From the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA and the “fuel out of thin air” department comes this announcement that says right off the bat it can’t compete with oil, especially when gasoline is now under $2 a gallon in some parts of California.
Carbon dioxide captured from air converted directly to methanol fuel for the first time
Research could one day create a sustainable fuel source from greenhouse gas emissions
They’re making fuel from thin air at the USC Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute.
For the first time, researchers there have directly converted carbon dioxide from the air into methanol at relatively low temperatures.
The work, led by G.K. Surya Prakash and George Olah of the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, is part of a broader effort to stabilize the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by using renewable energy to transform the greenhouse gas into its combustible cousin – attacking global warming from two angles simultaneously. Methanol is a clean-burning fuel for internal combustion engines, a fuel for fuel cells and a raw material used to produce many petrochemical products.
“We need to learn to manage carbon. That is the future,” said Prakash, professor of chemistry and director of the USC Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute.
The researchers bubbled air through an aqueous solution of pentaethylenehexamine (or PEHA), adding a catalyst to encourage hydrogen to latch onto the CO2 under pressure. They then heated the solution, converting 79 percent of the CO2 into methanol. Though mixed with water, the resulting methanol can be easily distilled, Prakash said.
The new process was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society on Dec. 29. Prakash and Olah hope to refine the process to the point that it could be scaled up for industrial use, though that may be five to 10 years away.
“Of course it won’t compete with oil today, at around $30 per barrel,” Prakash said. “But right now we burn fossilized sunshine. We will run out of oil and gas, but the sun will be there for another five billion years. So we need to be better at taking advantage of it as a resource.”
Despite its outsized impact on the environment, the actual concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is relatively small – roughly 400 parts per million, or 0.04 percent of the total volume, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. (For a comparison, there’s more than 23 times as much the noble gas Argon in the atmosphere – which still makes up less than 1 percent of the total volume.)
Previous efforts have required a slower multistage process with the use of high temperatures and high concentrations of CO2, meaning that renewable energy sources would not be able to efficiently power the process, as Olah and Prakash hope.
The new system operates at around 125 to 165 degrees Celsius (257 to 359 degrees Fahrenheit), minimizing the decomposition of the catalyst – which occurs at 155 degrees Celsius (311 degrees Fahrenheit). It also uses a homogeneous catalyst, making it a quicker “one-pot” process. In a lab, the researchers demonstrated that they were able to run the process five times with only minimal loss of the effectiveness of the catalyst.
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Olah and Prakash collaborated with graduate student Jotheeswari Kothandaraman and senior research associates Alain Goeppert and Miklos Czaun of USC Dornsife. Their research was supported by the USC Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute, and their paper can be found online here: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jacs.5b12354
One way you could get around the first law issues is if you are using a coal fired plant’s waste heat to run this process, then convert the plant’s CO2 emissions. You might be able to eek out a little more efficiency from a coal fired plant, although of course CO2 emissions will ultimately be the same once the methane is processed.
There’s a reason that they call it ” waste heat “.
That’s what is left over after you have used the useful energy to do some work. It’s the garbage dump of the energy industry, and you can’t turn it all back into useful energy.
Brownian Motion of atmospheric dust demonstrates that the molecular motions of heat, go in every which way at random, and they aren’t likely to co-operate with each other in moving the ball in just one direction.
It’s hard to get lower on the stored chemical energy totem pole, than CO2 gas and H2O water. Well you can get a bit lower by adding salts to the water to make sea water. But we already have plenty of sea water, and it has a lot of CO2 in it as well.
g
You could, conceivably, using a new design of boiler for the coal plants use the same water you are already heating and driving turbines with in a secondary chamber that gets both a CO2 bubbler added as well as pentaethylenehexamine to generate the methane as the water cools.
The real engineering issue would be creating a distiller that was effective at separating the methanol.
[To save money, the mods recommend submitting this patent proposal in the same envelope as the next perpetual motion machine. .mod]
Years back I saw a story on a fish farm that was diverting some of the water that was headed [from] a power plants cooling pond and used it to warm the water in the fish ponds.
There are a few uses for such low density energy, but not many, and not all of them can be located close enough to the power plant to take advantage of it.
