In fact, the problem with turning CO2 back into a hydrocarbon fuel is not so much in transformation—there are at least three potential approaches to do so with sunlight, along with a process that employs high pressures and temperatures, so-called Fischer-Tropsch, which is currently used—but rather the tremendous expense involved. "It's an uphill process to convert CO2 to methanol. It's going to cost you some energy," Bocarsly says. "The current rate of generating methanol is not high enough to be commercial."
Solar heat
The sun bathes Earth in more energy in an hour than human civilization uses in a year. Giant dish mirrors in the New Mexico desert erected by scientists at Sandia National Laboratories capture some of that energy and have been used to concentrate it on a cylindrical machine that looks like a beer keg—a would-be solar-fuel generator. Nestled inside that machine are a series of rotating, concentric rings. Turning at roughly one rotation per minute, the CR5—for counter rotating ring receiver reactor recuperator—moves these rings studded with teeth containing iron oxide (also known as ferrite, or rust) or cerium oxide (ceria) into and out of the sunlight. The sun heats the teeth as high as 1,500 degrees Celsius—driving oxygen out of the rust—before they rotate back into the darkness and cool off to roughly 900 degrees C. In the darkness, steam or CO2 is injected and the greedy ferrite sucks the oxygen out of those molecules—leaving carbon monoxide (CO) or hydrogen (H2) behind—before rotating back into the sun.
The resulting CO–H2 mixture is so-called synthesis gas, or syngas—the basic molecular building block of fossil fuels, chemicals, even plastics. The CR5 "is a chemical heat engine," says chemical physicist Ellen Stechel, program manager of Sandia's Sunshine to Petrol project that basically seeks to reverse fossil-fuel combustion. "It's doing chemical work, breaking a bond."
The CR5 has already been turned on three times—and will likely be run again this year before the sun gets too weak, according to chemical engineer James Miller of Sandia, co-inventor of the device. But it has never reached the steady state necessary to efficiently throw off syngas. The problem is the thousands of ceramic tiles that form the reactive teeth on the edge of the rotating rings, some of which break as the process heats up. "You're cycling back and forth from 1,500 to 900 [degrees C], and that's a lot to ask of a material," notes chemist Gary Dirks, director of LightWorks at Arizona State University, who is not involved with the project.
Other groups are working on different designs or different materials, such as zinc oxide, but finding better materials is only one part of the challenge—the Sandia researchers estimate they could make a precisely equivalent replacement gasoline, diesel or jet fuel for roughly $10 per gallon. Simply put, all those specialty mirrors to concentrate the sunlight and metal structures to hold those mirrors in place are expensive. "Even though sunlight is free, what costs you the most is collecting it and converting it into a useable form," Miller says. "Sunlight is the make-or-break feedstock."
But there is another problem: to replace the 20 million barrels of oil used every day in the U.S. alone—roughly 60 percent of which is imported—would require roughly 685 million concentrating solar dishes covering more than six million hectares of the desert Southwest. It would also require 62.4 trillion moles of concentrated CO2 per year. "That's the miracle we haven't addressed," Miller says.
Even capturing and concentrating the emissions from the nation's fleet of fossil fuel–fired power plants—which would add even more to the expense of the process—would not be enough. "Liquid fuel to burn in your car is the ultimate manifestation of making things at scale," notes chemist Eric Toone, an ARPA-e program manager working on so-called "electrofuels," or hydrocarbons manufactured via microbes. "When you think of how much oil we actually need, that source of CO2 becomes a really great question."
Artificial photosynthesis
Nature has an answer. Plants pull CO2 out of the air and, thanks to the ongoing burning of the results of millions of years of photosynthesis (otherwise known as fossil fuels), atmospheric concentrations continue to rise. Unfortunately, plants are woefully inefficient at turning sunlight into food—averaging at best 1 percent of the incoming sunlight stored as chemical energy, thanks to competing concerns like survival—one main reason that the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) estimates that at best, 15 percent of the nation's energy needs could come from biofuels (pdf).
