From MIT, a possible solution to allow coal fired power plants to meet the new draconian CO2 emission requirements imposed by the EPA. Hybrid copper-gold nanoparticles convert carbon dioxide to methane CO2=>CH4
May reduce greenhouse gas emissions
Various researchers around the world have studied copper’s potential as an energy-efficient means of recycling carbon dioxide emissions in powerplants: Instead of being released into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide would be circulated through a copper catalyst and turned into methane — which could then power the rest of the plant. Such a self-energizing system could vastly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired and natural-gas-powered plants.
But copper is temperamental: easily oxidized, as when an old penny turns green. As a result, the metal is unstable, which can significantly slow its reaction with carbon dioxide and produce unwanted byproducts such as carbon monoxide and formic acid.
Now researchers at MIT have come up with a solution that may further reduce the energy needed for copper to convert carbon dioxide, while also making the metal much more stable.
The group has engineered tiny nanoparticles of copper mixed with gold, which is resistant to corrosion and oxidation. The researchers observed that just a touch of gold makes copper much more stable. In experiments, they coated electrodes with the hybrid nanoparticles and found that much less energy was needed for these engineered nanoparticles to react with carbon dioxide, compared to nanoparticles of pure copper.
A paper detailing the results will appear in the journal Chemical Communications; the research was funded by the National Science Foundation. Co-author Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli of MIT says the findings point to a potentially energy-efficient means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from powerplants.
“You normally have to put a lot of energy into converting carbon dioxide into something useful,” says Hamad-Schifferli, an associate professor of mechanical engineering and biological engineering. “We demonstrated hybrid copper-gold nanoparticles are much more stable, and have the potential to lower the energy you need for the reaction.”
Going small
The team chose to engineer particles at the nanoscale in order to “get more bang for their buck,” Hamad-Schifferli says: The smaller the particles, the larger the surface area available for interaction with carbon dioxide molecules. “You could have more sites for the CO2 to come and stick down and get turned into something else,” she says.
Hamad-Schifferli worked with Yang Shao-Horn, the Gail E. Kendall Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, postdoc Zichuan Xu and Erica Lai ’14. The team settled on gold as a suitable metal to combine with copper mainly because of its known properties. (Researchers have previously combined gold and copper at much larger scales, noting that the combination prevented copper from oxidizing.)
To make the nanoparticles, Hamad-Schifferli and her colleagues mixed salts containing gold into a solution of copper salts. They heated the solution, creating nanoparticles that fused copper with gold. Xu then put the nanoparticles through a series of reactions, turning the solution into a powder that was used to coat a small electrode.
To test the nanoparticles’ reactivity, Xu placed the electrode in a beaker of solution and bubbled carbon dioxide into it. He applied a small voltage to the electrode, and measured the resulting current in the solution. The team reasoned that the resulting current would indicate how efficiently the nanoparticles were reacting with the gas: If CO2 molecules were reacting with sites on the electrode — and then releasing to allow other CO2 molecules to react with the same sites — the current would appear as a certain potential was reached, indicating regular “turnover.” If the molecules monopolized sites on the electrode, the reaction would slow down, delaying the appearance of the current at the same potential.
The team ultimately found that the potential applied to reach a steady current was much smaller for hybrid copper-gold nanoparticles than for pure copper and gold — an indication that the amount of energy required to run the reaction was much lower than that required when using nanoparticles made of pure copper.
Going forward, Hamad-Schifferli says she hopes to look more closely at the structure of the gold-copper nanoparticles to find an optimal configuration for converting carbon dioxide. So far, the team has demonstrated the effectiveness of nanoparticles composed of one-third gold and two-thirds copper, as well as two-thirds gold and one-third copper.
Hamad-Schifferli acknowledges that coating industrial-scale electrodes partly with gold can get expensive. However, she says, the energy savings and the reuse potential for such electrodes may balance the initial costs.
“It’s a tradeoff,” Hamad-Schifferli says. “Gold is obviously more expensive than copper. But if it helps you get a product that’s more attractive like methane instead of carbon dioxide, and at a lower energy consumption, then it may be worth it. If you could reuse it over and over again, and the durability is higher because of the gold, that’s a check in the plus column.”
Written by: Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office
Canada has dispensed with their penny–I suppose the US could do that too, and the metal used for this process–were pennies actually made of copper.
Anybody notice that when the government gets involved, it creates a shortage in one sector of the economy, a surplus in another, and the taxpayer ALWAYS makes up the difference?
This process might actually be useful, by increasing the efficiency of the fuel-manufacture stage of Robert Zubrin’s Mars Direct scheme: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct .
It might even allow them to power the conversion with solar panels, rather than the proposed nuclear reactor.
You guys drive me crazy.
The EPA’s draconian rules are going to prevent coal plants?
There weren’t any coal plants being built in America anyway, and there weren’t going to be any new ones in our lifetimes anyway. The economics just aren’t there for coal plants, any more than the economics will support nuclear power or windmills or photovoltaic. It’s called natural gas fracking, perhaps you’ve heard of it?
