Science Daily: Scientists solve puzzle of converting gaseous carbon dioxide to fuel - Saving the planet from climate change with a grain of sand
summary - Every year, humans advance climate change and global warming by injecting about 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Scientists believe they've found a way to convert all these emissions into energy-rich fuel in a carbon-neutral cycle that uses a very abundant natural resource: silicon. Readily available in sand, it's the seventh most-abundant element in the universe and the second most-abundant element in the earth's crust.
3 comments:
Human ingenuity when under pressure is what will hopefully save us. The advances in materials science the last few yrs. is astonishing and gratifying, but useless if not applied in time or on the scale necessary. In the case of climate change everybody is now very aware we have an excess waste GHG problem that needs to be addressed in two ways. The first is we need new sustainable non- Fossil energy sources and soon. This part of the puzzle is being dealt with daily and is doable. Here the issue is new efficient ways to store these sources of energy for later distributed use. The second issue is harder and were only now dealing with it at the basic science level. This is capturing and either sequestering the massive amounts of CO2 in the air or like this new process and others like it turning it into products that we can use like gaseous Methane and others. Now I'm not sure turning CO2 into methane another even more potent GHG is a good or a bad thing? The important thing is were finding ways to deal with the excess up there and also creating devices to do the job. All of this stuff is moving forward and that's a good thing. Time though is of the essence, were running out of time to do this. Nature is not going to wait around for us to solve these problems. The Climate system is much more delicate and multifaceted then anyone ever suspected and we've screwed around with it big time. Like ignorant children being allowed to mess with a complex machine ( Planet Earth) we've started processes going that were better left on auto.
I re-read the article to clear up one pt. Since it's a CARBON neutral process that means its a GOOD thing since its then taking carbon out of the cycle and burning it not adding carbon. Now this isn't a perfect solution by any means because all that excess carbon is still going to be in the air. It just means we can use it as fuel going forward and not burn "new" amounts of FOSSIL fuels like Coal and Oil. The down side of this is that the excess CO2 CH4 ( methane) still needs to eventually come out of the atmosphere because it's causing the warming. So, other new processes like the one in Iceland being used where CO2 is being made into limestone deep under the Earth will still be necessary in the long run. It's a BIG BIG BIG job and it will take many many generations to set things back on a ore normal footing. Even if we do all this and I think given the chance we probably will have to, it still isn't going to solve the whole problem by any means. This is because we have already set in motion other planetary processes that are released other sources of planetary Fossil energy like all the methane and CO2 frozen in the arctic tundras and under the Oceans as frozen hydrated methane or Methane calcatrate. So, the sooner we get going the better because if we don't slow down these processes fast the planet itself will enter a kind of fast runaway heating mode kind of like a fever state in us. Fevers are to kill microbes ...GET IT?
Glenn thanks for helping to explain this to us, it's very helpful and valuable. I see an article like this and I think, excellent, we are at the beginning of this science to get the CO2 out and as technology, experience, and knowledge gain and grow, then we get better innovation and better solutions. But as you say, we are in a race with time. This is the critical point.
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