- cross-posted to:
- science
- science@lemmygrad.ml
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- science
- science@lemmygrad.ml
- hackernews@derp.foo
Engineers develop an efficient process to make fuel from carbon dioxide::An efficient new process can convert carbon dioxide into formate, a material that can be used like hydrogen or methanol to power a fuel cell and generate electricity.
What’s the catch?
When they say it’s efficient, they mean at not letting CO2 go, not in energy cost. Looks like step one is capturing it which is already energy intensive, and step 2 is reacting it with a strong base. So it takes a lot of stuff as input.
And they did this on a lab bench, not at scale in a plant.
This and fusion, neck and neck.
Burning it creates enormous clouds of Trioxin 2-4-5.
That it burns the shit back into the atmosphere.
Yes, but if it could provide as an alternative to digging up oil and gass, and get the energy needed to make the transformation from sun, wind or other sustainable sources. It could lower the amount of new CO2 being put into the atmosphere as well as work as a way to store excess energy from wind and sun.
Yeah, it would basically act as a battery except much better energy and power density, and faster ‘charging’.
The downside is invariably that round trip energy efficiency (electricity in vs electricity out) is somewhere between ‘much worse’ and ‘terrible’.