Recent Comment
Share
All this talk about solar power and the weird thing is, plants have been doing it since the beginning of, well, plants. For years now, scientists have been trying to duplicate and improve upon the process of photosynthesis (even Jimmy Stewart tried it once.) And now a research group led by Osamu Ishitani has created a new catalyst that could turn CO2 into fuel efficiently, with only the power of the sun.
The new catalyst uses ruthenium and rhenium, two elements not found in your average leaf. But they do allow for the same first step (CO2 to CO) that plants use. In fact, it's considerably more efficient and simpler than the way plants do things.
CO is far more reactive than CO2, and so it's fairly simple to do a little bit of old-school organic chemistry to turn CO into burnable hydrocarbons like ethanol.
The trick was using the Ru catalyst to absorb the light, which it does very efficiently in the visual light spectrum, but then using the Re catalyst to actually take the electron produced and knock one of the oxygens off of the CO2. The Re complex has a quantum efficiency of 0.62, which means it actually uses 62% of the electrons it gets from the Ru catalyst to reduce the CO2. This number is extremely high.
The Ru-Re combination also excels at selecting CO2 over H2O. One big problem with artificial photosynthesis in the past is that these photocatalysts would often reduce water to OH just as easily as they reduced CO2 to CO. That waste of energy forced people to look into ways of scrubbing the CO2 of water (not a simple task.) But with this new catalyst, water isn't a problem.
Now, the only problem is to make sure the catalyst is stable and doesn't degrade over time. If they can do that, then there won't be much between this research and a CO2 to fuel manufacturing plant.
Via TechOn
Subscribe to this comment's feed
written by Clinch, January 09, 2009
I think this is an interesting new development, but can't see it changing the world, as it seems more efficient to convert the sunlight directly into electricity, rather than through some roundabout way of changing it into CO, and then burning the CO.
-
- +0
-
-
written by amj, January 09, 2009
-
- +0
-
-
written by Dima Lurie, January 11, 2009
written by Clinch , January 09, 2009
Do you mean converting CO2 in to CO AND O, otherwise, what happens to the extra oxygen?
the process goes like this
2CO2->2CO+O2
or if you didn't study chemistry:
2 molecules of carbon dioxide will turn in one molecule of CO and one molecule of Breathable oxygen.
If the catalyst will be stable you can say Good Bye to Global Worming, as carbon dioxide can be easily pulled from the air there will be no need to burn any fuels in order to get it (burning fuels emits a lot other hazardous gasses).
O2 will probably be used as part of the fuel that will be created at the end or be sold to medical companies.
-
- +0
-
-
written by Dima Lurie, January 11, 2009
-
- +0
-
-
written by jeff, January 11, 2009
-
- +0
-
-
written by mark, January 12, 2009
They haven't quoted an overall efficiency - but 62% of the electrons are reducing the CO2. Assuming your not using a whole lot of energy in then converting the CO into useful fuel it could be quite efficient (if the CO conversion approaches 100% efficient the overall efficiency would approach 62% in my limited understanding of the process). In contrast the absolute world record for solar->electric is under 50%.
It also depends on if the electricity is more useful than the hydrocarbon fuel. In the case of cars, hydrocarbon fuel is a better energy transport due to higher energy density than current electric storage. Obviously burning the hydrocarbon fuel in a heat engine (up to 60-80% efficiency) to generate electricity would be less efficient than current worlds best photovoltaic technology, but this might also be much cheaper to implement on a large scale. There are many ways why this may complement solar rather than compete with it and still change the world.
-
- +0
-
-
written by Rory, January 13, 2009
If properly managed, this has huge potential. More efficient than solar, and a catalyst is cheap to produce, if the 62% efficiency is achievable, how do we go about harvesting the CO2 to feed the process?
-
- +1
-
-
written by Mary, January 14, 2009
Did you mean Global Warming?
-
- +1
-
-
written by Logan Quinn, January 14, 2009
Of course, they just wanted to bury the CO2 instead of capturing the Carbon and producing carbon fibers as Jeff mentioned above (I really wish our scientists and inventors would really try to move away from this mindset of burying waste for future generations to deal with and adopt the mindset that everything is a resource and nothing is waste). I think these two technologies could work together very well. Especially if used as part of factories which manufacture carbon fiber based products.
-
- +1
-
-
written by Kit Kuhlman, January 14, 2009
-
- +1
-
-
written by Carol, January 15, 2009
-
- +0
-
-
written by Uncle B, February 19, 2009
-
- +0
-
-
written by Carbon Bob, May 22, 2009
-
- +0
-
-
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
the concept of renewable energy would be fairly direct in this one:
1. burn some sort of fuel
2. directly capture co2 and make co using the sun
3. produce ethanol
4. burn ethanol and repeat
of course you would lose carbon and energy each step of the way, but it still sounds like one of the most efficient ways to produce energy. this is just as much solar power as it is burning carbon for energy. as long as the catalyst doesn't have to be replenished often, i can see this popping up in coal plants everywhere.