Chemist Nathan Lewis of the California Institute of Technology would like to improve on that by mimicking the processes of photosynthesis—light absorbers, molecule-makers and membranes to separate various products, among other things—artificially. "Nature uses enzymes; we use inorganic complexes or metals," Lewis says of a new effort to create artificial photosynthesis launched with DoE funding on July 22. "Materials carry as much [electric] current as you like because they move electrons rather than molecules."
Lewis notes that all of these artificial processes exist on their own—but do not necessarily work well together. The goal over the next five years of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, a project that Lewis directs, will be to simply prove that it can be done. "If we demonstrate that we can make solar-fuel generators, it would be like the Wright brothers," he says. "It's not a 747, but it shows humans can fly."
Lewis is not alone. Massachusetts Institute of Technology chemist Dan Nocera is working with novel catalysts to improve water-splitting—the vital step for deriving the hydrogen that is then paired with CO2 to make hydrocarbons. NASA has funded scientists to research turning CO2 to fuels in order to make it possible for Mars explorers to manufacture rocket fuel from the Martian atmosphere for their return trip to Earth. And Mantra Energy has paired with utility KOSPO to employ its electrochemical cell technology to convert CO2 to formic acid—an essential building block for many chemicals or fuels— at one of the company's coal-fired power plants in South Korea. "What they're doing with [CO2] now is they are having to release it to the atmosphere" despite having attached dry-adsorption technology to capture the CO2, explains John Russell, Mantra's chief technology officer, although he admits his start-up has yet to build a power plant–size unit. "That is going to take the best part of six months and then we'll run it for a similar sort of time."
Liquid light
The utility of liquid fuels is clear: one gallon of gasoline contains as much energy as 55,000 gallons of water pumped uphill to the height of Hoover Dam and then dropped back through turbines, and the best batteries offer 200 watt-hours per kilogram of energy whereas gasoline delivers 140,000 watt-hours per liter, according to Caltech's Lewis. "There is nothing that can come close to the gravimetric and volumetric density of liquid fuel," ARPA–e's Toone notes. "It's hard to see how you electrify long-distance trucking and impossible to see how you electrify long-distance flight."
In fact, replacing one oil field that produces 500,000 barrels a day would require a 100-square-kilometer algae-biofuel field, according to former oil man Dirks—and replacing the world's oil habit in that way would require thousands of such fields. "It will take at least 20 years before we get a material change in the existing system, by which I mean 15 to 20 percent of our liquid fuels coming from something we don't do right now," he says. "That's as fast as we can do it."
In the last 150 years or so humanity has already run through a few hundred million years of ancient photosynthesis conveniently stored underground. Whereas vast reserves of such fossil sunshine remains—think of the tar sands in Canada or coal beds in Siberia—the cost of utilizing them is an entirely altered climate from the one that has allowed human civilization to flourish. Plus, "this is a finite resource," Toone notes.
Liquid Light would like to push back that deadline by allowing CO2 molecules to be recycled via a version of the electrochemical cell from Bocarsly's Princeton lab. "If you can get even one more cycle out of the same CO2 molecule before you put it in the atmosphere, it's much more efficient," says physicist Nety Krishna, CEO for Liquid Light. "Essentially, you delay the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere."
The company has replaced the expensive platinum electrode in the original cell and has eliminated the semiconducting electrode entirely. "In the beginning we will use electricity as the source of electrons," Krishna admits. They don't even use pyridinium anymore, although it is cheap and abundant, and Bocarsly reports being able to make not just methanol—not ideal as a fuel—but also longer-chain hydrocarbons with it. For the moment Liquid Light plans to pursue the manufacture of more valuable chemicals or simply syngas alone before chasing the dream of a drop-in replacement for fossil fuels, which would require scaling up from the company's liter-scale prototype to one with hundreds of millions of liters of capacity. "That's the scale in order to make any difference," Krishna notes.
