Researchers unveil new method for converting carbon dioxide into jet fuel

[Judi Lynn]

The experiment could open a new area of research in which the greenhouse gas could be extracted from the air, stored and used to power planes



(Bloomberg Creative Photos/Bloomberg)

By
Dalvin Brown
Dec. 31, 2020 at 5:00 a.m. CST

Researchers led by Oxford University have developed a strategy for creating jet fuel out of natural greenhouse gas, joining a growing list of firms and aviation organizations aiming to tackle mounting climate change concerns.
Last week, the research team in Britain published a study on a novel scientific process that would transform carbon dioxide in the air into an alternative jet fuel that could power existing aircraft.

Environmentalists have long believed that commercial flying damages the climate with the massive amount of CO2 that passenger jets emit globally; air travel accounts for about 2.5 percent of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions. The problem is rooted in the burning of fossil fuels, a process that essentially takes carbon buried beneath the Earth’s surface and releases it into the atmosphere. The process is thought to contribute to global warming.

Instead of adding to the amount of carbon in the air, the Oxford experiment would result in a “carbon-neutral” emission by aircraft. Essentially, a jet would extract the gas from the air while on the ground and re-emit it via combustion while in flight.

“We need to reuse the carbon dioxide rather than simply burying or trying to replace it in the aviation industry,” said Peter Edwards, a professor of inorganic chemistry at Oxford and a lead researcher on the project. “This is about a new and exciting, climate-conscious, circular aviation economy.”

More:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/31/jet-fuel-climate-change-co2/

[Faux pas]

1. Kickin'

[hunter]

2. Original paper, open access, here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20214-z

Extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere isn't a trivial business and synthesizing jet fuel from it would require an uninterrupted power source if flying is to be affordable by anyone but the uber-wealthy.

The only existing technology that can accomplish this is nuclear power. It would be silly to do this with hybrid wind-solar-natural gas systems, although someone is likely to do it, call the fuel "green," and sell it at a premium.

I think if we quit fossil fuels entirely many affluent people would decide nuclear power is acceptable rather than give up the high energy fossil fueled consumer lifestyles they now enjoy.

Or, more likely, we will continue to burn fossil fuels until climate change and rising seas cause this first world civilization to collapse and billions of people to die prematurely, mostly people who didn't cause the crisis.

[NNadir]

3. Well considering that Nazi Germany made the first jet fuel with this chemistry in 1944...

...it's not really all that impressive, or for that matter, "new."

This is one (of many) "new" FT (Fischer-Tropsch) catalysts, but the FT reaction is over 80 years old, and has been industrialized in several places where access to petroleum has been limited by political issues or by war. The Germans industrialized it, and so did the South Africans in the Apartheid era. It was a key component of Jimmy Carter's energy program to address the "oil shocks" of the 1970s. In all three cases, coal was the starting material.

Chinese scientists publish "coal to liquid fuels" papers regularly. Most FT papers use carbon monoxide, but carbon dioxide is also widely used in this chemistry, particularly because the hydrogen is made using the water gas reaction.

A much more impressive pathway to jet fuel, one that overcomes the entropy of mixing associated with carbon dioxide is Heather Willauer's work: Development of an Electrolytic Cation Exchange Module for the Simultaneous Extraction of Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen Gas from Natural Seawater (Heather D. Willauer, Felice DiMascio, Dennis R. Hardy, and Frederick W. Williams Energy & Fuels 2017 31 (2), 1723-1730) She works at the Naval Research Laboratory, and developed this technology to make it possible for aircraft carriers to generate jet fuel at sea.

I believe her technology has advanced to pilot stage.

There have been many proposals for circular carbon methods, going back decades. For me, one of the most beautiful of these is the Review Article by the Nobel Laureate George Olah and his colleagues: Chemical Recycling of Carbon Dioxide to Methanol and Dimethyl Ether: From Greenhouse Gas to Renewable, Environmentally Carbon Neutral Fuels and Synthetic Hydrocarbons (George A. Olah, Alain Goeppert, and G. K. Surya Prakash The Journal of Organic Chemistry 2009 74 (2), 487-498)

Almost 12 years after he published this paper, one still sees some of the ideas raised in it being kicked around. Just this week I came across an alkyl amine functionalized MCM-41 paper somewhere - I can't remember precisely where - that made me think of Olah.