I have never come across the splitting of the C02 to extract the oxygen. All the processes I have seen involve either using C02 (a valuable little chemical compound), storing it, or combining it with other compounds for long term storage. I would be interested if someone knows if it is even possible without resulting in some crazy array of C and O compounds due to numerous complex chemical reaction processes (ie- can just the C or O be extracted at all in one or two steps).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_sequestration

As for the energy required to split C02 (by any process electrical, chemical or brute force), the simple answer is enormously more than you could ever get out if the intention is to use the byproduct (oxygen) as a fuel source. Orders of magnitude worse. Compressing wood to create oil to refine into gasoline would likely be more efficient (and that it ain't).

Hi jack of all trades,

"use the byproduct (oxygen) as a fuel source" also requires the addition of a true fuel to combine with the O₂, right?

I see an over-unity opportunity here. (Just kidding)

Yes , I think you're onto something here lynlyn, I maybe able to utilize my dihydrogen oxide motor to power the reaction.I would provide details , but BIG OIL is monitoring me trying to suppress the truth, man. Seriously, plants do this all the time and the wife says that I am possibly smarter than some plants.

I was just thinking that there might be a better use for the CO2 beyond injecting it in the ground, OR how about underground+ algae+ geothermal+water and tapping the output to sell at the oxygen bar.Get Archer Daniels Midland involved with an exclusive genetically engineered algae that uses geothermal rather than sunlight, can't be too much more ineffecient than converting corn to ethanol. Use abandoned mineshafts, commission a study by the Bland Institute to see if we have a mine shaft gap vis-a-vis the Rooski's.

Packdrill, -out

Sorry packrat561,

I'm already on to directly converting the CO₂ into O₂, using an indoor "garden" to produce the generator. Cover the windows of a large room with Al foil and grow some type of cash crop that you can sell, perhaps on-line. You'll need some black lights for this process. Then pump CO2 into the room and the plants will produce O₂ as a result. Harvest the crops in rotation and you have added income.

Oh, and somehow catch the O₂, too.

Stick around. Cheers!

Hi lynlynch, your idea does make more sense on a practical level, except for two things:

1. All my aluminum foil is spoken for in order to construct my special hats.

B. It would have to be a very pricey vegetable to overcome the cost of shipping, I guess you mean something one can't readily buy in the store, like an heirloom tomato or a truffle.

Thanks for the suggestion ,

Packdrill-out

The theory is good......and fully correct!!

Great thing about this process is that the plant takes the carbon and puts the oxygen back into atmosphere where you can get at it and it uses solar energy.

Another plus is that if the carbon is made by destructive distillation you can recover all sorts of useful chemicals and not foul up the atmosphere again.

What goes around comes around - we have got to stop "effing" around - Freedom From Fossil Fuels"

just be careful, certain law enforcement authorities monitor electrical and water usage as well as the purchase of certain necessary equipment.

Hi rorschach,

I understand that if you use the electricity or water that you must pay for it, that's what you meant about the authorities monitoring , Right? Or do you mean if you are growing some kind of patented vegetable and you are supposed to pay some kind of licensing fee?

Packrat

er... something like that....

Hey Rorschach,

I dig it , must apologize for my gentle leg pulling "clueless" posts, I read somewhere that it is the biggest cash crop in America . I live in Florida , it must be very common here ,cuz they are frequently busting them . and like every activity the U.S. declares war on, cancer, poverty , drugs, disco, etc., you know they have a poor success rate.

Couple years ago there was an organized group here that was helping people buy houses, use them for grow houses for a couple years then let them keep the houses.

So yeah, the CO2 could be used , but like you alluded to,they have got to figure a way to explain the $3,000.00 a month electric bill.

Packrat

Vermin is correct. The most effective way to separate carbon from CO₂ is to grow plants, and the best part of this is that the carbon is sequestered as biomass rather than risk being released back into the atmosphere.

Grow rapid growing plants; their high growth rate means that their carbon consumption is extremely high. Best of all would be to grow rapid growing edible plants. Not only will they consume CO₂ heavily, they'll also have reduce your grocery bills, and if you were to grow climbers on trellises on your walls and roof, they'll form an insulating layer that will keep your house cool in warm weather, reducing your energy bills and further reducing your carbon footprint. Kudzu fits this bill perfectly, and being a legume, would also enrich your soil. There's just one tiny little problem: for some strange reason the EPA would be less than amused if they were to discover somebody intentionally growing it.

This is true for "Grass" as well, except that by selling it, until caught by the Feds, you will be making a huge amount of money too and can buy ANY groceries you may need a 1000 times over!!!

I can fully recommend a really funny film (even funnier if you "smoke" while watching it I expect!!) called "Saving Grace" in the English version or "Grassgeflüster" in the German version......one of those cheap films that really hit the mark and make a lot of money....

Heartedly recommended viewing, it won several awards too......

You can view the film trailer here:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEX2mqdi-As

Hi Andy ,

Yeah that was a good movie.

