Community | November 23, 2009 | 36 comments

New reactor uses sunlight to turn water and carbon dioxide into fuel

source: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-11/co2-recycler-uses-sunlight-turn-waste-carbon-b...

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Talk about a Eureka moment. Scientists at Sandia National Labs, seeking a means to create cheap and abundant hydrogen to power a hydrogen economy, realized they could use the same technology to "reverse-combust" CO2 back into fuel. Researchers still have to improve the efficiency of the system, but they recently demonstrated a working prototype of their "Sunshine to Petrol" machine that converts waste CO2 to carbon monoxide, and then syngas, consuming nothing but solar energy.

The device, boasting the simple title Counter-Rotating-Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (we'll go with "CR5") sets off a thermo-chemical reaction by exposing an iron-rich composite to concentrated solar heat. The composite sheds an oxygen molecule when heated and gets one back as it cools, and therein lies the eureka.

The cylindrical metal CR5 is divided into hot and cold chambers. Solar energy heats the hot chamber to a scorching 2,700 degrees, hot enough to force the iron oxide composite to lose oxygen atoms. The composite is then thrust into the cool chamber, which is filled with carbon dioxide. As it cools, the iron oxide snatches back its lost oxygen atoms, leaving behind carbon monoxide.

The same process can also produce raw hydrogen by pumping water rather than CO2 into the cool chamber. Hydrogen and carbon monoxide can then be blended into syngas, a replacement for current hydrocarbon-based combustibles like gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. While it's not a total solution for carbon emissions -- syngas, after all, burns right back into CO2 -- it is an alternative to sequestering carbon underground, where it benefits no one.

CO2 recycling could be used to trap waste carbon from factories and power plants and return that energy to productive use, rather than releasing it into the air, where it can cause problems science doesn't even yet fully understand. The next step for the team is to increase the process's efficiency to twice that of natural photosynthesis. A market-ready CR5 device is still more than a decade away, but the idea of taking our waste carbon and turning it directly back into fuel using nothing but abundant solar rays is tantalizing, to say the least.



http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-11/co2-recycler-uses-sunlight-turn-wa...
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36 comments // New reactor uses sunlight to turn water and carbon dioxide into fuel

  • e_young
  • Allan_Roberts
    • 0
      Allan_Roberts  

    • Actually poop into energy is already here, using a simple plumbing solution.

      "Carbon Dioxide Recycler" is for our society.

      Compress exhaust C02 into dry ice for recycling with a CR5 (or by using a traditional green house) with a "Carbon Dioxide Recycler" exhaust method on your vehicles internal combustion engine.

    • 2 years ago
  • Allan_Roberts
    • 0
      Allan_Roberts  
    • Image

    • Actually poop for tomorrow is already here.

      Carbon Dioxide Recycling is for our society. The CR5 is used with the simple plumbing solution called "Carbon Dioxide Recycler".

      Compress C02 exhaust emissions from internal combustion engines into dry ice for recycling into methanol or syn-gas using a Carbon Dioxide Recycler.

      Myspace.com/allantugwellroberts

    • 2 years ago
  • bethopea
    • 0
      bethopea  

    • always wondered if there was way to convert humidity into energy - to use it for something other than its gardening wonders...a refrigeration technique for example - like pulling out all those pesky water particle-molecule thingys and compressing the air...um...I haven't the faintist!

    • 2 years ago
  • aquamammal
    • 0
      aquamammal  

    • This is just solar energy, but converting the solar energy into gas. It's interesting, but we should be concentrating on solar thermal and voltaic, because electricity is more efficient and relevant to sustainability than gas, which will just further lengthen the time we have before we ditch automobiles.

      The most important thing is to control where you live. If you live in a shit place, move. But this has to be in tandem with the struggle for free movement of all peoples.

      XVX for life, R.A.S.H. 'til death.

    • 2 years ago
  • jackierappaport
  • jackierappaport
  • Agent_Alpha
  • Cobi321
    • 0
      Cobi321  

    • actually ras_menelik almost all of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are water vapor. But I call shenanigans on this. How many times have we seen a motor that runs on water and it always turns out to be a fake? Also this is called the photosynthetic reactions of plants they just put "sciency" sounding names over it to make it seem like they pulled this idea out of nowhere.

    • 2 years ago
  • remanns
  • wekebu
    • 0
      wekebu  

    • "CO2 recycling could be used to trap waste carbon from factories and power plants". Does this mean the CR5 device needs to be located next to these factories? It would be better is the device could get enough carbon from the air and not be reliant on the factory's schedule and financial stability.

