UC-San Diego chemists split carbon dioxide with sunlight
There are many pilot projects going on right now with carbon capture and sequestration at power plants and other facilities that are burning fossil fuels. Capturing the carbon dioxide is probably the more straightforward part of that equation. The process of storing the carbon dioxide is can be more problematic. Chemists at University of California at San Diego have come up with an alternative use for the captured CO2. Rather than storing it underground they want to split off one of the oxygen atoms to produces carbon monoxide and oxygen. The CO is an important feedstock for many chemical processes such as producing detergents and plastics and is usually produced from natural gas. Prof. Clifford Kubiak and grad student Aaron Sathrum have demonstrated a semiconductor catalyst device that uses solar power to split the CO2.
This has multiple advantages because it eliminates the CO2 from the atmosphere and provides the CO that is needed for other processes without consuming additional fossil fuels. More development is needed on the device to improve the efficiency, but the concept takes a novel approach to dealing with the problem of what to do with the carbon dioxide we produce.
[Source: UCSD News]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Joseph 9:49PM (5/27/2007)
Although this sounds nice, is this really feasible?
It sounds like it's be expensive large-scale, so maybe the extra moeny is better spent on wind or solar. And if you're going to say that wind or solar is too expensive, well, the coal-fired plant with a fancy expensive carbon-spliting thingy would probably make it cost just as much as electricity from renewable sources.
Anyway, we use only so much carbon monoxide. Therefore, we can only split so much carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide. And I can't imagine that the amount of carbon monoxide needed can ever make a dent out of the carbon dioxide produced.
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www.chl-tx.com 10:28PM (5/27/2007)
When I first saw the title of this blog entry, I thought to myself, "gee, wasn't splitting of CO2 by sunlight accomplished several million years ago by plant life?"
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susan.kraemer 9:09AM (5/28/2007)
On the other hand, though, if carbon monoxide is NOT a greenhouse gas, then it hardly matters if its merely of no USE, just that it do no HARM to the atmosphere.
This sounds like a breakthrough to me.
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Jon 12:38PM (5/28/2007)
I sincerely hope they keep on with this research. At least it sounds promising.
Solar and wind power are underused, yes, and government grants for each individual property [or energy rebates of some kind] should be considered rather than some vast and expensive schemes done on a grand scale.
But governments like to govern, and anything which diminishes their power isn't welcomed! Democracy? - what democracy?
Sadly, in the UK, government is hell bent on nuclear power stations - never mind the fact that they still don't know what to do with the waste from the previous generation of nuclear stations.
Anything which will help stop that is to be welcomed!
My rants are usually in regard to the mismanagement of the roads, plus the fact that the UK will soon be 'standing room only' if European law prevails - please don't get me on the subject of the Common Market.
My 'Road Usage' blog is at http://road-use.blogspot.com
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Greg A. 11:30PM (5/28/2007)
#3: But carbon monoxide is poisonous. How much of it can be released into the atmosphere if there is not enough industrial demand for it and it is not a greenhouse gas?
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kballs 7:54PM (5/29/2007)
Carbon Monoxide is already present in exhaust gases in copious amounts... they use catalysts to convert it to Carbon Dioxide because it's less poisonous... this would just be converting it back again.
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Al 12:53PM (8/23/2007)
#5 carbon monoxide is used industrially to make clean liquid fuels (which do not produce smog) via Fischer-Tropsch process.
If we can mimic photosynthesis to produce clean fuel then I'm all for it.
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