Did you see the other movie about people dying and being buried from the same people? If not I will look it up for you, just let me know. Also really good English black humor!!

Marked as Off Topic as it really is!!!

Why not use the CO2 to react with incandescent carbon to make producer gas (CO). That is a basic component of syngas.

but how much fossil fuel will you burn in order to get it that hot?

Go back and read your chemistry book the water gas/ producer gas requires the action of air on carbon in a controlled quantity to give Carbon Monoxide - which is combustible and explosive (2CO + O2 = 2CO2). The carbon mass gets very hot so at the correct moment water is injected, breaks down and Hydrogen is produced. This cools the mass so at the correct moment you go back to using air and so on ad infinitum.

The resultant fuel - generally mixed into town gas is a mixture of Hydrogen and Carbon Monoxide.

Isn't that what the guest said?

Hi milo,

just read the first pdf, wanted to thank you before I read the remainder. This process sounds promising, apparently it is something that is being researched to determine its feasibility. This is what I was grasping at when I was wondering if burying CO2 was the best use of a resource. Again GA and thanks.

Packdrill--out.

You are correct about the energy required of course.

However, plant growth is a very slow process.

There are conceivable situations where more closely matching the rates of reaction could be appropriate, despite the cost and complexity.

The point of providing these high tech 'options' is to point out that the reaction is in fact chemically reversible and by means other than waiting decades to get biomass and then somehow converting that into products at costs.

No one made any representation that this would take less energy than that to oxidize the carbon in the first place. We just tried to show that multiple means of doing so exist and are under study.

Regards.

milo

I agree that plant growth is a very slow process. However, the reason for this has to do with availability of energy (day-night) and conversion efficiency of plants.

Trying to speed up the process by synthetic means by trying to reverse the carbon oxidation process, automatically implies the need for huge amounts of power needed to realize this reversed process. As mentioned before, the reversed process uses more energy than gained from the original process (burning the fuel).

So if it's the intention to capture CO2 from fossil fuel fired power plants and reverse the process transferring the CO2 into C and O2, then that is a big waste of energy (that has to come from nuclear or alternative energy plants). It's cheaper to just let coal be coal.

I already had a discussion where someone stated that the above is not completely true, as by reversing you could produce pure carbon and have a net effect of only burning up the hydrogen in the fossiel fuel. But that is only true if burning and reversing the chemical process is more efficient than thermodynamic laws allow for solid fuels. For gaseous and perhaps liquid fuels, this might be feasable, but this would imply a very expensive and inefficient means of power.

So I keep having a sceptical eye on carbon storage and synthetically trying to reverse the chemical process of burning (=oxidizing) faster than plants do.

Hi milo,

I appreciate your posts. I understand that this research is preliminary and that making something useful out the CO2 requires more energy than it would produce, but a t least

it's thinking in a forward direction. It just seems wasteful to take a resource and bury it in the ground

Packrat

Yes, I sensed your perspective of appreciativeinquiry, (see the list of assumptions on page 2 of the link , especially 2,3&4) rather than get rich quick over unity scam.

AAA batteries are expensive and inefficient, but there is a reason for them to exist.

I personally don't think that fuel cells will be effective for automotive power source, but I know several companies making them for computer back up and some other emergency power applications. and I saw a bike powered by one at the canadian national research center in vancouver several years ago. Research is its own reward.

It is easy to scoff from a perspective of practicality here and now; it is another thing to wonder, and think critically, and devise an application.

Research is worthy, even if it will never supplant the "miracle of photosynthesis," as long as we don't claim that it will supplant the "miracles held dear" in the current status quo.

Frankly, in a world where atmosphere is free, it is not economuic query. but in say long term submersibles, long term space travel, etc, one could argue that there is a case to be made for the chemical reduction of CO2.

You're welcome of course.

milo

I read about heating CO2 to decompose it using a solar furnace as one means of dealing with CO2. I have looked quickly for this reference with all the appropriate reactions; but have not yet located it.

http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/

This is the link from which I originally found the treating of CO2 in a solar furnace, as it is a space habitat it has access to large amounts of solar energy so the extra energy needed is not a problem. Yes theres a large amount of places to look there but one of the links does have a nice page or two write up on what is needed and what the end result is. It is done by someone who has a much better understanding of the chemcial process required than I have.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/l657506wq72t007h/

http://www.atypon-link.com/OLD/doi/abs/10.1524/zpch.219.5.555.64325

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18497167

You are correct about the energy required of course. However, plant growth is a very slow process. There are conceivable situations where more closely matching the rates of reaction could be appropriate, despite the cost and complexity. The point of providing these high tech 'options' is to point out that the reaction is in fact chemically reversible and by means other than waiting decades to get biomass and then somehow converting that into products at costs.

