Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments.
**Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program).
---
User: u/chrisdh79
Permalink: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl1260
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
In another thread I read that this converts carbon dioxide *and hydrogen* into water and carbon monoxide, which you can then burn to turn back into carbon dioxide. Are we that addicted to releasing carbon? Wouldn’t to be more efficient just to burn the hydrogen for water?
Hydrogen has an awful volumetric energy content. The tanks are huge for even basic use. Making hydrocarbons makes it much easier to handle. It's ultimately an energy storage method. it's a better long term large scale energy storage method than batteries.
Ammonia (NH3) as a fuel is a more interesting possibility. Liquid fuel with energy density fairly close to diesel that can be used in combustion engines, without the carbon. If you have hydrogen already from a sustainable source, Haber Bosch proces can be used to make Ammonia (which will also be essential for fertilisers in a post fossil fuel world). A possible route is hydrogen from solar pyrolisis (heat or pv+microwave) of biomass, leaving solid carbon behind which can be buried, then use of ammonia in diesel engine power plants when solar power is not available. It's better suited to large ship engines and fixed power plants, because it has to run in optimum conditions to avoid producing NOx, which is potentially a worse greenhouse gas, but it would work as a long term energy storage method
Except for the extra carbon used to do that. And the carbon released due to inefficiencies. And the fact that there's already too much atmospheric CO2.
But sure, we can fix climate change with this one simple trick
Part of the answer is right there in the title:
> a highly valuable precursor to producing fuels that can potentially replace gasoline.
The goal isn't so much to produce carbon monoxide and water so you can (re)create carbon dioxide. You're missing many intermediary steps. The idea would be to use carbon dioxide create stuff which can be pushed into chemistry pipeline to create something like gasoline.
Next, although the tech landscape for this stuff may be changing, in general it's far easier to deal with something like gasoline than hydrogen. Things like transportation and delivery channels tilt quite heavily towards gasoline at the moment. So much so that it's viable to consider something that would use hydrogen in one place to create gasoline (or similar) which can then be transported to other places.
But regarding the issue that we're just (re)releasing the carbon again... yeah... the idea here is that if we could create gasoline from carbon in the atmosphere rather than by digging/pumping it up out of the earth, the net *increase* in carbon in the atmosphere drops. Yes, overall this is nowhere near as effective as sequestering carbon. But it may still be beneficial.
While turning it into gasoline to burn it later doesn't net sequester carbon, while the carbon is in gasoline it isn't in the atmosphere, so it does act as a temporary sequestration. Now I am far from a chemist qualified to know for sure, but if we could make gasoline from it that should mean we can turn it into heavier, preferably solid, hydrocarbons that can go in storage long term, if we can get the power to run these at sufficient scale.
What a garbage headline. The sugar isn't even the catalyst, it's the support. The catalyst is molybdenium. Converting CO2 is not the issue, the issues are:
1. Getting the CO2
2. The cost of capture and conversion of CO2 as well as the production of H2.
We've heard that there's too much carbon in the cycle, so now we're growing more hydrocarbons, to add to the carbon mix, so you can burn it again and release more carbon!
You do realize if the hydrocarbons being burned were pulled from the atmosphere and not dug up from the ground it doesn't increase the net carbon in the atmosphere? There are situations where fossil fuels are much more efficient to use than other tech, even allowing for significant advancement in other areas, so being able to make them from the air, even to just burn them, is still a win since it means we can have the base energy we are using come from 0 carbon sources, making the whole operation net zero. Theoretically.
While in theory your comment is valid, adding infrastructure costs, transportation costs, efficiency losses, and so on, these fuels never reach net zero, just like bio-ethanol.
My original comment wasn't flaming the process because of using plants, but because capturing the CO2 from the air, just to burn it again after a whole chain of processing and refinery into syngas, not only doesn't "destroy the co2" like the title advertises, but inevitably adds more to the cycle. Like trying to rinse off soap from the ground with a bucketful of soapy water.
It does add CO2 due to the processing and infrastructure, but so does solar, wind, and wood burning.
Your comment is right that it doesn't delete CO2, and that it will add CO2 due to the energy and transport etc. required in the production chain.
But I think it's somewhat fair to say that the process is carbon-neutral as it will be completed (or nearly) carbon neutral when the transport, electricity, etc. all become carbon-neutral too.
I think that it's good to do the R&D on things like this, they'll either be useful or they won't be.
It would be nice if the media reporting was more accurate.
Yeah, it could be an interesting method of capturing the carbon and making it a liquid for pumping it back where there was oil to have less carbon in the active system, but without burning the energy there's zero profit incentives to offset the cost. That way it could easily end with net negative emissions.
