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Simple method for converting carbon dioxide into useful compounds:
Researchers in Japan have found an energy-efficient way to convert the chief greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) into useful chemicals. Using the method, CO2 is transformed into structures called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), suggesting a new and simpler route to dispose of the greenhouse gas to help tackle global warming.
The research was carried out by scientists at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS), Kyoto University, and colleagues, and the results are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
“Taking the CO2 released from fossil fuel combustion and converting the gas into valuable chemicals and materials is a promising approach to protect the environment. But because CO2 is a very inert and stable molecule, it is difficult to get it to react using conventional conversion processes,” says Satoshi Horike, a chemist at iCeMS who led the study. “Our work demonstrates an easier approach that can be run at a much lower temperature and pressure. This should make reactions that use CO2 easier to produce and more popular.”
The Japanese team targeted MOFs because they have a wide range of uses, including as biosensors and catalysts. Further, because MOFs are porous and can hold large amounts of gas, they show promise as storage devices for sustainable hydrogen fuel.
To run the reaction, the researchers bubbled CO2 at a temperature of 25°C and a pressure of 0.1 MPa through a solution with an organic molecule called piperazine, in what chemists call a “one pot” procedure. The MOF emerged quickly as a white microcrystalline powder that could be collected and dried. Analysis of its structure using X-ray and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy confirmed the conversion had taken place as planned.
Journal Reference:
Kentaro Kadota, You-lee Hong, Yusuke Nishiyama, et al. One-Pot, Room-Temperature Conversion of CO2 into Porous Metal–Organic Frameworks, Journal of the American Chemical Society (DOI: 10.1021/jacs.1c08227)
Also at Phys.org.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @11:12AM (19 children)
> a new and simpler route to dispose of the greenhouse gas
No, a new and simpler route to generate more greenhouse gas from unchallenged increasing consumption with less guilt.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @11:31AM (1 child)
Nothing we do can ever erase our original sin of advancing beyond mud huts.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday October 06 2021, @02:22PM
Revelation 11:18 [biblegateway.com]
Also Facebook going down . . . Revelation 16:10 [biblegateway.com]
Young people won't believe you if you say you're older than Google. (born before 1998-09-03)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:18PM (14 children)
At some point, we'll need to pull our heads out of our asses and realize that we painted ourselves in a corner. Almost eight billion people won't go away just because you feel guilty about greenhouse gases.
As to the "unchallenged" nature of increasing consumption, perhaps some day you could come up with an argument that isn't juvenile and ignores the suffering of billions of people? "Consumption" is not only how we exist, but how we make our lives and world better.
I think there's a deep moral wrong here to discount stuff that potentially could be the best of both worlds - improving our lives while improving our environmental footprint - just because there might a little less guilt involved. But this is a feature of some technology innovation. It can obsolete moral dilemmas.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @02:04PM (4 children)
World population due to low birth rate will fall everywhere except black Africa.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:52PM (2 children)
The alt-right infestation continues. Such insecurity is sad, but there is no simple way forward except to let such fools eventually catch up to modern humanity. No wonder the site is dying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @09:23PM
This is from non-partisan data, dumbass.
Google it. It's based on current birth rates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @09:27PM
I dug up a link with a graph of projected population by continent:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/01/the-children-s-continent/ [weforum.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 07 2021, @02:03AM
I think you'll be surprised then to find that birth rates are declining in "black" Africa as well. It's just behind the curve.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:30PM (2 children)
As I have repeatedly said, the solution has been found. Stop burning fuel for heat!
If you are cold, then synchronized collective shivering is cheap and it works! That is how penguins survive the harsh winters of Antarctica.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @10:01PM (1 child)
Why is every actual solution laughed at?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday October 09 2021, @09:55PM
That actually *is* how male penguins survive the winter. They huddle together in a compact bunch, protecting the eggs, while the females are off somewhere else, feeding well, to return in the spring when the eggs hatch to help raise the children.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tork on Wednesday October 06 2021, @03:57PM (3 children)
Earlier this year people were falling over each other to consume the news that Biden was going to 'limit our burgers to once a month'. There's a more appropriate direction you could be wagging your finger.
