Skip to main content

Recycle Carbon dioxide from the air and converted into methanol





The danger posed by rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide has seen many schemes proposed to remove a proportion it from the air. Rather than simply capture this greenhouse gas and bury it in the ground, though, many experiments have managed to transform CO2 into useful things like carbon nanofibers or even fuels, such as diesel. Unfortunately, the over-arching problem with many of these conversions is the particularly high operating temperatures that require almost counterproductive amounts of energy to produce relatively low yields of fuel. Now researchers at the University of Southern California (USC) claim to have devised a way to take CO2 directly from the air and convert it into methanol using much lower temperatures and in a correspondingly simpler way.
With the simplest structure of all alcohols, methanol can be used directly as a clean-burning fuel for appropriately modified internal combustion engines, as well as in fuel cells. It is also a very useful material for the production of other chemicals such as formaldehyde, from which such things as plastics, explosives, and paints can be made, along with transformation into dimethyl ether (a replacement for hydrocarbons in aerosols propellants), acetic acid, and a range of solvents, anti-freezes, and de-naturing agents. 




To produce methanol from COin the air, the researchers at USC's Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences first bubbled captured air through an aqueous solution of pentaethylenehexamine (PEHA), an ammonia-derived organic compound with multiple amino groups that – at raised temperatures – helps form chemical derivatives from alcohols. They then added a catalyst made from ruthenium (a member of the platinum group) to promote hydrogen attachment to the CO2 when the mixture was subject to high pressure.
The solution was then heated to around 125° to 165° C (257° to 359° F), and around 79 percent of the CO2 was converted into methanol. Though the resulting methanol was still mixed with water as it was produced, the researchers state that it can be easily separated using simple distillation processes. In addition, with the new method operating at such comparatively low temperatures, minimum decomposition of the catalyst meant that the researchers were able to repeat the process five times with minimal loss of the catalyst effectiveness. It also uses a homogeneous catalyst (that is, a soluble catalyst in solution with the chemicals it is reacting with) resulting in a simpler and faster "one-pot" process.




Though the method is still in its infancy, the researchers are looking at ways to refine the process so that it could be scaled up to industrial levels, but they admit that such a system may be five to 10 years away and will probably be still more expensive than ordinary fuel production.
"Of course it won't compete with oil today, at around $30 per barrel," said Professor G.K. Prakash from USC's Department of Chemistry. "But right now we burn fossilized sunshine. We will run out of oil and gas, but the sun will be there for another five billion years. So we need to be better at taking advantage of it as a resource."
G.K. Prakash collaborated with George Olah and graduate student Jotheeswari Kothandaraman and senior research associates Alain Goeppert and Miklos Czaun of USC Dornsife. 

The research was recently published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society 




Source: University of Southern California

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Nine government sites hit by cyber attacks: NIC

The National Informatics Center (NIC) has revealed that as many as nine government websites were defaced by recent cyber attacks. The center further said that the servers, which hosts these government sites, suffer a number of hacking attempts on a daily basis. The websites www.kumbh2010haridwar.gov.in, www.ueppcb.uk.gov.in, www.gov.ua.nic.in/ujn, www.cdodoon.gov.in, www.arunachal.nic.in,www.bee-india.nic.in, www.civilsupplieskerala.gov.in, www.mpcb.gov.in and www.informatics.nic.in were  defaced , prompting authorities to  ramp up  the cyber security safeguards. In an RTI reply, the NIC, which reports to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, said that it was impossible for the body to accurately quantify these attacks but they are usually blocked by security controls put in place. The Ministry was asked to provide details of hacking attempts made on the governments websites in the last ten years (2001-11) along with url names of the portal...

Solar car hits U.S. in round-the-world jaunt

Last October, the SolarWorld GT solar-powered car set out from Darwin, Australia on a drive around the world. It has since driven 3,001 kilometers (1,865 miles) across Australia, logged 1,947 km (1,210 miles) crossing New Zealand and been shipped across the Pacific Ocean. This Friday, it will embark on the U.S. leg of its journey, as it sets out across America from the University of California, Santa Barbara.   The SolarWorld GT is the result of a collaboration between solar panel manufacturer SolarWorld, and Bochum University of Applied Sciences in Germany. The four-wheeled, two-door, two-seat car gathers solar energy through photovoltaic panels built into its roof, with its solar generator offering a peak performance of 823 watts. Custom hub motors are located in both of the front wheels. The vehicle manages an average speed of 50 km/h (31 mph), with a claimed top speed of 100 km/h (62 mph). In order to demonstrate that solar powered cars needn't be a radical...

Google and Stanford early adopters of Honda Fit EV

Honda's first all-electric vehicle is hitting the streets a little early. The  Honda Fit EV  debuted at the Los Angeles Auto Show in November 2011, and it's expected to be     available for lease this summer. However,  Honda announced  that Google and Stanford University got a special early delivery of the tiny EV this week.The Honda Fit EV is equipped with a 20kWh lithium ion battery, and has an EPA estimated driving range of 76 miles. Google added the EV to its  car -sharing service for employees, dubbed the G-Fleet, in    Mountain View, Calif. The search giant maintains several electric and plug-in vehicles that it uses for research and to cart Googlers around town and between buildings on campus. Stanford University also is an early adopter of the Fit EV, but will be using it primarily for research. The university's automotive research department will study the difference in psychological and physical reactions of using battery...