A natural gas plant is way cheaper than a coal plant, fuel delivery is easier, and power companies are assured of being able to charge enough to pay for fuel, even if natural gas prices somehow went way up.
And then consider, with natural gas you don’t need a fly ash pool or spent fuel containment at all – your spent fuel you dump into the atmosphere!
To test the nanoparticles’ reactivity, Xu placed the electrode in a beaker of solution and bubbled carbon dioxide into it. He applied a small voltage to the electrode, and measured the resulting current in the solution. The team reasoned that the resulting current would indicate how efficiently the nanoparticles were reacting with the gas: If CO2 molecules were reacting with sites on the electrode — and then releasing to allow other CO2 molecules to react with the same sites — the current would appear as a certain potential was reached, indicating regular “turnover.” If the molecules monopolized sites on the electrode, the reaction would slow down, delaying the appearance of the current at the same potential.
The team ultimately found that the potential applied to reach a steady current was much smaller for hybrid copper-gold nanoparticles than for pure copper and gold — an indication that the amount of energy required to run the reaction was much lower than that required when using nanoparticles made of pure copper.
Well. One way or another energy is needed to sequester CO2 or reuse the carbon in the CO2. How much of the power plant’s output has to be consumed to make this CH4? If it is a coal-fired power plant, where does the H come from?
Obvious questions, don’t you think? That does not mean there are no answers, but if they are in the report I missed them.
As long as we are on the topic of catalysts…Is there anyone here that can think of a catalyst to drive this reaction?:
9CH4 + 7C => 2C8H18
I smell another EPA mandate, which the power companies will fight so hard to block /sarc
Owen in GA says:
April 11, 2012 at 3:44 pm
All the thermodynamics arguments aside…let’s put on our political thinking caps here. The EPA passed a rule that limits how much CO2 per megawatt hour a plant could emit, not CH4 in order to pay back powerful political backers in the natural gas industry (I shouldn’t mention Warren Buffett by name) . So if I can convert enough CO2 to CH4 to put my CO2 level under the rule, I can keep my plant running. I don’t even care at that point if it makes sense (which it doesn’t), I am working to rule. This useless application of this technology might actually make someone a good deal of money. Of course it is a little like putting a smog pump on a 1970s internal combustion engine to make the tail pipe numbers “look good”. It is all about making the number in the regulation to get the regulators off your back.
This is it in a well-writen nutshell. EPA passes ridiculous regulations, come up with a ridiculous way around them.
Remember, this administration does not bother with “economicly sound” ideas. If this process does what they say it does, it does not matter if it causes “energy costs to necessarily skyrocket”.
Martin Hall says:
April 11, 2012 at 5:31 pm
“This process might actually be useful, by increasing the efficiency of the fuel-manufacture stage of Robert Zubrin’s Mars Direct scheme: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Direct .
”
Oh. A NatGas powered rocket.
Likes it.
Should we now include limestone deposits in our energy reserve estimates?
polistra says:
April 11, 2012 at 4:43 pm
And what about the CO2 created in mining, shipping and super-processing all that copper?
It occurs to me that a really rich anti-Green activist could do a vast amount of good for the country by the following tactic: Pay the (mostly coal-powered) utility that supplies electricity to the Washington area to shut down for a year. Cover the lost profits and so on. Agree to start up when the EPA stands down on all CO2 regulations, and promise to shut down again if EPA shows the slightest sign of returning to evil.
_____________________________________
A year is not needed.
All they need to do is shut down ALL the coal plants for one or two weeks paid vacation for all employees. That shuts down 42% of US electric power. Do it the last two weeks in October of this year….
Anyone want to start up a kitty for that project?
duncanmackenzie says:
April 11, 2012 at 5:43 pm
You guys drive me crazy.
The EPA’s draconian rules are going to prevent coal plants?
There weren’t any coal plants being built in America anyway….
_________________________________
It is called creating a monopoly. As long as new coal plants are sitting in the wings as a viable alternative gas powered plants can not jack the prices sky high. By taking coal plants out of the picture energy from gas plants can be priced higher.
The greenies are also taking aim at hydro plants because the dams might hurt the little fishies and Nuclear gives them screaming fits.
So that leaves natural gas with a monopoly since solar and wind can not handle base load.
Gail Combs:
All they need to do is shut down ALL the coal plants for one or two weeks paid vacation for all employees.
Brilliant.
All y’all just don’t get it. I’m gone take this here paper to the EPA tomorrow and git me a grant. This here is better than Solyndra.
Gail Combs and others the EPA opinion about CH4 is nonsense, The burning of natural gas (mainly CH4) gives more so-called greenhouse gases than coal because of the production of large amounts of water vapor which absorbs about ten times the radiant energy in the range 4 to 40 micron wavelength than CO2 per molecule. On the other hand CH4 does not burn/oxidise in the atmosphere and absorbs less than one fifth of the radiant energy of CO2. Someone should take the EPA to court and if they say that CH4 in the atmosphere is 21 times worse than CO2 they should be charged with perjury and jailed.
