Scientists Accidentally Discover Efficient Process to Turn CO2 Into Ethanol

[KamaAina]

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a23417/convert-co2-into-ethanol/

Scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have discovered a chemical reaction to turn CO2 into ethanol, potentially creating a new technology to help avert climate change. Their findings were published in the journal ChemistrySelect.

The researchers were attempting to find a series of chemical reactions that could turn CO2 into a useful fuel, when they realized the first step in their process managed to do it all by itself. The reaction turns CO2 into ethanol, which could in turn be used to power generators and vehicles....

This process has several advantages when compared to other methods of converting CO2 into fuel. The reaction uses common materials like copper and carbon, and it converts the CO2 into ethanol, which is already widely used as a fuel.

Perhaps most importantly, it works at room temperature, which means that it can be started and stopped easily and with little energy cost. This means that this conversion process could be used as temporary energy storage during a lull in renewable energy generation, smoothing out fluctuations in a renewable energy grid.

Party at Oak Ridge! No, srsly, it's a win-win. Less greenhouse gases, more fuel, and fewer crops used to produce ethanol!

[Cracklin Charlie]

1. Kick for later.

[haele]

2. Please, let this not be another cold fusion bust...

This could be really big, if we can replicate it on a large scale.

Haele

[Glassunion]

3. Find a way to turn it into a nice single malt Scotch and you'll really get my attention.

Seriously, pretty neat if it works.

[murpheeslaw]

4. Of COURSE they discovered this in TENNESSEE

They are really good with ethanol production there! 😜

[KamaAina]

13. Thread win!

And welcome to DU!

[Buckeye_Democrat]

5. Sounds promising!

(Fingers crossed.)

[The2ndWheel]

6. Nothing is win-win

There is a cost, as well as a benefit, to whatever we do. It's tough to beat physics.

[silverweb]

7. Please, please let this be real!

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]If it is, the process needs to be put on the fast track for wide-scale use now.

[dembotoz]

8. popular mechanics mag....uh oh

still waiting for my flying car

[Duppers]

12. Read 'em and ____

http://www.ornl.gov/news/nano-spike-catalysts-convert-carbon-dioxide-directly-ethanol

[KelleyKramer]

23. 2nd sentence of the OP .. "Their findings were published in the journal ChemistrySelect"

[bucolic_frolic]

9. Limitless energy

means we run out of everything else first

[Mustellus]

10. Ok.. CO2 to Ethanol to CO2 at "little energy cost" ???????????

Do I sense a perpetual motion machine here somewhere ?

Mustellus.. Playing a PhD physicist in real life since 1970....

[Buckeye_Democrat]

11. Hard to know what "little" means from the article, other than...

... comparative to other techniques.

It doesn't imply a violation of thermodynamics.

More text:

"A process like this would allow you to consume extra electricity when it's available to make and store as ethanol," said Rondinone. "This could help to balance a grid supplied by intermittent renewable sources."

The researchers plan to further study this process and try and make it more efficient. If they're successful, we just might see large-scale carbon capture using this technique in the near future.

[patsimp]

14. i doubt this is real.

[4lbs]

16. It's real. It's front page right now on Oak Ridge's own government web site.

https://www.ornl.gov/

[paulkienitz]

15. ethanol is a surprising outcome

As near as I can guess how it might work, it could turn two carbon dioxides into two carbon monoxides plus an oxygen molecule, and if you stick those COs together and decorate with hydrogen (thereby producing more oxygen, if you get the hydrogen from water)... well, it's not ethanol, it's ethylene glycol -- antifreeze. There must be something about the process that favors an asymmetrical alcohol molecule over the glycol -- something that involves losing yet more oxygen. Even if there's a bias, though, it's hard to see how it couldn't be producing a significant fraction of either ethylene glycol, ethane, or both, as producing ethanol involves splitting the difference between those.

They are downplaying the electric part of the process by noting that it only takes 1.2 volts... but if you want to produce in quantity, I bet the current has to be huge. You have to put in at least the energy you'd get by burning the fuel, so that's a lot of electricity. Given that it uses low voltage DC the ideal power supply would probably be solar panels. The yield per acre would not be anything terrific.

[ffr]

17. Yes, but how do you readily extract CO2 from the oceans or atmosphere?

That's the hard part, getting it in concentrations to make converting it viable.

[KamaAina]

21. You capture it at the source

car exhaust, as mentioned downthread, or better still, smokestacks of fossil fuel-powered plants.

[NickB79]

22. Which requires scrubbers and pressurization systems

When you capture CO2, you have to concentrate and pressurize it, much like you do with propane.

And therein lies the rub; it's incredibly energy-intensive to do this, and I highly doubt this process will work efficiently with low-density, impure CO2 feedstocks.

One of the main reasons carbon capture at coal factories has never become feasible is because it can take a fairly sizeable portion of the coal plant's energy output just to capture and compress the CO2 emissions coming from it's stacks.

[Ruth Bonner]

24. Thanks for clarifying that...

I read the story on the lab page and was wondering if atmospheric CO2 would do. So they have one step conquered and someone needs to figure out how to efficiently pressurize CO2. Still an impressive finding.

[keithbvadu2]

18. If only there wasn't such a shortage of CO2...

[jmowreader]

19. I wonder: will it work at, oh, 200 degrees F?

Maybe we could bubble car exhaust through water, capture the CO2-laden steam that results and condense it back to liquid water before sending it into this reactor - the output of which would be fed into the engine's fuel rail. You'd still need to burn gasoline because there's no such thing as a free lunch, but you wouldn't need as much of it.

[MineralMan]

20. The heck with fuel. This will make vodka from club soda.

LOL!