I was speaking of using the waste heat to help heat the working fluid temperature up to the 165 C level that their process operates at. Even if it’s just used to preheat the fluid, and additional energy is needed to get it up to 165C, it’s still useful work that can be extracted from the waste heat. Thanks for the condescending lecture though…harkens me back to my Mechanical Engineering study days.
An “simple” process to produce Methanol from CO2? Sound like it’s ideal for Mars! Just read Zubrin’s “The Case for Mars” where he suggested using methanol/oxygen fuel cells for Mars Rovers. You could even use it for rocket engines. One drawback compared to the production of Methane was according to Zubrin that it was more difficult to produce.
Of course we need to wait to see how (and if!) this lab demonstration can be transitioned to real life flight hardware…
No matter how much shit you shove up a horses ass, you will never get hay to come out of its mouth.
But since it for our grandchildren then we have to at least try. (and by we, I mean you).
Well you can buy hay pretty cheaply; specially if you are satisfied with hay that has already been once through the horse !
g
+100
But it’s free sh*t!
Entropy is monotonously single-minded.
Perhaps someone should tell them about photosynthesis!
Yep. But still, all the wood, coal and oil we consume once was hay. Eaten by dynasaurs.
Somehow I think we should be able to reinvent this process. Cheaper and faster.
dynasaur? Is that some kind of ancient power measuring device?
not my day. I meant dinosaurs. At least it’s a nice typo 😉
I cannot see a difference between this and the work of PhD students working under Prof Biswas at Washington University in St Louis. The difference seems to be that Biswas is working on a system than works using solar power at 70 C, a much lower temperature. They are also using an exhaust stream, not open air, so it is far more efficient. Instead of letting the emitted CO2 loose and trying the gather it again, it takes the emissions as they emerge and use solar energy and a catalyst to create methanol.
There is more than one way to skim a catalyst.
There are at least 2 thermochemical paths to convert CO2 and water into hydrocarbon fuel:
(1) Use CO2 and hydrogen in the reverse water-gas reaction to form carbon monoxide. Use water and hydrolysis to form hydrogen. Use CO and H2 in the Fischer-Tropsch reaction to make whatever hydrocarbon you like.
(2) Dissociate CO2 into CO and oxygen (heat will do nicely), then follow with hydrolysis and Fischer-Tropsch.
There will be quite a bit of heat flowing to and from these various reactions, so it is best performed all in one facility.
It is simply a way to convert otherwise directly-useless nuclear heat into transportation fuel. Be mindful of the fact that thermal watts from a nuclear power plant are cheaper than electrical watts, due to the conversion efficiency. (Another way is with coal and water, but that is almost too simple.)
The CO2 can come from the atmosphere or from pyrolysis of junk organic matter. This is a process that can produce essentially unlimited quantities of fuel without straining natural resources or altering the atmospheric composition (assuming that you actually burn the fuel for use). Because the Greens are fundamentally anti-industry and anti-energy, I think you will find that this prospect sets their hair on fire.
Either process is a net energy loss. Have you overlooked the energy requirement involved in harvesting 400+ ppm of CO2 from the air? The most effective way to do it (and still get a usable product) involved refrigeration below -109.3°F (-78.5°C), which needs a LOT of energy.
Of course, you could always obtain CO2 from CO2 gas wells – no methane or oil involved – just fracking, drilling, acidifying carbonate rock, etc.
Cooling air down to -78.5 deg. C will get you precisely no dry ice from your CO2 laden air.
Need to look again at the CO2 phase diagram.
g
Various amines complex CO2 reversibly and they are used to capture it. Of course the efficiency would be greatly improved by capture from more concentrated sources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amine_gas_treating
It will work if they throw enough taxpayer subsidy at it. See ethanol and biodiesel for business models.
Let’s apply a handheld calculator, some HS chemistry, thermo, and build an overall energy balance. More perpetual motion heat loop hocus pocus.
Well wow!
What are the byproducts of the reaction? I am no chemist but I am certain that there is more to the reaction than:
air + nasty chemical + heat + catalyst = clean air scrubbed of CO2 + clean water + methanol.
Ray H: You forgot to leave the catalyst on both sides (it is not supposed to be consumed in the reaction) and there is probably some residual “nasty chemical” on the right hand side (incomplete reaction) and some residual CO2 for the same reason.
