Filed under: Emerging Technologies, Natural Gas, Carbon Capture, UK
British scientists develop CO2 to natural gas process
What if we found a system to transform one of our big "enemies" into a fuel again, and then, when produced, re-transformed again? This is the aim of a project made at University of Nottingham's Centre for Innovation in Carbon Capture and Storage (CICCS), in the UK, directed by Mercedes Maroto-Valer. They have successfully completed a cycle of transforming CO2 into natural gas (CH4). This could lead to making most carbon capturing processes obsolete while also powering cars we already have. According to Ms. Maroto-Valer, the CICCS group tacked the problem by studying what plants do - capturing CO2, water and solar light and transforming it into carbohydrates - and then replicated the process to create methane instead of carbs. However, it's still unknown what the energy balance the system is - we can't defeat the laws of Thermodynamics, after all.[Source: Agencia Efe via Madrid+d]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
A.Brien 9:59PM (5/09/2008)
Most everything is invented, methods and tools. The best feedstocks for fuel is a dirty chimmey or sewage water. Algae eat co2 and some other pollutants and it grow fast for cheap too. The problem is that the power in society is insisting to impede new players in socio-economics and business, they are heavily corrupted like %arp$# in canada or the last 5 prime ministers before him, they are just a small office taken orders from c.i.a and germany too. At least they don't take orders from zimbawea yet but who knows?? If the politicians and car compagnies were honests and competants it would be a long time ago that we will have algae biofuel and cleaning and the water car( hydrogen ).
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GreyFlcn 1:42AM (5/10/2008)
Wow, this sounds disgustingly similar to H2Car.
http://greyfalcon.net/h2car
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Scatter 3:28AM (5/10/2008)
Let's say they find a way to do this efficiently, wouldn't it make more sense to route the natural gas back to the power station (where the CO2 produced can be recaptured and reconverted) rather than directing it to fueling cars where it can't (or at least where it will be much harder).
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Rei 3:58AM (5/10/2008)
It's actually quite legit. Enhanced oil recovery works because superfluid CO2 is readily miscible with oil and helps reduce its viscosity at the same time it pressurizes the reservoir. Enhanced coalbed methane recovery is basically the same thing, except they use CO2 to help drive methane out of underground coal seams (the CO2 likes to absorb into the coal microstructure, displacing methane while raising the pressure).
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mike baz 9:30AM (5/10/2008)
Since when is CO2 a pollutant? We breathe it out, plants breathe it in. Maybe Al Gore should declare dihydrogen oxide a pollutant too :)
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mike 1:02PM (5/10/2008)
Since when is CO2 a pollutant? Ask 100,000 dead people in Burma. But, sure, stay stupid with Rush.
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mike baz 4:42PM (5/10/2008)
In the 70's scientists were warning us of an impending ice age... in the 90's the warnings did a 180. I'd like a global warming proponent to explain to me why the ice caps are melting ... on Mars :)
Global warming is globalist attempt to lure us into paying a new tax to a new global level of government, but its for our own good. PS I'm an environmentalist but I can't stand for BS especially when spewed out by globalist tools
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Bob R. 6:45PM (5/10/2008)
Sorry, Mike Baz, but you are not quite correct about predictions of an ice age in the 70's.
While it is true that some articles were published speculating about a coming ice age, the majority of the science even then pointed to global warming. In popular media at the time, the term "Greenhouse Effect" had already seen widespread use. For example, it was used as a key element of the setting for the 1973 film "Soylent Green" with the term being spoken by none other than Charlton Heston.
Regarding your earlier comment dismissing labelling CO2 as a "pollutant", it is not necessary for something to be harmful-on-contact or not naturally occurring to be a pollutant. Quantity is key.
There's all kinds of arguments about climate change, and I don't suppose anyone's going to change your mind here in the comments section, but you might want to move on to lines of argument which are more scientifically based and at least factual.
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mike baz 7:14PM (5/10/2008)
Bob, anybody can change my mind anytime with facts.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
The entire solar system is heating up, but proponents of global warming refuse to even address this fact, and prefer to belittle those that point out this nagging fact.
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Bob R. 7:38PM (5/10/2008)
Nice dodge there, mike. You fail to correct your two previous erroneous comments, and then post a link to an article which leads off with "according to one scientist's controversial theory", as though that somehow settles anything.
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mike baz 8:21PM (5/10/2008)
Bob here's a summary of the 1970's ice age scare:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttLBqB0qDko
And on your second point yes Bob, anything can be toxic if administered in high enough doses, however carbon dioxide levels have been higher in the past and the sky didn't fall. And here's the latest globalist scare, and Al Gore with it, being torn to bits:
http://epw.senate.gov/repwhitepapers/6345050%20Hot%20&%20Cold%20Media.pdf
Now do me the honor, as a proponent of the global warming theory camp, to answer this simple question:
Why is the solar system heating up?
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Bob R. 8:45PM (5/10/2008)
Mike, mike, mike... The YouTube video you link to (which could just as easily have been done in print, as there is no narration, just music) provides no information about the ratio of articles (or more importantly, peer-reviewed scientific studies) promoting warming and/or cooling in that time period.
Your original comment contended that in the 1990's the warnings "did a 180", but you've shown no evidence that this, by and large, is actually the case.
Fortunately, someone has done this important work for us: Gathering the evidence and compiling statistics about reports from the 1970's. USA Today reported on this study in February:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/environment/2008-02-20-global-cooling_N.htm
Excerpts:
But Thomas Peterson of the National Climatic Data Center surveyed dozens of peer-reviewed scientific articles from 1965 to 1979 and found that only seven supported global cooling, while 44 predicted warming. Peterson says 20 others were neutral in their assessments of climate trends.
The study reports, "There was no scientific consensus in the 1970s that the Earth was headed into an imminent ice age."
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mike baz 9:15PM (5/10/2008)
Bob, or for that matter any proponent of the global warming impending catastrophe, for the third time, I repeat my question:
Why is the solar system heating up?
The science simply is not on your side Bob, and you have no answer to my question:
http://www.populartechnology.net/2007/10/no-consensus-on-global-warming.html
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Bob R. 9:35PM (5/10/2008)
I see now that your first two indefensible comments have been disproved, you've chosen to move the goalposts.
The National Geographic article you first provided regarding alleged solar system warming leads off by stating the theory is controversial, and includes other quotes like these:
'His views are completely at odds with the mainstream scientific opinion," said Colin Wilson, a planetary physicist at England's Oxford University.'
and
'Amato Evan, a climate scientist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, added that "the idea just isn't supported by the theory or by the observations."'
Based on this one article about one controversial proposal from one scientist, you boldly proclaimed "The entire solar system is heating up".
I've enjoyed talking to you, and I've checked out the sources you've provided and pointed you to better information. That's about all I can do. I try not to waste too much time with denialist rantings, and you've demonstrated no real factual basis for your claims. Like I said, I didn't expect to change your mind. Good day.
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mike baz 10:15PM (5/10/2008)
Hi Bob, likewise it has been nice arguing our points, but I really wish you had at least attempted to answer my original and oft repeated query:
Why is the solar system heating up?
I encourage all readers of this blog to do their own research, and not believe the self serving "truths" put out by the elites
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rj 12:20AM (5/11/2008)
It's a well known fact that there were no cyclones or any other natural disasters before suvs were invented.
We can go back to that wonderful time as soon as we stop burning stuff. Then people can feel free to live in tin shacks with no risk of bad weather or any other problem.
Plus rainbows everyday and polar bears enjoying a coke with some penguins ...or something like that.
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Ralph 1:08AM (5/11/2008)
Determining whether the earth and the solar system are heating up should not cause any ambiguity since scientists have something measurable. We should get a verifiable result. Since it appears that we do have a rise in temperature for both the question that naturally comes to mind is how much impact does mankind have on the rise in earth's temperature? Personally, I don't think our scientific community has the knowledge to answer this question fully, so we seem to be stuck debating this point. What seems more productive to me is to examine the benefits of increased efficiency and a shift to using multiple, cleaner sources of energy. By having multiple energy solutions we can moderate the impacts that we see today when the oil supply is reduced and/or the prices rise sharply. If we are vigilant to make sure that these new energy sources are not monopolized by the current energy establishment then the world has a good chance to be more stable and contented...IMO.
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cce 2:23AM (5/11/2008)
The solar system is not "heating up." Martian temperatures are determined by its albedo, which in turn is determined by how dusty the surface is at any particular moment. We know that there has been no increase in the output of the sun because we've had satellites measuring the sun for 30 years.
The prediction in the '70s about "cooling" was either a new ice age in thousands of years due to Milankovitch cycles, or due to the effect of manmade particulate emissions whose effects were overstated and didn't matter much anyway since global Sulfate emissions peaked in the late '80s. No matter, because predictions of warming in the '70s outnumbered predictions of cooling by 6 to 1. http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf
And anything linked from the Senate EPW minority website was compiled by Marc Morano, a former Limbaugh producer whose current purpose in life is to crank out garbage like this on behalf of (soon to be former) Senator Inhofe.
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Dr. Kenneth Noisewater 6:54AM (5/12/2008)
Why not just reformulate it a bit further into gasoline? It's a much better carrier of hydrogen at STP than methane.. Plus, there's a century of development in gasoline-based infrastructure..
Here's hoping such reformulation plants can be powered by Bussard-style electric fusion..
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mike baz 3:32PM (5/12/2008)
CCE, I'm not blaming the sun per say for the solar system heating up, I'm saying no one knows. Since you seem to have explained Mars heating up to your satisfaction now try Pluto.
"MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY NEWS RELEASE
Posted: October 10, 2002
Pluto is undergoing global warming,..."
I'm not pushing a neocon agenda, I reject the left/right paradigm altogether, I say power to the people, freedom for all from the energy monopolies, and when I get my Volt I'll be grinning every time I pass a gas station :)
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