Now on this subject. Probably, it is not viable. People have experimented and even operated gasification of coal. That is how domestic gas used to be supplied long ago. The gas produced could have a number of uses such as producing peak power with gas turbines or making chemicals. A process to convert Co2 to CH4 or CH3OH from oxygen enriched combustion of coal may possibly be more economic than gasifying the coal. A coal fired base load power station that has extra capacity for peak power is not that stupid.
There is of course a super-catalyzer that would force this co2 converter to work. It is called a “mandate.”
Cheer up. I am sure these researchers will be much better at “car technology.”
So should I increase my gold holdings?
Gold and copper nano-particles. Isn’t that the mythical and magical Orichalcum of Atlantis fame and other ancient stories. It seems it might be useful on Mars to manufacture, a manned expedition’s, return fuel. GK
Okay guys, as much as it hurt’s my head, I had to put on my “Greenie” hat here to look at how this works from their point of view. Here’s what I figured out:
EPA rules say you can only produce 1000 lbs of CO2 for every MW of electricity produced. Well if a current coal power plant is producing 1200lbs for every MW of electricity produced then somehow they need to reduce their CO2 emissions by ~25% or so, such that they will only be emitting 900lbs of CO2 per 1000 MW in order to be in compliance.
Now, you start with your 100MW coal fired power plant. A few hundred yards away from the power plant a separate company set up and funded by TAX dollars and tax credits builds the CO2=>Methane plant. This plant also has an electrolysis plant to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen. There is also a pipe running from the power plant to the C02=>methane plant that will transfer 25% of the CO2 produced by the power plant to the conversion plant. Amazingly, because of the use of these new catalysts they have developed, the conversion plant can reconvert the 25% of the CO2 from the plant into methane using only 40% of the power produced by the plant. Thus the conversion plant purchases (using the TAX dollars and government incentives and energy credits along with “profit” from the resale of the Methane produced) 40% of the 100MW of power produced by the power plant.
NET RESULT: Power company is producing 100MW of power but only emitting 900lbs CO2 per megawatt into the environment. Company is in compliance and greenies, Lisa Jackson and Obama are happy.
Consumers are now going to pay nearly 2x the cost for energy since the energy company is really only providing a net of 60MW from a 100MW power plant to the consumer.
In addition, there will now be~ 1700 lbs of CO2 released instead of only 1300 lbs per MW of electricity provided to the consumer. However, the EPA/lefties won’t care because it has never been about CO2 anyways.
I’m in. I really think the two weeks at the Washington, DC plant(s) alone would suffice. But if I were an executive in the coal-fired power business, I’d be giving serious thought to a ‘power strike’, maybe not a complete shutdown at first, but a ‘brownout’, and if that were not effective, a ‘dark brownout’, and then. . .
/Mr Lynn
The trick here is to hide the CO2. You sacrafice a bit of your power and capital to get a permit. Then you burn the methanol off-premises under another permit or in an unregulated process.
This where science and law meet.
Burning a carbon-based fuel to make energy and then using the energy to make another carbon cased fuel is insanity. Every transformation of energy has losses—there is no free lunch.
The problem is solved by the fact that there is absolutely no way that CO2 causes or contributes to warming of the atmosphere by violating the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. It’s freaking impossible. Good, that problem is gone. Now, how about addressing real problems, of the nonpolitical kind.
This is no different from the Spanish solar energy company who was caught using electricity from their gird to shine spotlights on their solar panels at night to generate electricity that they could sell back to the grid at four times the cost of buying from the grid in the first place. They profited and wasted energy at the same time, quietly raping the customers, the eventual payer of the bills.
Let’s not forget that the administration has decided to have the Spanish company Scytl handle the voting count in the Fall Presidential elections. Why in heck would we outsource our voting results to somebody else and let them have full control of the future of our country? This is just plain wrong. Perhaps this is why he is so smug about winning in November—the fix is in.
The administration also suppressed the recent downgrading of out credit rating from AA+ to AA. Whose side are they on? Obviously not ours.
Ok so you can’t get more energy out of system than you put in, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t increase the efficiency. 100% of the energy stored in the coal is not turned in electricity by the power plant, there are losses. I thought the idea of this is capture some of those loses and reuse them, thus making the plant more efficant, not to create more energy than is put in, but rather not lose as much energy as would have been lost otherwise. Why isn’t that possible?
Start at the top of the smokestack.
Install heat exchangers to cool the exhaust plume.
Downdraft the cooled airflow back to ground level.
Funnel the cooled exhaust through several miles of linked greenhouses.
Some of the greenhouses would run on grow lights during the night.
Propel the airflow with solar powered fans and “batteries” at night.
Extend the length of the greenhouses as required to achieve the 25% reduction.
Find where and how the mercury and other undesirables are precipitating out and capture that.
The actual CO2 capture might be a big surprise, perhaps up to 80%.
Someone could run the numbers on that.
Use the process that mother nature gave us.
It’s cheaper and easier.
alcheson says:
April 11, 2012 at 7:23 pm
I think you have it about right, but the methane goes back to the power plant. So the result is not quite as bad as you portray.