Turning carbon dioxide into fuel – CNN.com
LONDON, England (CNN) — You might have thought that recycling is limited to paper, plastics and glass. Well, think again. A Californian company is developing a new technique for recycling carbon dioxide, or CO2, and turning it back into fuel.
Carbon Sciences are developing a “breakthrough technology” to make fuel out of waste CO2.

Carbon Sciences believe they have made a breakthrough with their technology, which they say can transform CO2 back into basic fuel building blocks efficiently.

Their biocatalytic process converts CO2 into basic hydrocarbons – C1 (methane) C2 (ethane) and C3 (propane) — which can then be utilized to make higher-grade fuels like gasoline and jet fuel.

This looks to be a grand opportunity for the world, but I question whether or not American companies or the government has vision enough to see the opportunities to be had with this sort of investment. We seem to be a big country with lots of people who don’t mind pollution so long as it isn’t directly in their backyard.

“We don’t use high temperatures or high pressures, which is a huge advantage in terms of scaling the project up,” McLeish said.

In the future, McLeish envisages Carbon Sciences setting up shop next door to large CO2 emitters — coal, gas-fired plants and oil refineries — recycling concentrated streams of CO2 discharged from fossil fuel plants. Trying to take CO2 out of natural air just wouldn’t be worth it.
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“The beauty of this system is the whole infrastructure to distribute, to market and to use it is already in place,” he said.

The recycling process has five main stages. After rudimentary purification and regeneration of the biocatalysts, the CO2 is transferred to a Biocatalytic Reactor Matrix where mass quantities of biocatalysts function in a matrix of liquid reaction chambers breaking down CO2 and turning it into hydrocarbons.

We too have the infrastructure to put this in place, but once again I wonder if we aren’t too myopic to see beyond the dollar signs that no doubt will need to be invested in this sort of project. With $700 Billion plus going to bail out Wallstreet I wonder if Joe Sixpack has the vision to see beyond anything that might cost more money right now. Don’t get me wrong we still need to keep those companies afloat, but I wonder if we can still afford to invest in the future while saving our ass at the moment.

Post 4 of 100 of Brad’s Tiny World Scribefire Challenge.

When this is land in the best of times how will you survive?

• Ethanol puts out more pollution than gasoline. In some studies this is the case. However automakers never wanted to work on the problem, because they were one in bed with the oil companies and secondly because there was no demand to do it.
• Ethanol will harm my cars engine. This is partly true. Old gaskets and seals won’t withstand long term ethanol use. Many of those cars and trucks need to be taken off the road anyways which is slowly being done by attrition. We have the technology to make gaskets and seals which are safe for use with ethanol, some even do better against ethanol than they do gasoline.
• It will cost more to make ethanol burning cars than it does gasoline burners. False. This is just one more thing automakers say to keep people from using ethanol.
• The price of gas won’t go down. Well duh, nothing is going to make the price of gas go below $3.00 a gallon ever again.
• It is better to buy or use diesel machinery than ethanol burners. In some things it most certainly is and there is nothing stopping us from planting different, highly productive crops to make that too. The goal isn’t just to produce fuel it is to cut down on how much is wasted by grass mowing. The fact we can make fuel from alternate plants is just a bonus.
• Refineries cost too much to build for the government. False. Huge refineries cost a lot of money, but a cellulosic or bio-diesel production facility doesn’t have to be huge. You can easily produce small ones to handle local amounts of bio-matter for very little money. Secondly there is nothing that says it has to be a public processor. A local processor would encourage others to use local unused lands for the same crop, producing even more fuel.
• Expensive pipeline infrastructure would been to be built. False. Sending the final product away from the production facility defeats the purpose of local production and consumption. Secondly we need new a pipeline infrastructure anyways. Most of our current system is old and starting to show signs of degradation.

Like my call to stop cutting grass on an individual level I am not saying we should totally eliminate the task. There are some places that need cutting and some very good reasons to do it in others. However simply reducing the amount of time we spend doing it will save not only money, but lessen the impact we make on our environment.