The company hopes to have a prototype system built in the next year or so. The CR5 will continue to be tweaked and improved, and alternate designs are in the works at the University of Minnesota and elsewhere. And, already, companies like Sundrop Fuels are using the sun's heat to gasify the plant stalks and other biomass built by photosynthesis to make a better fuel. But it will take more than a cost to emitting CO2 in the U.S. to drive the development of this technology, says chemical engineer Jane Davidson of the University of Minnesota. "It requires an economic stimulus."
But the promise is an abundance of liquid fuels that store sunlight as chemical energy and are slower to exacerbate atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. "As taken from the example of nature, if you can store [sunlight] in chemical bonds then you solve the intermittency problem, because the sun has this nasty habit: it goes out locally every single night," Caltech's Lewis says. "Chemical fuels would be the game changer if you could directly make them efficiently and cheaply from sunlight. It's pairing the biggest source [of energy] and the biggest storage."
See what we're tweeting about
40 Comments
Add CommentIf you watch the video from 1:44 to 1:50 the narrator says it takes "18 kilowatts (18,000 watts) of energy" to separate the hydrogen from one gallon of water. However a watt is a unit of power (energy over time). Additionally, it is later stated that this "energy" is equivalent to the amount of energy 300 light bulbs expend in one hour. Assuming standard 100 watt incandescent bulbs this equates to 108 mega-joules (108 million joules). So even if they had meant 18 kilo-joules instead of kilowatts they still made a mistake.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPS. Units are important, just ask NASA (http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/launches/orbiter_errorupd_093099.htm).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSeveral detail are wrong here. For instance both flight and trucking can be fairly easily converted to Electric power by using high speed trains. Both faster and more eff. Trains are faster because they don't have take off, landing, etc problems that take so much time, a slower can actually be faster time wise.
A train made up of specially designed trucks can be made to use high speed tracks also cutting both fuel use and time to transport. If the truck drivers are onboard they as they arrive just drive off the track to their final destination.
Of just have E truck lanes with either overhead wires or a third rail and can be on autopilot until is gets where it is going.
All these are far more eff than liquid fuels and less costly over 15 yrs.
My EV gets 600mpg equivalent and a similar 3wh 2-3 seat aero cabin EV can go 100 miles and 75mph and be built using 40-100 yr old tech, lead batteries for about $8k. I'd like to see any similar fueled vehicle get anywhere close to that.
Not to nitpick, but it is important to use accurate terminology. The video says that water is made up of two molecules of hydrogen and 1 molecule of oxygen. It should say 2 atoms of hydrogen and 1 atom of oxygen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@shockburner,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this300 60 watt bulbs burning for one hour would be 18,000 watts. Their units seem correct to me.
@shvegas,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell they use kilowatts as a unit of energy (a watt is a unit of power) they probably meant kilowatt hours which according to your calculation works out. My main argument was that they use the wrong unit.
I believe that you make an incorrect assumption of using 100 watt bulbs. If instead they used 60watt bulbs (almost as common) we would have:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this18000j/s = 300bulbs x 60watts/bulb = 18000watts (or j/s)
Read comment 5.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"@shvegas,
Well they use kilowatts as a unit of energy (a watt is a unit of power) they probably meant kilowatt hours which according to your calculation works out. My main argument was that they use the wrong unit."
I think this is great stuff. It means that with enough nuclear plants and renewable energy producers, my grand-children might still be able to fly to visit me on summer vacation. (Hmm... should mention I don't have children, much less grand-children, yet for that to statement to make sense.) Anyway, the point is valid. The technical hurdles of getting our planes in the air with the tech now already relies on the best we could do with no technology restriction, and is pushing a delicate balance to remain economical. If it were any less efficient, any heavier, or any less resistant to cold weather, we probably couldn't keep up the service we have now. This way, even if we run out of oil, we can hook up our grid to a fuel creation station and make enough jet fuel to at least power of fleet of planes. It will cost a little more, but probably not be a deal breaker. I am skeptical of claims that speed trains will be the wave of the future. Planes are something like six times faster than most "bullet" trains. Foreign countries just go around giving their velocities in kph so you'll think they are fast ;).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'll ask the dumb question again: if we stop burning all preexisting hydrocarbon fuels and switch entirely to recycled CO2 products: by what percent will our contribution to atmospheric co2 be reduced; how long will it take to return the average global temperature to pre-industrial levels?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs I understand, massive processes already in progress produce a thermal momentum effect, ensuring that the Earth will continue to warm even if atmospheric co2 was now suddenly returned to pre-industrial levels.
