Posted on 10/19/2018 11:09:14 AM PDT by Red Badger
Creating the super-strong material out of something harmful could kill two birds with one stone. _______________________________________________________________________________________________
The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide is at its highest levels in hundreds of thousands of years and as matters get worse, it's more crucial than ever to find a way to reverse it. A study released earlier this month presents a novel idea with what to do with the gas humanity can't seem to stop making: Turn it into something useful. Specifically, high-quality carbon nanotubes.
The main cause of global warming, carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas that is released through using fossil fuels and processes like deforestation. While some carbon dioxide is natural and healthy, people are generating far more carbon dioxide than the Earth's natural levels. And too much of it would likely have catastrophic results.
Beyond simply producing less carbon dioxide, ideas on what to do with carbon dioxide include storage and repurposing it. That second one has always been something of a longshot, to the extent that there's an XPrize dedicated to trying to find uses for the substance.
Scientists at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, alongside private sector scientists there, have developed a non-traditional way to construct small-diameter carbon nanotubes, called CNTs, while actively using carbon dioxide. Their results have been published in Applied Materials and Interfaces.
The process relies on a type of molten salt known as lithium carbonate, or Li2CO3. More commonly used for health purposes, lithium carbonate is often used in tandem with treatment of mental health disorders. But here, the scientists melt it by heating it up to 723°C. This process creates dilithium oxide (Li2O) and releases both oxygen and carbon into the air.
Scientists are able to capture this liberated carbon and place it on an iron catalyst. When that connection occurs, it creates carbon nanotubes. The Li2O reacts with carbon dioxide already in the air and becomes lithium once again.
CNTs have a wide variety of uses. They are 100 times stronger than steel but with only one-sixth the weight, as well as remarkable thermal conductivity, and small amounts are used in thigns like high-end baseball bats and golf clubs.
There's still work to be done on the process. The iron catalyst isn't that stable and depending on how long it's in use is creating irregularly size CNTs. But, the scientists argue, figuring out how to stabilize the iron could be worth the effort. Once the electricity is figured out, the entire endeavor would only cost half of what CNTs go for on the market.
The other method of dealing with carbon, capturing it, is already being implemented across the globe. But the more uses scientists can find for carbon, the better chances are for humanity.
The Earth has had vastly higher levels of CO2 during the course of various geologic eras.
This is a good graph to show to people who are obsessed about the last 100 years.
Global warming people are a bunch of CNTs.
CO2 levels are now at 415... so highest in 400,000 years, per both your chart and mine.
More commonly used for health purposes, lithium carbonate is often used in tandem with treatment of mental health disorders.
The author needs to go back and take 7th grade science again. This process does NOT remove CO2 from the air, it removes if from lithium carbonate. The amount of CO2 in the air stays exactly the same. In addition, the energy to liberate the carbon requires more burning of fossil fuels than is “captured”. Why not simply use the carbon in coal? Besides all that, the mass of useful nanotubes is trivial compared with the mass of CO2 the Global Warming religious zealots want removed.
I made it to here....
I haven’t cranked the numbers, but I strongly suspect any CO2 -—to-—> carbon nanotubes reaction is going to be exergonic - it’s going to be a process that’s uphill in energy.
And if I’m right and you’ve got to put a pile of energy into the process to get it to go, I doubt you’re going to get that energy from sunshine or your friendly neighborhood windmill - not if you have to work with a molten salt at a temperature of over 700 degrees.
Why are they constantly pounding this “carbon dioxide is poison” schtick?
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Same reason they keep pounding the communism work! we just ain’t done it right yet! schtick.
They’re evil and idiots.
How about feeding it to plants? You know, air for plants? Going green? Save the Planet type stuff.
Mankind puts out 1010 tons of CO2 per year.
How many devices that weigh 10-10 tons would have to be made every year to put a dent in CO2 output?
Maybe if every human being on the planet needed ten million of them every year.
These authors are just INCREDIBLY STUPID. How they get hired as "science" writers is beyond me.
We were in the Cabinet Mountains in Western Montana last week where, 14,000 years ago, the area was under 3,500 feet of ice. And that was at the very southern leading edge of the huge ice sheets that covered much of North America. That was not very long ago when you think about it.
“mass of useful nanotubes is trivial compared with the mass of CO2 the Global Warming religious zealots want removed.”
I made the same comment before reading yours. See #34.
Propaganda.
“The main cause of global warming is CO2.” Just plain false on many fronts.
Assuming you buy many of their assumptions, water vapor has about 100 time the concentration as co2. (Ps - this is rarely mentioned because mankind does not impact atmospheric water at all.)
And that would have lasted longer if something didn’t hit the sheet going several thousand miles an hour and melt a shitload of ice.
It’s also interesting how, at the end of the last glacial period, the great ice dams failed unleashing HUGE floods across the now-western states (see Missoula Flood and Bonneville Flood). Then things froze up again, the huge lakes re-formed, the ice dams broke again unleashing more gigantic floods. The flood waters were 500 feet deep flowing to the pacific scouring everything in their path. These massive freeze/thaw cycles happened several times.
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