Turning Carbon Dioxide into Petrol – Carbon Capture – Horizons

There’s now a fifth more carbon in the atmosphere than there was just in the year 2000 and the international energy agency talks about carbon capture and storage, CCS in the jargon, as the most important single new technology to prevent global warming. Adam Shaw visits a company who are not just capturing and storing CO2 but are using CO2 to create a synthetic fuel.

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19 thoughts on “Turning Carbon Dioxide into Petrol – Carbon Capture – Horizons”

  1. So they capture CO2 which is plant food (remember that below 180 ppm we don´t have green plants to eat) and turn into a mix of real pollutants like SO2, NOx and others, when it is burnt inside an explosion motor……that is very, very intelligent!! I am amazed with our scientists capabilities.

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  2. It seems like most or all of the larger hydrocarbon molecules are all fuels that can be oxidized to release energy at some temperature. Carbon dioxide and water are just about free. Set a mixture of water vapor and carbon dioxide spinning at high velocity in a cylindrical chamber with a filter along the outside that will stop anything larger than methane hoping to catch only those molecules that are liquid or solid at room temperature and are easily stored with good energy density. Focusing concentrated solar into the center of the chamber will break the water and carbon dioxide down into their elements. The centrifugal force and theiir own heat will drive the disassociated elements away from the center where they will combine into different hydrocarbons at different temperatures as they move awsy from the heat. The larger molecules so formed are likely to be alcohols or propane or butane etc., and will be trapoed by the filter. The recombined carbon dioxide and water and other small molecules will pass through the filter and can be recirculated into the center. The larger flamnable molecules trapped by the filter and kept from the hot center by centrifugal force will build up until most of the initial carbon dioxide and water vapor have been converted to flammable hydrocarbons like the mix found in crude oil. This "crude oil" can then be refined in the ordinary way. Hopefully the process would not take millions of years as in the formation of natural fossil fuels.

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  3. Lol. how much energy is being use for this conversion?
    also the catalyst from vehicles transform H2, NOx, carbon monoxide into H2O, N2 and CO2 NOT carbon monoxide.

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  4. this makes no sense co2 is not a fuel if you have that much hydrogen just burn that and you will have no emissions and you won't have to supply energy for distillation this is a big joke and a waste of tax money

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  5. Groan. Ok… so you fill a desert with solar panels (ignoring the energy and specific minerals needed to make the solar panels). You now build a massive plant next to it. You then extra CO2, combine it with sulphur-based chemicals (which need producing and extracting) and make ethanol. You then transport the ethanol to vehicles which burn it.Now anyone can figure at least five better ways of going this. 1. Farm crops and use the plant material to make ethanol. Doesn't require solar panels, sulphur extraction, etc. 2. Just put vast lakes of algae or vats of bacteria. These will extract CO2 and make ethanol for you without the need of solar cells. 3. If you have all this endless renewable power… use the solar cells to make this vast amount of electricity and send to cities with electric vehicles with hydrogen fuel cells. Electric vehicles are far more efficient then burning gasoline (let alone low-grade ethanol fuels). 4. If you have all this endless renewable power… replace all the coal and gas electricity plants in the world and don't worry about making ethanol for vehicles.5. If you have all this endless renewable power…  just keep burning coal and gasoline for power and use existing carbon extraction technology to take CO2 out of the earth and trap it in rock or the ocean.The problem has never been using, transporting, or converting energy. These are always a fraction of the energy usage percentage. The issue has always been generating the power. This "technology" relies on some fictional renewable power which doesn't exist. If such power existed… we have the technology to replace fossil fuel vehicles with electric vehicles and just use the power normally.

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  6. Well, just build the thing on a desert beach, with a solar power tower.
    Oh, and this still looks rather contrived. What’s wrong with just using the methanol as-is?

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  7. Wonder what the projected cost per/unit would be? Joules Unlimited does a similar process. The process is sun light plus CO2 plus water fuel that is 'finish refined' in their DNA modified algae, who's Body…surprisingly holds it's energy storage (fuel) on the outside. The algae lives on after the fuel is removed. Joules Unlimited is teamed up with Audi…so it's no 'smoke and mirrors' idea. Joules says they can do it profitable at equal to oil (at)$50/barrel.

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  8. actually this process is more important because it produces synthetic hydrocarbons which are used in far more places than just as a fuel. Alot of chemicals and plastics need hydrocarbons too.

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