Efficient process for removing CO2 and turning into ethanol (1 Viewer)

[jplvr]

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

I'm sure Exxon will buy the rights to this and soon determine it isn't feasible in large scale, but very exciting stuff here.

 

[cstu]

Would solve the battery issue with solar and reduce CO2 at the same time.

 

[Brony]

Would solve the battery issue with solar and reduce CO2 at the same time.

And we'd all be drunk!

pretty cool discovery.

 

[jplvr]

I ended up reading the parts of the paper I could understand. According to the conclusion, it isn't economically viable, but they hope to find a different catalyst. I know things like this tend to be debunked or just continue to be just out of reach, but this seems like a big enough deal to get the attention of anyone worried about climate. 

 

[Dragons]

Pretty cool, and far better than making ethanol out of food, but this seems to be a CO2 neutral solution. Once it's burned to create energy, the CO2 would be released.

Still better than burning fossil fuels.

 

[cstu]

Pretty cool, and far better than making ethanol out of food, but this seems to be a CO2 neutral solution. Once it's burned to create energy, the CO2 would be released.

Still better than burning fossil fuels.

Depends how you look at it - it's terms of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and then releasing it when the ethanol is burned, that's neutral.  

However, every gallon of ethanol produced by renewable methods is a gallon that is not produced using food (enough to feed a person for day) and fossil fuel (about 75% of the energy from every gallon of ethanol is used by fossil fuels).

Link

 

[Bri]

Depends how you look at it - it's terms of taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and then releasing it when the ethanol is burned, that's neutral.  

However, every gallon of ethanol produced by renewable methods is a gallon that is not produced using food (enough to feed a person for day) and fossil fuel (about 75% of the energy from every gallon of ethanol is used by fossil fuels).

Link




 




 

I don't know much on this topic. Always one of those I wanted to research more and never found time. Are there other foods besides corn to create ethanol? 

The corn is garbage. We lived in VT for a year or so during the recession that hit there pretty hard. People spoke of the farmers switching to "cattle corn" to sell as fuel, money was good, so that's how they got through the recession. Still though, that stuff was gross. You wouldn't eat it.

I just googled some and see some restaurants selling cattle corn and it looks fine.

I went to probably a dozen farms (and there aren't all that many in VT) trying to nail down suppliers and ....it was garbage. I'm not sure what the deal is. I did not see corn like that.