford to pay for what it costs to produce oil (in whatever form), at which time mass chaos ensues.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday August 27 2015, @05:39PM
Oil is crazy cheap now, somewhere around $40 a barrel. Of course, if you consider 2009 not that long ago then your point stands (last time we saw prices this low).
On the one hand it certainly delays cost-competitiveness. On the other, it does make it unprofitable to be starting up new wellsites. So, mixed blessings I guess.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Thursday August 27 2015, @09:24PM
Add "in comparison" at the end of your sentence, and I'll agree with you.
Of course. But if it's in comparison to fossil oil, it does not need to be dirt-cheap-in-comparison, it just needs to be marginally cheaper. But to be marginally cheaper in comparison, it must be so "dirt" cheap that the sheiks can't sustain prices below the renewable to push them out of the market. Bit of a feedback logic. :)
On the other hand, the threat of renewable hydrocarbons sets an upper limit to the sustainable oil price, which as I elaborated in the OP would be at 8 cents per kWh in my ballpark guesstimate. One conclusion is that the fossils can't become much more expensive than they are now, which isn't good news for the environment, because that keeps the incentive for energy savings down. But, as the reply to your post says, it will suppress investments in hard-to-tap fossil fuel retrieval, which would only be profitable at, say, 100$ per barrel. That, and that's the better news for the environment, would mean when the easy-taps dry up, the renewables take over.
To be considered is that if the PV spread continues in a fashion that they're past break-even even with non-full sunshine, there would be an intermittent oversupply that someone might soak up for free. And when all the E-Cars are fully charged, one might get the idea to start with synthesizing fuels. But now we're drifting off in the realm where uni profs on global economy can spend their lifetimes calculating ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 27 2015, @09:57PM
...if you don't factor in the externalities.
Fracking (use of precious water in California, poisoning of well water, earthquakes); pipeline ruptures; derailments of petroleum trains; oil well blowouts (dead workers, poisoned cleanup workers, poisoned flora and fauna, workers who depend on the ecosystem now out of work); etc.
the low quality hard-to-reach stuff
...and the moonscapes that are left behind when they're finished raping Mother Nature's tar sands.
...not to mention the giant ponds of poisoned water.
-- gewg_