Researchers have combined gold nanoparticles (in light red) with copper nanoparticles (in light green) to form hybrid nanoparticles (dark red), which they turned into powder (foreground) to catalyze carbon dioxide reduction.
Posted on 04/11/2012 8:26:05 AM PDT by Red Badger
Researchers have combined gold nanoparticles (in light red) with copper nanoparticles (in light green) to form hybrid nanoparticles (dark red), which they turned into powder (foreground) to catalyze carbon dioxide reduction.
Cue McGyver - “The thing about hydrocarbons is...”
http://macgyver.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_problems_solved_by_MacGyver
Actually, that would be Zinc.
Well, they have a copper jacket...............
How much voltage, for how long? IOW, will it cost more to supply the necessary voltage than the net value of the fuel produced?
Will it end up as inefficient as the other "green" technologies?
science ping
I guess I'm missing the point. Thermodynamics requires MORE energy to convert CO2 into methane than can be produced by converting (combustion of) methane back into CO2 and H2O. The total mass of carbon remains constant. So how does this help?
Wait a minute - they burn methane which produces carbon dioxide which they convert back into methane which they burn which produces carbon dioxide which they convert back into methane.....
When methane is burned the carbon turns back into CO2 so there is no net gain. Are they suggesting they've discovered a perpetual motion machine? Is there any point in doing this?
suck all the CO2 out of the air and then wonder why all the plants are ,ah, dead
This sounds really fishy to this old engineer, but I’m burdened with those old, crusty laws of thermodynamics that were formulated before the days of quantum physics and nanotechnology. Still, the prospect of oxidizing CH4 to form CO2 and H20 to release energy and then taking “relatively little energy” to convert CO2 to CH4 sounds more like a perpetual motion machine than an economically viable process.
I guess the point is the carbon never leaves the plant.?..........
The methane produced would not generate power for the grid, just the power to run the facilities at the plant..........
Sounds like another great money-wasting scheme to me. But it’s great for Professorette Chu, whose research is probably funded by Steven Chu (no relation?).
Meantime, they’re blocking the nuclear plants and shutting down the coal plants that would produce the needed electricity to do this.
Lights out! Time to freeze in the dark, while starving the plants.
Then the amount of energy to recycle more and more carbon will eventual overwhelm the productive capacity of the plant, consuming all energy converted from combustion of new carbon based fuels. Very strange.
Actually, you got the point. The author is counting on the 99% that read the article and never understand that point.
They hope you will flood the phone banks of your congress representative to fund this important research.
No different than the chasing of hydrogen fuel for the exact same reason.
The long term trend over millions of years is less and less CO2. We need more of it, not less.
Worse, there is some loss at each step.
TANSTAAF
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