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Carbon dioxide can be converted directly into ethanol using copper nanoparticles on a nitrogen-doped graphene film:
In a new twist to waste-to-fuel technology, scientists at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an electrochemical process that uses tiny spikes of carbon and copper to turn carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, into ethanol. Their finding, which involves nanofabrication and catalysis science, was serendipitous. [...] The team used a catalyst made of carbon, copper and nitrogen and applied voltage to trigger a complicated chemical reaction that essentially reverses the combustion process. With the help of the nanotechnology-based catalyst which contains multiple reaction sites, the solution of carbon dioxide dissolved in water turned into ethanol with a yield of 63 percent. Typically, this type of electrochemical reaction results in a mix of several different products in small amounts.
High-Selectivity Electrochemical Conversion of CO2 to Ethanol using a Copper Nanoparticle/N-Doped Graphene Electrode (open, DOI: 10.1002/slct.201601169) (DX)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RamiK on Sunday October 16 2016, @08:22AM
Energy is abundant and free for the most part. Just pull up a solar panel \ wind turbine \ nuclear plant and harvest away.
The problems are:
1. Burning ethanol releases CO2. The supposition is that you're reclaiming the CO2 when creating the CO2. But it could be like methane where escaped gas is very harmful to the environment so the result is a net loss to the environment.
2. Catalyst. Making the catalyst can release CO2 that you're not reclaiming when producing the ethanol. It could use rare metals or similarly difficult-to-mine materials that leave you with a non-renewable fuel source again. Here, I'm seeing copper and graphite. Both are mined\produced while releasing a whole lot of nasty chemical and CO2.
3. Heat pollution: Literally cooking the earth won't do at all. Though that's not an immediate concern.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday October 16 2016, @07:04PM
Saying "energy is abundant" isn't exactly correct, though it's also not exactly wrong. Useful energy can often be difficult to come by.
This was suggested as a way to "store" excess energy produced. It's not a terribly efficient method, but it does something useful (removing CO2 from the atmosphere) at the same time. This makes it somewhat plausible.
1) If you burn the ethanol produced in this way your net contribution to the atmosphere would appear to be zero. And methanol isn't methane.
2) A poisoned catalyst can normally be regenerated, the question is the cost of doing so...but certainly it would be a higher grade ore than most copper mines are digging. That said, you do need to count the cost of originally making the stuff...and not only the catalyst. But "non-renewable" doesn't fit here.
3) This isn't a primary source of power, this is a secondary source. So heat pollution doesn't enter in here except that if this is effective it might decrease the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Nuclear adds heat. Burning fossil fuels adds heat (technically not true, but it releases heat stored so long ago that people stopped counting it). This doesn't. It inefficiently stores heat. If you burn the ethanol you then release the heat that had previously been stored.
*OTOH*: This is a first report from a research project. Don't believe it's anything more than a pointer to something that might turn out to be interesting. I expect that their current catalyst is fragile and quite expensive to build. And estimating that their current efficiency is 63% is probably a gross overestimate. If this is going to be interesting, though, that will need to be improved a lot...but there's no reason to believe that it won't be.
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