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 07 2021, @12:21AM (2 children)
Serious business. I'm on it, stat.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Thursday October 07 2021, @12:40AM (1 child)
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 07 2021, @02:05AM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Thursday October 07 2021, @07:16PM (1 child)
Even if we assume it's possible to immediately transition to carbon free energy there are still a lot of processes that generate C02 that simply won't be mitigable without carbon capture.
Concrete manufacture, for example, is a massive C02 source. Maybe, eventually, we'll be able to eliminate those emissions but all the replacements currently are on the far horizon.
If we need to start doing something about the C02 right now, instead of some vague point in the perfect future, then we need to immediately figure out how to capture that carbon and what to do with it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 08 2021, @01:19AM
"If". There's a lot of problems here. I have no problems with finding ways to use/recycle CO2, but I'm concerned that we will be building a complex, costly, ill-justified CO2 recycling system that causes more problems than it solves.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Wednesday October 06 2021, @05:54PM (1 child)
Agree. The average progressive leftie commie-sympathizer replaces their iphone every 18 months. Consumer culture. We could solve so many problems by restricting the vote to net producers and just enslaving everyone else. It's what they want. It's what they vote for. Let's just end the charade and let government treat them like the cattle they desperately yearn to be.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @06:50PM
So, basically enslaving the entire investment and management class?
They don't produce a damn thing themselves. They convince other people to. I like it. Let's lock them up and swap places for a century or three.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @12:41PM (1 child)
The company or person(s) who are the first to create a device which can be fitted to the tail pipes of cars that creates a capture process right at the source, is going to be rich beyond measure, IF it can scale cheaply.
THIS is the solution we need right NOW.
So the process looks like a step in the right direction.
Bonus points if they can redirect the product back into the engine for further reduction.
Unfortunately, improvements in efficiency of ANYTHING humans use, only kicks the can down the road. At some point we need to STOP pulling carbon out of the ground, period.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @02:55AM
The problem with such a system is that it would consume more energy than the burned fuel produced. Put another way, you'd be better off just switching to electric. Carbon capture only makes sense once you've already converted everything to renewables.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:17PM (2 children)
suppose we had fusion, we still need to breath in outerspace.
now, energy not being a problem (see above) would this allow to store oxygen (the c-O2 part) in a really dense form, instead of as pure gaseous O2 in possibly leaky (and turning brittle) tanks?
so what's the most compact (volumetric) way to store oxygen as a solid at "normal" pressure? you know where you could use a spacesuit and a shovel to haul a mountain of "crystalline" stuff from the spaceship hanger?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:12PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @05:07PM
The only 'convenient' way to store oxygen in solid form is as an oxide. IIRC, silicon dioxide (aka sand) is the most readily available, but many other common materials work as well. As energy isn't a problem in your scenario, extracting that oxygen is as simple as putting the oxide through an electrolytic smelter.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 06 2021, @01:54PM (2 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 08 2021, @04:11AM (1 child)
Haha, you beat me to it. I convert CO2 into useful compounds by planting seeds and growing tomatoes and greens. It's super easy.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday October 09 2021, @07:46AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday October 06 2021, @04:29PM (1 child)
Now show that it takes less CO2 to gather the materials together and power the process and deal with the scraps than will be taken out of the atmosphere, and that the process can be scaled to a useful level, and that it can be controlled well enough that we won't overshoot are targets, and then convince governments or businesses to actually do it on a scale that will make a real difference.
Until then, I'm not going to read this or this finding [soylentnews.org] as demonstrating that there's such a thing as a cheap and simple technology that fixes climate change forever, since there's way too much oil money behind using theoretical possibilities as an excuse to not do anything at all about climate change while the world is burning.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 07 2021, @02:01AM
I think this is a serious criticism. Reactions that convert CO2 to "useful chemicals" is endothermic. No matter how efficient the reactions are made, they still will consume considerable energy. That energy has to come from somewhere.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @06:44PM
Carbon dioxide *is* a useful compound.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @08:13AM (1 child)
Plant a seed. Plants are all about converting carbon dioxide into useful compounds. From simple seeds you get food, medicine, clothing, building materials, fuel, shade, cooling, oxygen and a host of other ecological benefits
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday October 09 2021, @07:50AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves