Posted on 11/25/2016 4:11:06 PM PST by Enchante
Scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee have discovered a chemical reaction to turn CO2 into ethanol, potentially creating a new technology to help avert climate change. Their findings were published in the journal ChemistrySelect.
The researchers were attempting to find a series of chemical reactions that could turn CO2 into a useful fuel, when they realized the first step in their process managed to do it all by itself. The reaction turns CO2 into ethanol, which could in turn be used to power generators and vehicles.
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
From a more detailed article....
“Now let’s talk about the energy efficiency. The energy efficiency is essentially the energy you store divided by the energy you put into the reaction. We haven’t really investigated this, but we’re ballparking it around 20 percent, which is low. This is why, in the paper, we actually said that the overpotential (which defines the energy efficiency) is probably too high for the catalyst as it currently stands to be used commercially.”
Doesn’t look all that promising to me with a 20% efficiency. And that doesn’t count the energy/expemse needed to capture, store the CO2.
I’m also skeptical about a system that uses the output of a reaction (burning ethanal produces CO2) as part of its input without also inputting net energy. Sounds like a perpetual motion machine.
“Tampa Tribune”
The Trib is just NY Times’s baby brother. And nobody owning WF property thinks that anything can be done to “fix” the problem to any real degree, if one even exists.
If the article let me know where the hydrogen in the ethanol molecules is coming from, I could probably tell you whether the process is going to be economically viable.
If the politics of destroying capitalism was not so strong, there are ways of scrubbing CO2 without the draconian means of the environmentalists (no coal, no povs, etc.) that could drastically reduce emissions and aid the third world economies at the same time. Who knows, we could eventually help bring on another ice age which is due soon.
It is a plot to kill all the plants and take humans with them.
One more observation...
Besides CO2, the other output of ethanol combustion is water, which they also use as input.
So to recap... They claim that using water and CO2 plus a magical catalyst produces ethanol which you then burn to produce water and CO2 plus lots of free energy.
Totally bogus. This from the very prestigious Oak Ridge National Lab, that’s how far basic research has sunk in this country.
From the original article:
“The overpotential (which might be lowered with the proper electrolyte, and by separating the hydrogen production to another catalyst) probably precludes economic viability for this catalyst, . . .”
Translation: you’ve got to put so much juice into this system to get out ethanol, the cost of the electricity is unlikely to be recovered in the energy value of that ethanol.
But - maybe it’s a start; technology advances in increments, and if this approach can be tweaked enough, it might provide a means of converting electrical energy into the sort of chemical energy that’s useful for running vehicles.
“...to help avert climate change.”
With all due respect to the highly credentialled people who made this scientific discovery and who wrote and approved of this press release, the climate is ALWAYS changing.
In fact, within the last 25,000 years the land where the modern city of Chicago is located was under a mile of glacial ice. That was not the first time that this area was covered by a glacier. It will not be last.
The question is not whether or not the climate is changing. The question is this: to what extent is human activity changing the climate for the worse, especially to where it cases damage to the biosphere?
It seems to me that since almost all solutions demanded by advocates of “climate change” seem to converge on creating the socialist Utopia, that we are seeing more of an ideological agenda at work than the pursuit of true and honest science.
and that is the last we will ever hear ofit
..... Well .... This simply won’t do!!!!! ...... Don’t people realize that the Earth needs as much CO2 as possible to keep the climate scare alive!!! Using it for practical means just isn’t practical!
Aside from the fact that this whole climate change scam is nothing but a scam...My wife’s mother was dear friends with a couple whose husband was a senior engineer with SoCal Edison, a major utility, and he told me that most electric power plants using fossil fuels, i.e. natural gas or liquid fuels, would be lucky if they achieved 18% efficiency. Anything we can do to improve that model or develop new models would be helpful. But then, there is something missing here...which is the fact when God created everything on earth in such an incredible balance in what we call nature, do you suppose that the power to create such a hugely complex system could also anticipate the stupidity of lowly earth beings to phuck it all up...me thinks so...
More violation of the entropy law of physics.
Leftards will throw billions into this hole too.
Billions will be poured into grants, subsidies and studies, and it’ll go nowhere.
“A process like this would allow you to consume extra electricity when it’s available to make and store as ethanol,”
So yeah, it consumes power.
MAN MADE deforestation!!!
Great Caesar's Ghost!!! We're going to need Rachel Maddow for this one!
You're not dreaming. You haven't died and gone to hell. This is your world, now. This is America!
Add a twisted smile and, "Sigh..."
MAN MADE deforestation!!!
Great Caesar's Ghost!!! We're going to need Rachel Maddow for this one!
You're not dreaming. You haven't died and gone to hell. This is your world, now. This is America!
Add a twisted smile and, "Sigh..."
Thanks for posting. I like Science articles.
You are correct in questioning this key point. It seems like since I was a kid people always talk about these schemes that don’t conform to conservation of energy. Unless they get the energy from some atomic source, in which case it might be great.
OK I admit I didn’t read the article yet.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.