Excuse me? Check out Pennisetum violaceum, a tropical grass that has a history of producing 200 tons of dry hay per acre per year in South America. And with 18% crude protein along with 14% soluble carbohydrate, it produces 100 gallons of ethanol per ton of dry hay using the right cellulosic process. Miscanthus x Sugarcane hybrids as well as Kudzu and Amaranthus palmeri, (pigweed or carelessweed) will produce good tonnage as well. Pigweed will grow 3" per day, you can almost see it grow. Where is this slow-growing plant that takes decades to produce biomass? And let's not forget the lowly Hydrilla sp. or Water Hyacinth in the South. Have a look at www.ire-incorp.com.

200 tons of dry hay per year is indeed impressive, but it is still orders of magnitude slower than most any synthetic chemical reaction process. And you should also give Milo a bit of a break, he is a metallurgist after all, not a plant biologist. It is unlikely he would know about a relatively obscure South American grass. He probably DOES know about kudzu since it is considered an invasive species over most of the US. But it is still much slower than just about any commercially viable chemical reaction, which I believe was what he was trying to say.

Blessed are the peacemakers...

Milo

eh, I'm not a big fan of Colt revolvers, I prefer their M1911A1 automatic's =b

Right on, Bro,

Let's see, I've got 6 holes here and I can only fill five, BRILLIANT design Samuel.

Hey, S.C., why don't you go have a lie-down while John B. designs something that works right and has some staying power.

Take any wood available & cook it at high temperature (burn it with reduced air) and you get charcoal which is what you want. The wood got its carbon from the CO2 in the air at very little or no cost.

Where did THIS come from? To which post or blog entry is it responding? (certainly not the one at top here)?

Quote from original

"Given all the discussion lately regarding carbon capture, what kind of effort would be required to separate carbon from oxygen in a CO2 molecule?"

so let the plant use it = cellulose Then destructively distill the cellulose (make charcoal) and you have the result. If you are in a hurry then grow bamboo or balsa wood or something similar.

What could be easier. and all with renewable energy!

I have never read so much rubbish as is in the answers to this theme. I give up!

Goodbye!

Aw, Hazman, come back, we'll be serious. Okay guys you exasperated hazman, I hope you're happy, this is why we can't have anything nice. From here on out this will be a serious discussion on Colt Peacemakers, grow houses, cats , alcohol and oh, yeah, uh making charcoal or scotch or whatever out of switchgrass for you-know-who. I don't want to hear any more off-topic discussion of carbon or CO2.

Packdrill

Yer fault. You started this!

milo (I think I missd the cat part)

Milo,

Yep. I thinked I imagined the cat after sauntering by the grow house.

Packspace

I have often wondered if CO2 could be used as a feedstock for the manufacture of plastics. Short-chain carbon compounds such as ethane are commonly used as plastics feedstock. The difference is that in CO2 the side chains attached to the carbon atoms consist of oxygen instead of hydrogen. If a method could be developed for using CO2 for this purpose it would accomplish two goals; 1) eliminate the need for petroleum as a feedstock for some plastics, and 2) sequester carbon by converting it into a solid product that is stable for the long term.

Hi bmorrow ,

I agree if the carbon could be bound -up in something with a longer lifespan , that might solve the carbon storage and petro-chemical feedstock plasticneed.

packrat

FWIW, I was told by an internationally-recognized LANL physicist, who has been working on the design and proof of a device that utilizes the sun's energy to dissociate CO2 into its components, that the covalent bond in that molecule is the strongest on our planet. He and his colleagues have built several working models that produce Hydrogen and Oxygen by heating a CO2 - H2O mixture to very high temperatures by focusing the sun's rays, using an array of concave mirrors, onto a crucible that heats to the required temperatures to break the strong bond.

Plants do this unless you cut down the plants in places like Brazil the rain forest.

Ditto!!!

My trivia grabbing memory gives me a tv show about the Israelis experimenting with accelerated plant growth. They didn't give their secret out, but I think they were pumping extra co2 into their greenhouse. The plants went nuts, grew right to the ceiling, quickly.

Now, this could be dangerous for workers, but I'm sure that could be worked out.

Somewhere along the line, the plants must be kicking out oxygen, but how to get it out of the greenhouse eludes me.

Dope growers have known for years that CO₂ speeds up the growth of their product.

Also, people have found that adding some CO₂ to their aquarium water really helps the plants - soda bottle, water, yeast, 2 cups of sugar, and a hose.

Simple, just open the door!!

but how to get it out of the greenhouse eludes me.

We know of it as ventilation??

Ok, all you Gurus, lighten up on me. You know I was trying to stay on topic in #34 when I stated I didn't know how to separate the oxygen from the air in the greenhouse. Obviously, from the follow ups, it isn't an easy process. The membrane catalyst looks pretty good. Plasma is ok, but uses a lot of power, doesn't it?

Guys,

Del got caught on the wind mill. I had to fly up and get him down.

lynlynch, do you mean he took a trip and didn't leave the farm?

Packrat

That's how I see it, sittin here on this sack of seeds.

^{_{Where did our parents go wrong?}}

You're dating yourself, but better than no date at all.

GA, lynlynch.

You are too kind. But...........................................

What were we talking about? I can't remember. And, SPEAK UP, I can't hear well either.

Cheers,

This one's in the tank! So am I.