    • 2 years ago
  • HellastOne
  • CarlosIsDown
  • Wetdog
    • 0
      Wetdog  

    • This is a variation on the Fischer-Tropsch process, invented in 1923.

      It was used in Germany to produce synthetic and biofuels from coal and wood. This was the source of fuel in Germany in the last half of WW2.

      This process does not work well with coal. Sulphur in the coal poisons the catalyst beds and the chemical reactions stop.

      It does however work well with wood---wood chip contain no sulphur that poisons the catalysts.

      Range Fuels is just now finishing construction on a plant in Soperton GA that will when up and running at full capacity will produce 100 million gal/yr of ethanol from wood logging and milling waste.

      http://www.rangefuels.com/

      http://www.rangefuels.com/range-fuels-technology.html

      Click the link at the bottom of the page for an interactive schematic of how the process works.

    • 2 years ago
  • ras_menelik
    • 0
      ras_menelik  
    • Wetdog:

      In two years Germany will be manufacturing oil and gas enough out of soft coal for a long war. The Standard Oil of New York is furnishing millions of dollars to help. (Report from the Commercial Attaché, U.S. Embassy in Berlin, Germany, January 1933, to State Department in Washington, D.C,)

      The Standard Oil group of companies, in which the Rockefeller family owned a one-quarter (and controlling) interest,1 was of critical assistance in helping Nazi Germany prepare for World War II. This assistance in military preparation came about because Germany's relatively insignificant supplies of crude petroleum were quite insufficient for modern mechanized warfare; in 1934 for instance about 85 percent of German finished petroleum products were imported. The solution adopted by Nazi Germany was to manufacture synthetic gasoline from its plentiful domestic coal supplies. It was the hydrogenation process of producing synthetic gasoline and iso-octane properties in gasoline that enabled Germany to go to war in 1940 — and this hydrogenation process was developed and financed by the Standard Oil laboratories in the United States in partnership with I.G. Farben.

    • 2 years ago
  • Mike_Johnston
    • 0
      Mike_Johnston  

    • It is an old process that in this case simply substitutes solar power for another source (like petroleum). So it kinda makes it possible to recycle gasoline exhaust back into gasoline making CO2 pollution essentially a non-issue. Assuming it can be scaled up to reconvert all of the CO2 we release every day. This has been possible for some time. I have written about it before.

    • 2 years ago
  • CreditFigaro
    • 0
      CreditFigaro  

    • Sigh... that's really neat and all, but we already have the technology to produce clean fuels and electricity. All that we lack is political will, something that this invention did nothing to change.

    • 2 years ago
  • treewolf39
    • 0
      treewolf39  

    • Looks interesting but is still trapped in the carbon dioxide cycle. We need clean energy. Might help clean our act up in the interim.

    • 2 years ago
  • Crenshaw_Brothers
  • neocongo
  • JoshShrouder
  • aj727b
  • Wetdog
  • aj727b
    • 0
      aj727b  

    • Great news! This type of technology is the future, along with existing solar and wind technologies. The nuclear industry is hoping to siphon-off the billions of dollars that we should invest in applying these kind of ideas in the real world. Nukes have always been far more costly than they say, as well as being hazardous. We must defend the resources that should be devoted to truly clean and renewable energy development, both from current technologies and those that are only now being developed.

    • 2 years ago
  • kennymotown
  • Pettigrew
  • ochreRobot
  • Lurkistan
  • Manatee_man
  • ochreRobot
  • remanns
  • ras_menelik
  • Kari_Heaberlin
  • Wetdog
    • 0
      Wetdog  
    • Kari_Heaberlin:

      ----------"when are we going to start using poop for fuel? isn't that in the works?"--------

      It is already being done. It is called anaerobic digestion, or composting. It produces biogas---the main constituent of which is methane. Which is also the main constituent of natural gas.

      Natural gas is methane (CH4--80% hydrogen by volume). Natural gas can be used to generate electricity or power our vehicles.

      We have been able to do these things for over 100 years.

    • 2 years ago
  • MRprez
    • 0
      MRprez  
    • Kari_Heaberlin:

      using Co2 is perfect for this because it takes the crap that's going into our atmosphere and converting it back into a usefull substance... :-) this article has made my day.. maybe there is hope for saving our world...

    • 2 years ago
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