Why would you be “certain that there is more to the reaction” if you are no chemist?
Michael J, you are correct that, by definition, the catalyst should not be consumed during the reaction. Likewise, at any given time the portion of nasty chemical that is not consumed will remain. Beyond that, yes, I am certain that there is more to the reaction (ie. there will be byproducts created).
The process requires that hydrogen be stripped from the PEHA (nasty chemical) to combine with carbon stripped from CO2 to produce methane. The remaining elements will certainly combine to form new compounds that would be considered byproducts to the reaction. Since I am not a chemist, I have no idea what these compounds will be. I just know they will be created and my point is that the reaction output will not be limited to clean air, clean water, methanol, and a benign (not toxic) catalyst.
Beyond disposing of the resulting liquid waste, the byproducts could pose a real problem if any of them have an evaporation temperature lower than methanol as they would be released first in the distillation process.
To answer your second question, I am an engineer with rudimentary chemistry education from many, many years ago.
If, by some miracle, this turned out to be a widely adopted technology, the UN would immediately form a “scientific” commission to study how its use is starving plants of carbon dioxide.
Methanol is really too difficult to handle. What you really need to do is get to ethanol. How much is the distillation at the end of the process going to require?. What is the energy in vs the energy out for the whole process. I myself have been experimenting with a biochemical process that turns H2O and CO2 under sunlight into a solid fuel that is easy to burn. The fuel is identical to wood. The process is as easy as growing trees and also generates O2.
Why do you say that methanol is too difficult to handle? The main issues are materials compatibility and flammability. Preventing toxic exposure is relatively easy, and if it’s spilled it isn’t the dire disaster that many would have us believe. Methanol disappears very quickly from the environment through a number of mechanisms, including both aerobic and anaerobic bio-degradation.
The toxicity of methanol to humans and some other animals is largely a result of species-specific metabolism pathways that can result in formaldehyde buildup in the system.
If they think that this is economic, they can go right ahead and start production. They can risk their own money, not ours.
The basic idea is a dream: Let’s turn ashes back into fuel. CO2 is a product of combustion, and so is water. Why don’t they turn water into fuel? BTW, water is a much worse greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
The College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences is a nice incubator of dreams.
There is already an efficient process for turning CO2 into fuel. It’s called photosynthesis. So we let the trees do the conversion, then we burn the trees as fuel, releasing CO2 for the next generation of trees.
What next? How about splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen. Oh wait, that takes energy. Both CO2 and H2O are the products of combustion. Reversing the process takes up more energy than it can produce – isn’t that a basic law of thermodynamics?
The British scientist and author C.P. Snow had an excellent way of remembering the three laws:
1. You cannot win (that is, you cannot get something for nothing, because matter and energy are conserved).
2. You cannot break even (you cannot return to the same energy state, because there is always an increase in disorder; entropy always increases).
3. You cannot get out of the game (because absolute zero is unattainable).
Well said.
Massive reduction reaction (removal of oxygen/addition of Hydrogen).
Where is the energy coming from? (Remember that catalysts lower the activation energy, not the total energetics).
This is just another energy scam and has no merit as a practical idea.
Where does the hydrogen come from? H2 does not exist in nature for very long. Bacteria turns it into methane. Hydrogen is an important industrial chemical. It is a huge industry. H2 for industry is mainly produced from natural gas or methane. Because of chemical properties of H2 we are not worried about energy efficiency. One example of a useful chemical is ammonia. The by product is CO2, lots of it.
The fist point is there are plenty of concentrated sources of CO2.
Second, methanol is not a good transportation fuel. It is always fun to watch the debate on who pet bad idea is better. I am sticking with corn ethanol. For the record there was no rush to get there. There is no corn ethanol mandate. The 2005 Energy Bill did require that some transportation come from renewable sources. Farmers in places like Iowa beat the competition with a practical product.
The second point is that you have to beat the competition in the market place.
I worked in nuclear power. Not that I am worried about CO2 but is much more practical to not burn fossil fuel to make electricity that it is scrub it out trace amounts for the air.
