CO2 breakdown

it works out that a 2000 square foot ranch house would have to have the complete south faceing roof covered in solar panels (about 1200 square feet) worth to supply the houses needs. There would have to be a HUGE battery room and you'd still need some grid backup. If you lived in a two story house, you,d need more roof.

People always for get the batteries, There isn't enough lead around for everyone to have batteries in their houses.

As far as I know, water could be broken into hydrogen and oxigen parts by using catalitic proces of electrolyse, and that takes much less energy. Somebody have found some salt that make perfect catalyst fro electrolyse, costing just 6$ per ton.... They use it to provide hydrogen for fuel cels that are used to move big trucks and buses...... If informations on WEB are to be relied on, there are 6 factories producing such engines right now in US.

But, point of discusion here, as far as I understand it, is not one about saving of energy but of transforming CO2 to something usable while eliminating its surplus out of atmosphere. If CO2 (as fat as I am informed about it) is not preventing heat to irradiate into space, there would be no problem to get rid of any excess of energy in form of heat, so then we would look for new energy sources, and how to substitute >>dirty<< by >>clean<< energy sources.

I agree with You that it would ask for more energy to recycle CO2, and it would also be a problem to capture it for recycling, which would also spend energy... But if we compress air to liquid state (again great expenditure of energy, true) and separate gases like hydrogen, oxigen, CO2 and others, then we could use oxigen and hydrogen in fuel cells to produce energy, capture resulting water and reuse it, or directly use hydrogen to make methan out of CO2 then burn methan mixture with oxigen and recapture CO2 and reuse it and so on........

Actually, I think better way is to lessen production of CO2 in first place and plant trees, grass or crops that would use CO2 to produce food, but original poster asked for production of carbon and elimination of CO2 from atmosphere, so that is what we are discussing here......... If there is need for soft graphite that would most probably result from chemicall reactions described and somebody would produce it anyway and spend energy for it while using something else then CO2 as source material, then it would be better that we point out this process where >>materiall<< is practicaly everywhere, specially if it is used in places like steel factories where they have lot of CO2 as UNVANTED byproduct of steel making, no?

Anyhow, I think we have written everything there is worth to be written on subject, unless someone has another bright idea not tried yet :-))

This would represent a net loss of energy.

TheFreeDictionary:

bi·o·proc·ess (b-prss, -prss)

n. 1. A technique that produces a biological material, such as a genetically engineered microbial strain, for commercial use. 2. Production of a commercially useful chemical or fuel by a biological process, such as microbial fermentation or degradation. Sorry to everyone here: My posting NO 17, should be BIOPRECESSING and not biosynthesis. (correction)

Why not Carbon dioxide to Carbon monoxide then to carbon?

Research scientist has got some result . Read it for a macro view, THE USEFUL INTERMEDIATE PRODUCTS of CO2( CO2=OXIDE OF CARBON). The following article is pertaining to theme. Carbon dioxide makes people think of graphite or black charcoal is not true:--

Climate Debate: Carbon Dioxide is not 'Carbon'
By Tom Harris

(article can be found in internet)

==============================================================
Research scientist has got some result . Read it for a macro view, THE USEFUL INTERMEDIATE PRODUCTS of CO2( CO2= so called OXIDE OF CARBON):--

Tittle: Team to chemically transform carbon dioxide into carbon-neutral liquid fuels

:o

o www.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2007/sunshine.html

=======================================================================

MyMy understanding of the rationale from above 2 articles( in fact from wikipedia, one more article about CO2 to CO and carbon),

I I make the conclusion that : To obtain solid Carbon from Carbon Dioxide is doubful.

M

Carbon can be obtained/produced by subject COAL to incomple combustion( lack of oxygen) ===> carbon+ carbon monoxide.

Sir, You keep missing point of this discusion? Aim is not to produce Carbon, it is to produce Oxigen AND Carbon or at least turn CO2 to something usefull and thus remove it from air where there is too much of it!

Hmm actually i thought the original post was, "I have noticed high number of questions related to CO2 and global warming, my questions is slightly different. Does anyone knows of a process of breaking down CO2 into carbon (carbon black, graphite etc.) and oxygen, what temperatures, pressures, catalysts are needed, is it possible and could it be viable?"