Not to be too pessimistic, but I suspect the kind of global technological and manufacturing migration that would be required for recycling CO2 currently produced by burning hydrocarbons would take several decades and be largely ineffective.
The last thing we need to do is spend decades feeling that we're on the right track only to discover it didn't produce the required results. Many billions of people would suffer.
Great ideas, but carbon dioxide is not causing climate change. The fact is that the gas totally absorbs light only at 15 microns (water vapor absorbs more). This means more carbon dioxide cannot absorb more light to warm the Earth any more. Natural gas and coal are abundant and can be turned into liquid fuels. Solar power can compress air into carbon-fiber tanks to power cars and homes efficiently without pollution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, Shockburner and SHVEGAS finally figured out the units, 18,000 kilowatt hours of energy. But everyone has missed the big picture. They stated that it took energy to separate the CO2 from the air but never quantified it. They also never quantified the energy to convert the carbon and hydrogen into methane. Even if they quantified all the energy input required they never talked about how much they would get out of the methane compared to the energy put into it. The big picture is, if they put enough energy to drive an electric truck 100 miles and produce enough methane to drive a truck 10 miles, is this a good use of that input energy, or would the electricity from the windmills be better put to use in an electric vehicle?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat's the point of converting sunlight to hydrocarbons before using them for electricity and transport? To get energy out of it, you have to burn them and release CO2. Solar cells can generate electricity directly without CO2 emission. They can be used for transportation too via solar cars and electric cars recharged by grid electricity from solar cells. Hydrocarbons and internal combustion engines are an old paradigm. Solar cells and electric cars are the future.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut if you wish to stick to hydrocarbons, the artificial method of producing them, such as the CR5, is expensive and unreliable so far. Why not just do it the natural way, biofuels, which is cheaper and already mass produced? Sure, plants are less efficient in converting sunlight to chemical energy, 3-6% versus 6-20% for solar cells. But one sq.m. of leaves is a lot cheaper than one sq.m. of photovoltaic cells. Sugar cane is still more cost efficient than CR5.
Wow, great stuff. If only there were a natural process that used solar energy to remove CO2 from the air, utilized water from the ground and converted it all into something harmless like O2 and maybe some other useful substance like wood or grain or something. We would "seed" this natural process all over the earth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(to be fair, I only watched the silly video...didn't read the article)
Yeah, but with the video you always get the happy ending...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn response to R.Blakely on Carbon dioxide not being responsible for climate change because water vapor absorbs more light: I don't really know the specifics here, but my understanding was that carbon dioxide is transparent in the visible light frequencies, which is part of the problem. It happily allows visible light from the sun to make it to the surface. What it prevents is the radiation of the thermal energy from the earth back out into space. Think if it as wrapping yourself in transparent plastic and sitting out in the sun.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWater behaves in lots of different ways. In the form of water in the oceans, it is one of the most fantastic absorbers of electromagnetic wavelengths available. As humidity in the atmosphere, it increases the amount of energy that the atmosphere absorbs and transfers into thermal heat, as opposed to letting the ground absorb the same energy and turn it into heat or reflect it. This reduces the visible light we reflect back into space, but because most of our planet is covered in oceans, the visible radiation absorbed from light reflected from the ground is less important for energy dissipation than being able to radiate in the thermal bands. Even the oceans radiate in that part of the spectrum.