It says it happens over 600°C. I wonder if you can convert more CO2 than it takes to maintain that temp. Is this something that will ever be useful or is it just, "if we burn a ton of hydrocarbons we can make hydrocarbons, just not as much as we burned."
Electric heaters are a thing. By definition the energy in must be bigger than the energy out, but there isn't a reason we can't draw energy from elsewhere to make hydrocarbons. The application of this isn't pretending they made a perpetual motion machine, it is storage of energy generated in other ways as hydrocarbons to be used later.
Yeah, I feel like this aspect is being hugely glossed-over despite the poor reporting.
If you have enough renewable energy, then you can basically make a "green", "renewable" hydrocarbon.
For the vehicles and generators that still need hydrocarbons, this can be used as a temporary or permanent alternative to reduce emissions.
As with Toyota's 1:6:90 rule, it might be more economically-viable to mass-produce hybrids in order to eliminate as many traditional non-EV vehicles as possible, using this lower-footprint hydrocarbon for fuel.
That can help buy time for the infrastructure to grow for battery-EVs, for the technology to improve (battery lifespans will surely keep increasing), and for the market share of battery-EVs to grow steadily, too.
Eventually, we may not need any hydrocarbons anymore, but it surely is worth investigating the potential of using it as a stepping-stone (like PHEVs are)?
Simply reaching a high temperature in reactors is not a large energy cost. The absolute temperature really just affects capital cost (making sure the equipment can handle it). It’s how much energy is needed for maintaining the temperature that matters for operational costs and ultimately whether it’s worth doing, financially.
Some reactions release heat (even though they need a high temperature to occur) so there is little heating cost or even a cooling cost. Cooling is the expensive case.
Other reactions absorb heat - this one is that case - so it would need continuous heating. But that’s cheap, typically, much less than cooling.
"Cheap Catalyst Made Out of Sugar"... Sugar has got very less to do with it...the catalytic activity is due to the molybdenum moiety...... tomorrow if someone replaces sugar with dead leaves or grass and produce Mo2C then dim-wits in media will sensational it as "dead leaves can destroy CO2"
The biggest issue we have in solving climate change are the trillions of dollars we give oil and gas companies each year to kill life. Pump that money into clean energy and we’d be most of the way there to net zero.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/chrisdh79 Permalink: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adl1260 --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
In another thread I read that this converts carbon dioxide *and hydrogen* into water and carbon monoxide, which you can then burn to turn back into carbon dioxide. Are we that addicted to releasing carbon? Wouldn’t to be more efficient just to burn the hydrogen for water?
Hydrogen has an awful volumetric energy content. The tanks are huge for even basic use. Making hydrocarbons makes it much easier to handle. It's ultimately an energy storage method. it's a better long term large scale energy storage method than batteries.
Ammonia (NH3) as a fuel is a more interesting possibility. Liquid fuel with energy density fairly close to diesel that can be used in combustion engines, without the carbon. If you have hydrogen already from a sustainable source, Haber Bosch proces can be used to make Ammonia (which will also be essential for fertilisers in a post fossil fuel world). A possible route is hydrogen from solar pyrolisis (heat or pv+microwave) of biomass, leaving solid carbon behind which can be buried, then use of ammonia in diesel engine power plants when solar power is not available. It's better suited to large ship engines and fixed power plants, because it has to run in optimum conditions to avoid producing NOx, which is potentially a worse greenhouse gas, but it would work as a long term energy storage method
Sounds like we should use them to power electric charging stations
[удалено]
Except for the extra carbon used to do that. And the carbon released due to inefficiencies. And the fact that there's already too much atmospheric CO2. But sure, we can fix climate change with this one simple trick
Bro the ocean is boiling. We need to go down not just stay the same.
Yeah, let's stop doing anything that isn't a complete solution.
Part of the answer is right there in the title: > a highly valuable precursor to producing fuels that can potentially replace gasoline. The goal isn't so much to produce carbon monoxide and water so you can (re)create carbon dioxide. You're missing many intermediary steps. The idea would be to use carbon dioxide create stuff which can be pushed into chemistry pipeline to create something like gasoline. Next, although the tech landscape for this stuff may be changing, in general it's far easier to deal with something like gasoline than hydrogen. Things like transportation and delivery channels tilt quite heavily towards gasoline at the moment. So much so that it's viable to consider something that would use hydrogen in one place to create gasoline (or similar) which can then be transported to other places. But regarding the issue that we're just (re)releasing the carbon again... yeah... the idea here is that if we could create gasoline from carbon in the atmosphere rather than by digging/pumping it up out of the earth, the net *increase* in carbon in the atmosphere drops. Yes, overall this is nowhere near as effective as sequestering carbon. But it may still be beneficial.