As i understand it, there is no mention of making any other useful products, other than carbon or oxygen, from CO2, and no mention of attempting to remove CO2 from the atmosphere as part of the question. The problem here seems to be, many people are misdirecting the line of discussion to address what they would prefer to discuss, the removal of CO2 from our atmosphere. Please also note that removal of excessive amounts of CO2 can cause the planet to literally freeze solid on the surface, (antarctic conditions everywhere). It has happened at least twice before in our planets history leading to huge mass extinctions much more massive in scale of species decline relative to the stage of development than that which ended the reign of dinosaurs.

There is a synthetic process that is similar to photosynthesis that requires lots of input energy. I dont recall where I read this but it was during a search on the net for CO2 Absorption Rates before I found this site.

Hope that gives you a place to look anyway.

Having read the whole thread now, the answer I posted already is only partially helpful. To turn CO2 into a useful Carbon product with a "waste" of Oxygen.

Early on there was an answer that the amount of energy required for this would be prohibitive. True but then you have to balance the the final Carbon product and the "wasted" Oxygen ( not wanted in the process but a good waste product ). If the Carbon was turned into Diamonds, Carbon fibre, Activated charcoal or a plethora of other useful Carbon applications then the cost of energy could be less of a problem.

Another option with all the HOT weather could be to compress the CO2 and make dry ice. I haven't looked too far into this part as yet but it seems it would be possible to use dry ice to cool air in our homes, mines, work place. In the short term anyway recycle a portion of the CO2 we are producing by generating power or driving our cars.

The problem with burning hydrocarbons is they don't just produce CO2 they also produce sulfates (sulfur dioxide) that combine with water and create acids (sulfuric acid) and then return to us as acid rain killing our aquaculture and leaving a higher CO2 and methane concentration in the water which then has less nutrients for our land plants which now deplete the soils minerals making the plants harder to grow making less food and increasing the cost of food on your table. If it wasn't for fertilizers and smog and coal power plants and the other sources that burn hydrocarbons we wouldn't be so bad off.

The overall problem is we produce too many harmful gases and substances without thinking how to make them useful or inert.

Try a little thought experiment. Choose a food item you can grow, figure out all its needs to grow and be healthy, figure out all you have to do to produce the things the plant needs and all the things you have to dispose of to keep the plant healthy. Finally make a closed loop for the plant, allowing for harvesting. The end result will be a very large system, and it is all for ONE plant. Now consider how efficient the Earth is for doing the same thing. What can we do to remove the harmful products we have been adding to this system ?

The original post is one possible solution to this thought experiment.

so, where do we magically get all this S when we burn hydrocarbons.

Do you realize how much energy it takes to make solid CO2, then to top it off, the solid CO2 is at a temperature colder than we need. Recycle CO2?

Some plants require S to grow.

I agree with You that idea of solid CO2 is plain example of wrong thinking...... I suggest that beside score for >>good<< answers there should be score for >>bad<< answers as well!

Coal plants don't just produce CO2 they also produce sulphur dioxide (smog, or the yellow haze over a large city) which breaks-down in the atmosphere with water vapour and creates sulphuric acid which is then returned to the ground as rain and so on.

Yes dry ice is cold (-78C) and yes it takes lots of energy to make. I never said it should be done I said it was a possible way to capture CO2 and make it useful.

Any Mine has to cool it's O2 when pumping it down to regulate the temperature in the mine to a somewhat more productive working environment. A large number of mines also have excess water to deal with and they use an on site power generating plant to cover their power needs. All this power puts more CO2 and other gases into the atmosphere. The whole point of this discussion is to make better use of the wastes produced from the various sources of CO2 production. In the lower levels of the mine you will have a higher pressure than at the surface so a portion of the energy needed to compress CO2 to a solid is already done thus less energy needed. One could always use the excess water in the mine to chill it as well since it has a higher melting point than CO2; BUT the CO2 still remains as an excess waste product.