As Ice, water is extremely reflective. You also don't have a lot of humidity where it's cold enough to have ice. The problem with ice is that as the planet warms, its cooling influence on our temperature decreases because there is less of it. So at least at the outset of climate change (regardless of the cause) the recession of glaciers and ice layers causes more and more energy to be trapped by the ground and water where the ice used to be, increasing the temperature.
As cloud cover, however, the most energy filled wavelengths across the visible spectrum are reflected by Mie Scattering. This effect actually helps us. If the cloud cover around the world increases as a result of the warming climate, this may help to regulate our temperature eventually. In the long term picture, assuming there are no other influences I'm forgetting, once we run out of ice, eventually the cloud layers will get so thick that our temperature should level off, even with a higher carbon dioxide level. It's just that the side-effects of this change are pretty bad and we should probably be planning for them.
The article states:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this""You take electricity and combine CO2 with hydrogen to make gasoline," explained Arun Majumdar, director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA–e) that is pursuing such technology, at a conference in March. "This is like killing four birds with one stone"—namely, energy security, climate change, the federal deficit and, potentially, unemployment."
How can this monumental industrial migration to co2 recycling technology possibly be expected to solve global warming? Even optimistic technical assessments describe this as an interim solution.
These people are attempting to mortgage the future of humanity by selling what cannot be delivered. Could this be another Wall Street financial marketing scam? What an opportunity!
Hey folks...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSHOCKBURNER is right - kilowatts are measures of energy-delivery-rate, not the summation of energy-used-to-accomplish-some-quantitative-goal.
Second, "2 molecules to 1 molecule" is just as acceptable as "2 atoms to 1 atom".
Third, this technology's proponents strike me as having the credibility of Mayan Shamans standing on a pyramid shaking feathered fetishes at the oncoming hurricane! Without (gu)estimating the scale of a significant-fraction-of-power-use delivery vehicle... this is just a feathered fetish. Yes, picture(s) of tiny little men in front of great honkin' mirrors makes the kiddie-scientists go Oooh, Ahhh. But realistically? Millions of square kilometers of mirrors and trillions of dollars of investment, and hundreds of millions of jobs to mine, smelt, melt, mould, fabricate, install and maintain the great mirrored edifices?
No, let's just admit - out loud - that these great science projects and research experiments are feathered fetishes, equal in their proportionate value to casting aside the oncoming hurricane as were the Mayan Shamans.
Really. I'm not even being sarcastic.
GoatGuy
First totally agree with Goat Guy
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSecond this doesn't reduce CO2 from the atmosphere it just slows the rate at which it increases albeit very poorly if at all. Not only would so much energy be wasted in converting the co2 to methane but also the gasoline powered engine is ill designed to begin with for the amount of energy going in, too much energy is lost in heat, it's not nearly efficient enough. The whole idea is ludicrous it'd be like paying your friend 10 dollars so you can get back 1..if that.
Yeah this technology would be great if we actually had a net gain in energy but this attempt at reducing CO2 in the air while giving us a fuel source is totally ridiculous. The idea to hit two birds with one stone is good but once it goes on paper, it will be utterly retarded. The total CO2 just to create/transport/setup the solar panel itself is probably more than what it would take out of the atmosphere, especially since solar panels degrade over time.
I say just turn the CO2 into chalk (calcium carbonate) until we find a real way (efficient) to turn CO2 into an energy source. Use the solar panels and wind turbines to offset the coal powered power plants, and save all the liquid and gas combustibles for our automotive fleet and housing needs, until our battery tech catches up (energy/dollar wise).
I agree with you, including the mineral sequestration of co2 as the only way to possibly halt global warming. However, aren't there some rather common conditions that might might cause the 'chalk' (or whatever mineral) to catastrophically release its sequestered co2?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe problem with biofuels is that they don't really produce much of a net gain in energy by the time you factor in the production costs. Plus, we barely have enough food to feed the world now; converting food to energy is not going to be good for the poorer portion of the population.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere are conditions in which a fuel stable at atmosphere pressure and normal temperatures is more efficient than hydrogen, and batteries.
