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To make CO2 into fuel, to be burned, to release the CO2 again, seems rather futile. If your goal was to capture CO2
What it'll do is stabilize CO2 output, instead of constantly increasing it like we are now. It'll turn fuel into C02, yes, but then turn that C02 back into fuel. Currently we just turn fuel into C02, without the other half of it happening. SO it's still a net benefit.
The real issue is scalability to get enough fuel to do the job, unlike algae biofuel production which has turned out not to scale up to match the amounts of fuel we actually use.
To make CO2 into fuel, to be burned, to release the CO2 again, seems rather futile. If your goal was to capture CO2
In my opinion the question is what is the net gain in energy produced by converting co2 into ethanol vs producing gasoline. Capturing co2 seems a lot easier than pumping oil and converting it to gasoline. I guess if we can continue to harvest ethanol from the co2 we create from fossil fuels already processed from mining and drilling then it might make sense.
To make CO2 into fuel, to be burned, to release the CO2 again, seems rather futile. If your goal was to capture CO2
Converting CO2 to ethanol is useful even when the ethanol is burned because the net is zero new CO2. Where this process breaks down is that it takes 5 times as much energy to make the ethanol as is released by the ethanol. Given that most electricity comes from fossil fuel resources, there's a net increase in CO2. If you use renewable electricity to produce the ethanol you just have a very costly fuel.
The electrochemical and bio-chemical reduction of CO2 to various hydrocarbons has been an active area of research for some time, so the production of ethanol is not really surprising. The production of methane from CO2 has been known for a while.
If the goal with this is to produce fuels which are portable, or are used as a mean of energy storage, for instance converting photovoltaic energy into chemical energy and then burning it at night, then plain water electrolysis is pretty hard to beat. It has an energy efficiency of 50-75% (depending on whether the H2 is compressed or not).
The electrochemical and bio-chemical reduction of CO2 to various hydrocarbons has been an active area of research for some time, so the production of ethanol is not really surprising. The production of methane from CO2 has been known for a while.
If the goal with this is to produce fuels which are portable, or are used as a mean of energy storage, for instance converting photovoltaic energy into chemical energy and then burning it at night, then plain water electrolysis is pretty hard to beat. It has an energy efficiency of 50-75% (depending on whether the H2 is compressed or not).
The article say 20% efficiency, which is way to low to be remotely interesting. Plant based ethanol is much more energy efficient.
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