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Researchers have used liquid metals to turn carbon dioxide back into solid coal, in a world-first breakthrough that could transform our approach to carbon capture and storage.
The research team led by RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, have developed a new technique that can efficiently convert CO2 from a gas into solid particles of carbon.
Published in the journal Nature Communications, the research offers an alternative pathway for safely and permanently removing the greenhouse gas from our atmosphere.
Current technologies for carbon capture and storage focus on compressing CO2 into a liquid form, transporting it to a suitable site and injecting it underground.
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Climate Rewind: Scientists Turn Carbon Dioxide Back Into Coal
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Logicians have but ill defined
As rational the human kind.
Logic, they say, belongs to man,
But let them prove it if they can.
-- Oliver Goldsmith
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @10:30AM (1 child)
Probably because biomass is either already in a form that can be used for energy production (like wood), or there are more efficient/economic processes that convert them into usable fuels (biogas, ethanol). Not to mention that the profitability also depends on the price of crude oil, which will likely rise over time, increasing the profitability of such techniques (just like the price had to rise enough to make fracking profitable)
If the goal is to convert CO2 into fuel, then biomass is actually a quite inefficient way to do it, as the plants tend to use quite a lot of the harvested energy for their life processes, not to mention that photosynthesis isn't even as efficient in harvesting that energy as our best solar cells. It is not unthinkable that eventually we'll beat them in efficient fuel production from CO2 using sunlight, for the simple reason that we will optimize our processes for it, which plants quite obviously don't.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 28 2019, @02:43PM
"not to mention that photosynthesis isn't even as efficient in harvesting that energy as our best solar cells"
i am going to go break off some of my excessive growing solarcells for a cereal dinner after a hard days
work of mounting new solarcells.
tomorrow i am going to plant some more tiny solarcell particles which will be full grown solarcells and in need of a trimming in a years time.
your efficiency definition is for robots?