I don't think that the point of this article is that this is _the_ solution. I think the point is that this is an interesting technology that may help. Are the inventors excited about it? Sure, but then so is the inventor of most things
Sometime in the next 10,000 years,maybe next year the next ice age will begin.Global warming will then be something people want instead of trying to get rid of it.Lets hope all this reduction of greenhouse gases that half the world is trying to do doesn't in fact trigger the next ice age.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree that the inventor see this as an interim solution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, Arun Majumdar, director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-e) is quoted as saying:
"This is like killing four birds with one stone" - namely, energy security, climate change, the federal deficit and, potentially, unemployment."
Doesn't this sound like the pitch men are selling this to the politicians and potential investors as _THE_ Solution? It doesn't sound like anything else to me.
Hi to everyone,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would like to bring to your attention something I have just recently get involved in. On my website Peal People Real Answers (com.au) I had published papers of Australian engineer who challenges everybody to prove him wrong or right in his invention that might result in new source of cheap energy. He said that he doesn't want money-he wants answers. His papers,calculations and actual design are very convincing but I am not scientist. If all of you care so much for better ways to provide energy for the world I though you might be interested to look at his publications or maybe even take his challenge on. For any questions about his papers you can contact him directly through our website.
Warmest regards
The goal is to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases the we pump into air in quantity more so than to reduce them. Even though I don't wish to live through an ice age if we could somehow prevent them from ever happening again I'm not so sure this would be a good idea.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with jtdwyer that the last part is overstated. It would be more correct in saying that the technology could help kill help kill 4 birds with one stone. Whether or not it is successful or not is a matter of economics. If it has to use as much electricity that it would take to drive a truck for 100 miles while only producing enough fuel to propel it 10 miles I can't see that it would ever be successful regardless of the amount of the research money from the venture capitalists.
Let's talk politics for a moment. The world's governments will NEVER allow for a new technology that will plunge huge swaths of the planet into economic disaster-- Far from a humanitarian effort, the world is less safe when a region such as the middle-east(An oil based economy)becomes dozens of times worse than it already is. This is one of the factors that slows government investment into an industry so large that only government can provide the funds needed to yield real change.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn my opinion, each of the world's governments will take any action that most expediently satisfies high priority political objectives, particularly if there is potential for personal gain. That's how they do what they do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this- E. B. White
R.Blakely in response to Shad1974 comment, the fact is that water vapor absorbs all infrared at 4 microns. The other important fact is that carbon dioxide already absorbs all the infrared it can. This is at 15 microns. Carbon dioxide cannot absorb any more infrared. So, more carbon dioxide cannot cause more global warming. Therefore, carbon dioxide has no effect on climate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this28. R.Blakely,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are referring to the saturation argument. A few questions for you:
A) At what altitude do you think CO2 is saturated in terms of energy absorption? Is it saturated at 5 km, 10 km, 20 km, other? The atmosphere is not of uniform density, you know.
B) What happens to the energy that a CO2 molecule absorbs? Do you think in simply ceases to exist, or do you think it might be radiated again?
C) How much water vapor is there above the tropopause?
More on the saturation argument at
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
#54
I appreciate your enthusiasm for promoting the "Perpetual Magnetic Motion" PDF. The fellow postulates that his calculations are correct, that there is an integrated net "positive" force that over distance (or in the case of a wheel, around the circular integral of its 360°motion), when both attractive and repulsive forces are summed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe physics answer as to why this cannot work is simple: on any closed path through any magnetic-electrical field, any charged particle or object with a magnetic moment experiences a NET integrated force of exactly zero. Not a fillip more or less.
In particular, I guide you to the second Maxell's equation in this graphic:
http://elementaryteacher.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/maxwells-equations.gif
It means that a circular-path integral through a magnetic field (which does not have to be uniform), is precisely defined has having ZERO net force, or to put it a different way, that magnetic attraction and repulsion is a model for the PERFECT SPRING.