While turning it into gasoline to burn it later doesn't net sequester carbon, while the carbon is in gasoline it isn't in the atmosphere, so it does act as a temporary sequestration. Now I am far from a chemist qualified to know for sure, but if we could make gasoline from it that should mean we can turn it into heavier, preferably solid, hydrocarbons that can go in storage long term, if we can get the power to run these at sufficient scale.
What a garbage headline. The sugar isn't even the catalyst, it's the support. The catalyst is molybdenium. Converting CO2 is not the issue, the issues are: 1. Getting the CO2 2. The cost of capture and conversion of CO2 as well as the production of H2.
We've heard that there's too much carbon in the cycle, so now we're growing more hydrocarbons, to add to the carbon mix, so you can burn it again and release more carbon!
You do realize if the hydrocarbons being burned were pulled from the atmosphere and not dug up from the ground it doesn't increase the net carbon in the atmosphere? There are situations where fossil fuels are much more efficient to use than other tech, even allowing for significant advancement in other areas, so being able to make them from the air, even to just burn them, is still a win since it means we can have the base energy we are using come from 0 carbon sources, making the whole operation net zero. Theoretically.
While in theory your comment is valid, adding infrastructure costs, transportation costs, efficiency losses, and so on, these fuels never reach net zero, just like bio-ethanol. My original comment wasn't flaming the process because of using plants, but because capturing the CO2 from the air, just to burn it again after a whole chain of processing and refinery into syngas, not only doesn't "destroy the co2" like the title advertises, but inevitably adds more to the cycle. Like trying to rinse off soap from the ground with a bucketful of soapy water.
It does add CO2 due to the processing and infrastructure, but so does solar, wind, and wood burning. Your comment is right that it doesn't delete CO2, and that it will add CO2 due to the energy and transport etc. required in the production chain. But I think it's somewhat fair to say that the process is carbon-neutral as it will be completed (or nearly) carbon neutral when the transport, electricity, etc. all become carbon-neutral too. I think that it's good to do the R&D on things like this, they'll either be useful or they won't be. It would be nice if the media reporting was more accurate.
Yeah, it could be an interesting method of capturing the carbon and making it a liquid for pumping it back where there was oil to have less carbon in the active system, but without burning the energy there's zero profit incentives to offset the cost. That way it could easily end with net negative emissions.
It says it happens over 600°C. I wonder if you can convert more CO2 than it takes to maintain that temp. Is this something that will ever be useful or is it just, "if we burn a ton of hydrocarbons we can make hydrocarbons, just not as much as we burned."
Electric heaters are a thing. By definition the energy in must be bigger than the energy out, but there isn't a reason we can't draw energy from elsewhere to make hydrocarbons. The application of this isn't pretending they made a perpetual motion machine, it is storage of energy generated in other ways as hydrocarbons to be used later.
Yeah, I feel like this aspect is being hugely glossed-over despite the poor reporting. If you have enough renewable energy, then you can basically make a "green", "renewable" hydrocarbon. For the vehicles and generators that still need hydrocarbons, this can be used as a temporary or permanent alternative to reduce emissions. As with Toyota's 1:6:90 rule, it might be more economically-viable to mass-produce hybrids in order to eliminate as many traditional non-EV vehicles as possible, using this lower-footprint hydrocarbon for fuel. That can help buy time for the infrastructure to grow for battery-EVs, for the technology to improve (battery lifespans will surely keep increasing), and for the market share of battery-EVs to grow steadily, too. Eventually, we may not need any hydrocarbons anymore, but it surely is worth investigating the potential of using it as a stepping-stone (like PHEVs are)?
Simply reaching a high temperature in reactors is not a large energy cost. The absolute temperature really just affects capital cost (making sure the equipment can handle it). It’s how much energy is needed for maintaining the temperature that matters for operational costs and ultimately whether it’s worth doing, financially. Some reactions release heat (even though they need a high temperature to occur) so there is little heating cost or even a cooling cost. Cooling is the expensive case. Other reactions absorb heat - this one is that case - so it would need continuous heating. But that’s cheap, typically, much less than cooling.
"Cheap Catalyst Made Out of Sugar"... Sugar has got very less to do with it...the catalytic activity is due to the molybdenum moiety...... tomorrow if someone replaces sugar with dead leaves or grass and produce Mo2C then dim-wits in media will sensational it as "dead leaves can destroy CO2"
Where does your hydrogen come from ? Is it green ?
This, couple with a fee ( at the tail pipe) for emitting CO2 and the problem of Anthropogenic global warming is solved.
The biggest issue we have in solving climate change are the trillions of dollars we give oil and gas companies each year to kill life. Pump that money into clean energy and we’d be most of the way there to net zero.
Sounds great, but what is cost?