Solar-powered device captures carbon dioxide from air to make sustainable fuel

Comments

• TIN@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I thought ages ago about a passive technology to use solar power to capture carbon dioxide and turn it into solid form.

  I realised that I was trying to invent trees.

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• Buffalox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  This article has waaayyy too much “if this actually worked worked it could be used for…” and “instead of other methods that don’t work” and waaayy to little about the actual validity of the process.

  This is a general trend every fucking time an article claims to have something on CO2 or batteries or global warming. IMO this is probably because the actual idea is bullshit.
  Sorry but my ADD prevented me from reading all that non content crap to see if there were actually anything real to read.

  What if, instead of pumping the carbon dioxide underground, we made something useful from it

  What if instead of having your head up your ass, you at this point had already written at least a teaser about how this is any better?
  99% sure by now, that this is a fucking waste of time.

  Please inform me if there’s any actual content.

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  • iii@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    It’s university press department stuff. That’s always shitty pop-science communication.

    Then again, it works, as people post that to fora, instead of the actual research. And popularity, not quality, of work brings grants.

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  • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I skimmed most of it, but I’m still not sure what the fuel is. CO2 isn’t particularly useful unless you change it to something else. What’s that something else?

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    • iii@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Syngas, a mixture of CO and H2

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• futatorius@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Stopping pollution at the source is much more thermodynamically efficient.

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• nomoredrama@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I have several of these around me. I call them trees, and plants. They use solar power to convert carbon, water, and minerals, into a solid form, which I call wood.

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  • xia@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Ha! Next you’ll tell us these magic machines are nearly free and self-replicating!

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    • nomoredrama@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      lol. They are. It’s truly amazing!

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• Petter1@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  “Sustainable fuel”

  But that shit deep under ground, not back in the air!!

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  • EpicGamer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Lol, how is this different then hydrogen for example? Its renewable if just carbon dioxide is consumed during generation

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    • Petter1@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Hydrogen fuel isn’t really renewable, even if the PR agents of companies creating it tell so. Edit: at fact check, I found this, maybe there is a way after a

      youtu.be/ISuUlc8widc

      To your comparison: Hydrogen only releases water if burned.

      And getting CO2 out of air is very resource intensive and we need to pull a lot CO2 out, if the air to get back to “normal” levels. We can not afford to put any CO2 back into the atmosphere, after the hard work getting it out.

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• iii@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetogen is a more promising technology in my opinion. It also does not require high pressures or temperatures, has been proven to scale to tons of co2, and uses much less energy than this paper.

  This paper has the advantage of not needing a high concentration of co2 in the air. But on the other hand, such sources are readily available as a by-product of industry.

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  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    i think acetogens are biological entities, though?

    wasn’t there some rule about industrial processes being 10x to 100x more efficient than biological beings, in general?

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    • iii@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      there’s no such rule

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• Korhaka@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I first heard about this kind of thing a couple of decades ago. Pretty sure biofuel is more efficient though.

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• MNByChoice@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Cool.

  Looking forward to hearing about the scaling up.

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  • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    i find the technology itself more interesting than the scaling-up, because we can’t do anything about the scaling up (at least i don’t have billions of dollars that it would cost), but we can analyze the process qualitatively from home, that’s more exciting.

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• gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Interesting. I wonder how they catch the CO2 out of the air.

  Ok, after reading (parts of) the paper:

  • they use some amines on porous Silicate to catch the CO2 out of the air
  • the whole process in the paper is actually a 2-step process, the first step being CO2 capture
  • the second step describes how to convert CO2 into CO+H2 or sth

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