Therefore, the researcher's Perpetual Magnetic Motion idea's calculations that result in a huge positive force around the circular integral of either a single set of magnets, or the wheel's worth ... is in error in terms of the circular integral of magnetic moment itself. Many a young scientist is intrigued by the force-over-distance of magnets, and dreams of harnessing the seemingly limitless power of the magnet to produce endless energy. Unfortunately, Maxwell's Second Equation is the killer to ALL such attempts.
Best Wishes, GoatGuy.
PS: the author demonstrates a certain innocent ignorance of physics by posing the question, "but why can't one hang onto a playground monkeybar upside down without fatigue?" (heavily paraphrased). The answer is entirely different to the analogy of the magnet-on-the-ceiling. One's muscles DO expend significant energy to maintain force, whether they are in motion or not. Electrochemical force comes at great resistive cost to the muscle: the researcher should try imagining a car on a steep hill, with no brakes, but a manual transmission. Letting the engine run, and the clutch slip, one can remain pretty steady. However, the clutch will also burn out rapidly from overheating. Same mechanism as the high-force muscle, that happens to be at rest.
GoatGuy
Absolutely! The global warming idiots do not have a real, viable solution to their perceived problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBefore considering sequestering concentrations, what ppm of CO2 are you seeking? You may find the cure worse than the problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCO2 is a finite resource that has been decreasing in supply for 700 million years.
7000 ppm is what Earth had 540 million years ago.
250 ppm is what Earth dropped to before the industrial revolution. Most carbon had been sequestered underground, inaccessible to the biosphere.
150 ppm is the point where nearly all plants on Earth DIE.
350 ppm is where we're at right now. The higher the concentration, the better plants grow. That is a FACT.
Methane is 28 times more effective than CO2 as a global warming gas, yet is mostly ignored in the discussion. So why isn't Scientific America focusing on how to prevent methane from escaping, or in reducing methane production in manmade and natural resources?
Do you realize that Congress blocked the use of biomass from National Forests, and this biomass now will rot and release massive quantities of methane? If biomass were harvested and used for product or biomass burning for fuel, it would be converted directly to CO2 and thus present reduced overall global warming effect?
Sequestering CO2 underground takes about 20% of the power plants power.
Before considering sequestering concentrations, what ppm of CO2 are you seeking? You may find the cure worse than the problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCO2 is a finite resource that has been decreasing in supply for 700 million years.
7000 ppm is what Earth had 540 million years ago.
250 ppm is what Earth dropped to before the industrial revolution. Most carbon had been sequestered underground, inaccessible to the biosphere.
150 ppm is the point where nearly all plants on Earth DIE.
350 ppm is where we're at right now. The higher the concentration, the better plants grow. That is a FACT. Are you sure you want to lower CO2, and not focus on methane?
Methane is 28 times more effective than CO2 as a global warming gas, yet is mostly ignored in the discussion. So why isn't Scientific America focusing on how to prevent methane from escaping, or in reducing methane production in manmade and natural resources?
Do you realize that Congress blocked the use of biomass from National Forests, and this biomass now will rot and release massive quantities of methane? If biomass were harvested and used for product or biomass burning for fuel, it would be converted directly to CO2 and thus present reduced overall global warming effect?
Sequestering CO2 underground takes about 20% of the power plants power.
I knew a man who worked as a mechanic for Railway Express in Manhattan in the 1940s, and he told me that at that time there were thousands of EV delivery trucks being used for cargo delivery. He said that their use had been mandated, that they used lead-acid batteries, and that whenever possible they worked at night to avoid traffic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe point is that using lead-acid batteries for transportation has been done before, but it is seldom if ever mentioned.
According to the "Climate Institute", the natural half life of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is about 100 years, unless we start actively removing CO2.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey state that the level of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen by about 30% since the start of the industrial revolution, and that CO2 is currently at the highest levels that it has been in the past 150,000 years.
