Comments on: Plastic “Tree” Uses Biomimicry to Convert Atmospheric CO2 into Green Gasoline

By: Common sense

Common sense — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 16:36:00 +0000

To recycle CO2 into fuel, you need much more energy than you’ll receive from burning it. If you use fuel to produce electricity, and then more electricity to recycle CO2 into fuel, you have just wasted energy. –> Useless.

This technology would only be usefull if all your electricity was created with nuclear or renewable energy. And that’s obviously not the case in a huge majority of countries.

By: It’s Not Easy Being Green | Environmental Leadership, Ethics, and Action

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:24:21 +0000

[…] or carbonated drinks) can purchase recycled CO2. It is also a possibility that recycled CO2 can be converted into gasoline and then the gasoline emissions can be recollected as CO2. This would allow us to still use our […]

By: Dave Wesely

Dave Wesely — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 14:30:00 +0000

Closing the carbon loop is really the only long term solution. We need to pull the CO2 out of the atmosphere that has been previously added from fossil fuels to put our climate back into balance. Better efficiency and renewable fuels only slow down the release of CO2 into the atmosphere, they do not reverse it.

An item overlooked in this article is the source of the energy needed to convert the CO2 back into a gasoline like liquid or carbon solid. And THAT energy is excess solar. The energy grid can only handle about 12% of its energy supply from direct solar or wind due to energy storage limitations. Instead of limiting the amount of solar energy we collect to match our power needs, we should be using the excess energy to “close the loop”. And in effect using a liquid hydrocarbon as the storage medium. I know it is not the most efficient use of the energy, and that ICE are not either, but it is better that not collecting the solar energy at all.

By: Esteban Sperber

Esteban Sperber — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:06:00 +0000

Very interesting, but I wonder why to use Hydrogen + co2 to make gasoline, it is not better that cars use directly hydrogen, like the only hybrid Hydrogen gasoline from BMW 7 active, I think the same hydrogen can be used to make gasoline can directly move any car with hydrogen, some countries in north Europe and Bavarian Police are using Hydrogen, not gasoline, so we don’t get any direct contamination from the cars. Thank You.

By: Ele Truk

Ele Truk — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 20:52:00 +0000

The bigger issue is efficiency. With EVs being 90% efficient (tank to wheels) and overall efficiency 30-70% efficient (coal to PV sources) there is no way recycling CO2 to a liquid fuel will be anywhere as efficient as an EV is now. Maybe one day when we have unlimited Fusion power, the conversion cycle efficiencies won’t matter. But here in the real world, it will cost Waaaaayyy more to recombine hydrogen to CO2 to make liquid fuels, than competing technologies (which include simply drilling or even tar sands). The end result may be similar (less CO2 in the atmosphere), but the economics are hugely disparate.

By: Elina

Elina — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 12:03:00 +0000

This is only a closed loop as long as the capture and extraction of CO2 as well as the manufacture of the gasoline consume no energy or materials. Trees are still more efficient in the sense that they are fully powered by solar energy and they produce fuel directly. Also the point about NOx emissions is very valid.

By: Breath on the Wind

Breath on the Wind — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:40:00 +0000

If it were only so simple. We have been able to make gasoline for over 100 years using the Fischer-Tropsch process. It is only about 5% efficient and therefore costly. Only in South Africa where they had existing plants is the process used extensively. If this process were economical it might be beneficial to remove carbon at perhaps the most intense source: the smoke stacks of coal fired power plants.

Much attention in the media is on carbon but just the operation of the internal combustion engine produces NOX no matter what fuel is used. This precursor to smog results from the atmospheric nitrogen being exposed to high temperature and compression. Sulpher dioxide is another pollutant resulting from internal combustion. The ICE engine and drive train is only about 15% efficient so the fuel we carefully make would be 85% wasted.

By: Younes Badraoui

Younes Badraoui — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 17:35:00 +0000

If CO2 could be captured and recycled into fuel, it could as well be used to make electricity to fuel electric cars. That would actually be a lot better than looping into the existing cycle: more efficiency, wider use and cleaner cities.

You idea and theirs aren’t really incompatible.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 23:24:00 +0000

“This transition to a renewable or carbon neutral energy system could easily take 50 or 100 years, even if we started working on it hard today, which we’re not doing.”

If we worked hard on it we could move the world from fossil fuels to renewable energy in 20 years.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030&page=5

This is a scheme to make liquid fuel which, according to its proponents, would work if gas was only a bit more expensive. Electric vehicles cost 25% or less per mile as liquid fuel vehicles.

A move to 100% renewable energy and EVs could be accomplished with technology we have in hand, and in use, today. It’s all about political will, not the need for some breakthrough technology.