>so, where do we magically get all this S when we burn hydrocarbons.<

I just did a quick search on yahoo for "coal power plant emissions" and pulled this from a nice little page:

Coal ash is composed primarily of oxides of silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, magnesium, titanium, sodium, potassium, arsenic, mercury, and sulfur plus small quantities of uranium and thorium. Fly ash is primarily composed of non-combustible silicon compounds (glass) melted during combustion. Tiny glass spheres form the bulk of the fly ash

Web link: www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

So as you can see Coal plants don't just exhaust CO2 they exhaust other crud as well and most of the waste gases can be turned into useful compounds.

>Do you realize how much energy it takes to make solid CO2<

As I stated in the post I had not looked at this in any depth, so OBVIOUOSLY I was not cognisant of the energy required.

>Recycle CO2?<

Unless you know a way to make CO2 disappear completely, we can only reuse the CO2 we keep dumping into the air and by using the CO2 as much as possible in many different ways we will create less harmful products and in the short term remove CO2 from the atmosphere and reduce the warming of the planet. In most places this is recycling as we are not destroying or removing it completely.

Do you know any industrial process that may use or need CO2?

If there is no economic sense nobody will reduce emissions of CO2?

Unfortunately only strong punitive laws can enforce reductions of pollution and even then it will be done at the expense of growth, consumer will pay more for energy, transport food etc.

Plus with punitive laws you need the manpower and willingness to enforce such laws, which many communities are not willing to allocate adequate funding towards (or do not have the capacity to fund). Also, with such law enforcement comes corruption at all levels from the cheap policemen taking bribes to the expensive congressmen taking lobbyist campaign support.

if CO2 were outlawed, you'd have to stop breathing. CO2 is NOT a POLUTANT, its a source of revenue for governments.

Soft drinks, beer, champagne all of which contain CO2 are the next things to be regulated, taxed, or deemed non-PC. Thereby removing another way to at least re-use CO2!

Coal ash is a soilid and a very very small amount gets out of the stacks, and then those solids do drop out quickly. Guess what, burning wood has similar elements in the smoke.

Smog is mostly NOX and then the compounds the react with NOx to form Ozone. Eventually the NOx and Ozone decomposed within a few days to O2 and N2.

We recover all we can and for the most part, there isn't much we can recover, so we just bury the stuff.

We have no use for CO2 other than makeing soda pop. It has no usable energy, it can't be transformed into anything useful, the only use is to feed it to plants, and where do they need it, everywhere in a gaseous phase.

Now, you tell us what gases we can recover?

Smog is a very generic term used very broadly to generically indicate poor air quality from pollution relating to the burning of hydrocarbon fuels. Smog in the LA basin is mostly derived from the traffic burning gasoline, so it is predominantly an issue of NOx and some light hydrocarbons. Smog in the Central Valley of California is more dominantly particulates derived from the operation of diesel engines and agriculture.

Regarding coal, the stacks and size of some of the particulate emission actually allow a significant portion of it to rise into the upper atmosphere, this has caused an observed cooling effect over the indian ocean as the particulates in combination with water form fine mist in the upper atmosphere that reduces the solar radiation reaching the earth's surface.

Also, plants actually uptake CO2 as bicarbonate/carbonate from soil-water, in addition to gaseous phase CO2. You can actually make fertilizer from ash, since a major portion is potassium, calcium, and magnesium, which are all major nutrients. However, the heavy metals content of coal ash tends to be a problem, since plants bioaccumulate such metals (particularly lead in all ashes tends to be a problem). Also, sodium can sometimes be a little higher than needed, sodium is a major nutrient but it tends to be readily available in the environment so additional sodium tends to become a salt problem. The carbonate can be used to neutralize the ash and form a slow release neutral fertilizer, just need to get rid of those heavy metals.

Does anyone knows of a process of breaking down CO2 into carbon ... and oxygen, what temperatures, pressures, catalysts are needed, is it possible and could it be viable?

1. What process' are available to breakdown CO2 to its constituent parts?
2. At what Temperature(s) and Pressure(s)?
3. With what Catalysts, if any?
4. What usable compounds can be made from the breakdown process?
5. What is the Viability of each solution?

Here is a reposting of the Original question, with hopefully some clarification. Perhaps those with chemistry backgrounds can show us more on the chemical process'.

A real world example of a Coal plant was given, this would be a good way to answer the original question and come up with various solutions. The final part of Viability could be left to one own decision.