This is a sad representation of science and engineering.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe discover that electricity can be used to make hydrogen and oxygen from water. Things get better, electricity can be used to make methane out of carbon dioxide and hydrogen. We also learn (with great mental exertion) that it takes 18 kWhr to make the hydrogen and oxygen from a gallon of water. Then we credit Palo Alto Research Center with the idea that electricity can come from renewable energy.
Wow, that is fine science!
Oops. But it seems the report is numerically challenged, since we fail to report how much electricity would be required to turn the hydrogen and CO2 into methane. So we are nowhere. And are we serious? The 350 ppm of CO2 in air is going to be a source for this industrial process?
Pablum would be fine, but all of this stands in the way of real progress.
Standing Forests Solve Global Warming At No Cost
The game winning answer to global warming is to create standing forests, where every ton of newly existing forest mass, on a sustaining basis, compensates by CO2 capture for the burning of a ton of coal, approximately. Key to this solution is distribution of water in North America on a continental basis.
Existing electric power demand and new electric vehicles present a significant and growing CO2 problem. Viable, large scale solutions to this problem have been absent. But I have been shocked by the planning put forward by the US EPA regarding 'carbon' capture and sequestration (CCS), where the capture cost burden per ton of coal used would be up to $180-$320. This would be for capture of CO2 only, with additional costs for transportation and pumping it into caverns being not addressed, but acknowledged as additional expense.
Thus motivated, I looked for a better solution, and found that China seems to have taken the lead over our environmentalists in this very practical matter. A year ago, in a speech about how China was planning to react to the global warming problem, President Hu spoke of "forest carbon".
This kind of solution would be possible in North America. The key is to change how water is distributed on this continent and use it to establish new standing forests that would achieve CCS.
Thus, a real answer to global warming is possible that would enable continued use of our backbone fuel, that is coal, for generation of electricity.
Thus with cheap energy, industrial expansion could be ecomically justified and job creation could then begin.
We could stop pretending that renewables will appear on a meaningful scale.
The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide is not just from it's absorption of light but from its absorption of heat.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, I assume it might be ok to pass a carbon tax if we can use this technology to put inside an industrial air pollution "scrubber" equipped with solar cells on the outside. (they already have water and CO2 on the inside). Would that mean we would continue to burn coal for electricity? Capitalism never seems to work out the way environmentalists envision.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPulling co2 out of coal fire smokestacks still leaves many toxic pollutants to escape to the atmosphere, even if the proposed carbon tax is implemented, but avoided.
Sadly, there is a fatal flaw in the idea of using this as an alternative to burying CO2. The GHG problem is not that we do things which release CO2 into the atmosphere. There is a huge natural cycle which does that already. The problem is that we're adding carbon to that cycle that had been safely sequestered underground.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf we burn coal, capture the CO2, and convert that to fuel or cattlefeed using algae, then when the product consumed the CO2 still ends up in the atmosphere. All we will have achieved (at best) is a single re-use. Overall, we're still adding to the bioatmospheric carbon cycle.
Perhaps, one day, algal capture will become economic using CO2 extracted from the air. Until then, this is not the solution we need.
Our contribution will not be reduced.... it will remain at whatever level was in place at the time we switch to recycled fuels. Of course this assumes that we switch 100% instantaneously which will never happen.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGreat idea but sounds very inefficient. Perhaps I'm wrong. The great thing about this is that it demonstrates that people are realy thinking about solutions! I believe we will find one or even several (if they haven't been found already)that will make sense on all levels. Actually, if you think about it, if this source has been found already then there is very little chance that we will hear about - Imagine the advantage a company would have if it found a viable alternative to our current need for fossil fuels. This company would become the most powerfull company in the world - I call that motive to develop in secret!
I also believe that storage via liquid fuels is a great way to go. These fuels are awesome for so many reasons and there is currently no other energy source as light weight and packed full of energy as these liquid fuels! Plus we have the infrastructure to handle such fuels already in place!
Cheers!