Make fuel out of Thin AIR
Mr.S. Abisheik
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ABOUT
Imagine filling your car with gas pulled from the sky, rather than out of the ground. US scientists have developed what they say is a cost-effective way of pulling CO2 from the air and creating carbon-neutral fuels including gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, compatible with existing fuel networks and vehicles. The process works by direct air capture – which is when giant fans draw ambient air into contact with an aqueous solution that picks out and traps the carbon dioxide. Add heat and chemical reactions, and that same carbon dioxide can be re-extracted and made into new fuels, to be used or stored.
Process to achieve :
A two-step process using metal oxides that can split water and carbon dioxide. The first step, which occurs between 1100 and 1800 degrees Celsius, thermally reduces or “pulls off” oxygen from the metal oxide material. Then at temperatures of about 300 to 900 degrees Celsius, either water or carbon dioxide is introduced in the second step. These lower temperatures are favorable for re-oxidation, which enables the metal oxide to take back oxygen from either the water or carbon dioxide, resulting in hydrogen or carbon monoxide. The two steps are important — otherwise the oxygen would recombine with either the carbon monoxide or hydrogen, resulting in the release of heat that would then be lost.
Test run & Results
» The researchers have demonstrated that the technology works with zinc oxide, but they are searching for materials that can speed up the reactions and reduce the temperature of the first step.
» “You want something that can reduce at the lowest possible temperature in the high-temp stage and is capable of taking the oxygen from the carbon dioxide or the water vapor in the second step,”
» Recently, the group achieved promising results with mixed ionic electronic conducting materials. Now they are trying to tune these materials to break apart either the CO2 molecules or the water vapor molecules at lower temperatures.
Conclusion :
If commercialized, the technology could transform desert areas into fuel farms, “Instead of pulling fuel out of the ground, we could pull carbon dioxide from the air and use the sun to convert it with water into a long-term storage medium that could be shipped and used around the world without changes to transportation infrastructure.”
