Researchers Discover Nanoscale Catalyst to Efficiently Convert CO2 Into Ethylene

SciTechDaily ^ | 09/19/2020 | UCLA

[JD_UTDallas]

Ethylene can be hydrogenated over a copper catalyst directly to ethanol so yes this process could make pure ethanol with the correct secondary catalyst. Much of the industrial ethanol is made by catalytic Ethylene and ethane hydrogenation its much cheaper than fermentation. The only reason for fermentation of ethanol is the government mandates for corn based ethanol. For industrial not “fuel” use nearly all ethanol is hydrocarbon based.

[Vermont Lt]

I’m a petroleum geologist and also a engineer by degrees we see every day at the refinery energy being consumed to make a end product.
————

I never would have known that from the previous post. LOL.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Endothermic — so build lots of coal plants. You get the CO2 feedstock AND the required energy. Coal —> polyethylene.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Don’t underestimate the importance of plastics.

Lego intensifies search for sustainable bricks, September 16, 2020.

Danish toymaker Lego said on Tuesday it would invest $400 million over the next three years to step up efforts to produce its colourful bricks using sustainable materials instead of oil-based plastic.

The investment will help Lego to reach a target of becoming carbon neutral by 2022 in terms of its production, as well as phase out single-use plastic in packaging by 2025, and replace plastic bricks with ones made from sustainable materials by the end of the decade.

Lego uses some 90,000 tonnes of plastic in its products each year but since 2018 the company has made some of the less rigid parts of Lego sets, such as plants and trees, from bio-polyethylene, a type of plastic made from ethanol, produced using sugarcane.

The material does not work as well for the standard hard bricks that are still made from oil-based plastic. Lego is testing how to use bio-polyethylene for the hard bricks.

[bert]

Locally, we have three coal gasification plants that do precisely what you suggest except for the polyethylene part. The products are other molecules.

They began operation around 1980

[wita]

“We are at the brink of fossil fuel exhaustion, coupled with global climate change challenges”

opening statements like that pretty much destroy any credibility for the rest of the article ...

One might wonder why such idiotic opening statements failed to be in the exerpt used to introduce the article? Had you not read the article I might have thought this had some kind of merit, other than the premise one had to buy into that hydrogen and methane are somehow undesirable despite the fact they are part of earth science and provided by our all knowing Creator.

[alexander_busek]

Endothermic — so build lots of coal plants. You get the CO2 feedstock AND the required energy. Coal —> polyethylene.

Did I miss your "sarcasm" tag? Because: The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Analogous to operating a cat-pelt factory, where the cats eat the rats, and the rats eat the cats.

There is always a net non-zero loss.

Regards,

[no-s]

we see every day at the refinery energy being consumed to make a end product.

Thanks, I had a stupefying explanation wound up and then I thought to check and see if someone else had beat me to it with a better one.

[alexander_busek]

Just because a chemical process takes a net energy input to create a desired end product doesn’t mean it’s not a valuable process.

No one here is denying that it's possible to take CO2 and (while inputting energy) manufacture ethylene.

Rather, the point is that the energy required to do that - unless obtained from, e.g., nuclear power - probably involves the creation of CO2 somewhere up the line.

At present, tree (and other plants) are the most-efficient converters of CO2 into other valuable outputs (incl. O2 and wood).

Regards,

[cpdiii]

“They lie by omission. They omitted the fact that this process requires energy, far more than was used when oxidizing the carbon. It takes more energy to create each ethylene molecule than was created by burning the Carbon that produced the CO2. Even with a 100 percent efficient catalyst, it would take just as much energy as was used in the burning. A catalyst can’t create energy.”

Bingo. Unless the Universe starts becoming more enthalmic and less entropic there is nothing free in a chemical reaction. Entropy rules and the universe becomes cold and dark.

[JD_UTDallas]

Right I was just separating green fantasy from chemical engineering and economics. This process could be useful if it takes a waste product such as CO2 from oil well tank battery vents or natural gas separation plants or ethanol bioreactors or anaerobic sewage sludge reactors or landfill gas capture/ methane recovery or coal gasification plant exhaust or... You get the point CO2 is a cheap abundantly available commodity having a process that can take it and with cheap energy such as natural gas at 90 cents a therm or lignite at $3 a ton or base bar nuclear power off peak at $1 mill/Mwh and turn it into ethylene which can then be via polymerization turned into high value plastics PETE LDPETE HDPETE or via oligomerization into a whole range of alkenes, alkanes, or PAOs all of which are worth thousands of dollars per ton. Ethylene can be turned into PAOs such as Mobil one Motor oil which sells for $9 a quart. Breaking the double carbon bond of CO2 is a massive advance in catalyst technology with wide reaching outcome. All the greenwashing aside the raw tech is a huge advance for petrochemical industry.