In all fairness, this is not an “energy scam.” They very clearly acknowledged that they needed source energy to drive the process–though their selection of “renewable” energy is, admittedly, laughable. Even so, their approach is no rejection of known thermodynamics. In their playbook, it would be an energy storage approach.
But methanol? Brand Yechhh as a fuel, but not unreasonable if used in a fuel cell. I’ve read that methanol fuel cells are being investigated to supersede lithium-ion batteries in small consumer electronics.
“They’re making fuel from thin air at the USC ….”
Scam! The fuel is hydrogen. I went back and read the press release and the ACS abstract. It is not clearly acknowledged.
If you can not see the scam, would you be interested in a bridge in NYC?
It seems to me that GOD invented a way to convert CO2 and H2O into fuel a few billion years ago. Really low tech if I remember correctly, just requires sunlight for energy to power the catalysts and they replicate themselves during the processes. Any patents ran out long ago and the seed stock is freely available. 😎 …pg
Interesting science but what a waste. Why not let plants pull the CO2 out of the air for nothing, and then turn the plants into fuel? It is easy to turn organic material into fuel, and some processes are getting close to being commercially viable.
It might work with plentiful nuclear energy if it was too cheep to meter, but from Rud Istvan:
https://judithcurry.com/2015/07/01/intermittent-grid-storage/
Tilting at windmills.
It is not fossil fuel. It is hydrocarbons. It is renewable. It is created deep in the
earth and rises until it hits resistance, such as a layer of sedimentary rock
which allows it to accumulate, causing some people to come to the conclusion
that is “fossil”. When the pressure is relieved, more will perk up, continuously
renewing.
Nothing can compete with hydrocarbons for portable energy. The idea that
they are rare or should be expensive or are running out is an idea perpetuated
by big oil and the IPCC types to further their own interests, big oil to
be able to charge more than their product is actually worth and the IPCC
to take over world governance.
CO2 is in the energy valley. You can push it back up the hill (methanol) and roll it down again, but all you get back is SOME of the energy you spent pushing it up.
120 posts and nobody mentioned the word Chlorophyll
I am truly amazed
Well you should be amazed. UCLA is claiming they have repealed the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
Pssst. USC.
Steve Case,
Did you just do a word search? You should have actually read the posts. A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet. Photosynthesis was mentioned by name several time and by inference (plant/tree growth) many times.
I read the posts because there were a few points I considered making but discovered great minds think alike – others had already made those points.
SR
Nor any of the terms to invoke Godwin’s Law (or, if so, I missed it).
Quote
Carbon Recycling International has built an adjacent plant that converts the carbon dioxide into methanol, a fuel and feedstock for making plywood, paints, and other products. It may be the first company anywhere to demonstrate a commercially viable way of making liquid fuel directly from carbon dioxide, something that could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/521031/company-makes-co2-into-liquid-fuel-with-help-from-a-volcano/
Unquote
If you read the link, you will note that Iceland generates at USD 4 cents per kilowatt hour. That is the global base price. Compare that with free renewable energy in Germany at USD 40 cents.
Case closed
Note also all electricity generating fuels. oil, gas and coal plus transport are at record lows.
As someone who examined hopefully the prospect of methanol as an alternative fuel (i.e. making methanol from coal), human heath issues raise their heads. As we know, ingesting methanol in any kind of significant amounts (as in bad moonshine) can have deleterious effects on humans, including affecting the brain and causing blindness (because methanol damages the optic nerve).
Though small amounts of methanol are processed by the body routinely (such as in orange juice) without any damage at all, even amounts people would be exposed to such as sitting in rush hour traffic on a highway with many methanol-fueled cars, or even being in a garage where a methanol-fueled car was recently parked (as methanol evaporates) can cause damage to people, especially smaller children.
Changing the parts of a car out that would be damaged by methanol is not an expensive proposition, but there are issues with water in the fuel since the methanol is hydrophilic.
USC has designed a method of turning a harmless gas into a non-safe fuel by a multi-step process using large amounts of energy (requiring much more energy – and therefore fuel of some type – than produced), a toxic catalyst, and a pile of money.
If we want methanol, we could make it from coal as well as oil, where at least the feedstock is also the fuel.
If I recall correctly, ingesting petrol is not recommended either and it is explosive.
The point of your post is???????????
Did Norm not mention methanol evaporates?