Innovative “photosynthesising” technology might soon be able to generate “petrol” for cars from sunlight and carbon dioxide.
Fascinatingly, solar-powered reactors can be used to convert carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide. Besides, this reactor can also change water into both oxygen and hydrogen.
These two elements (oxygen and hydrogen) can be processed to produce hydrocarbon fuels. It is done through a mechanism called the Fischer-Tropsch process.
Generating fuel using this methodology is quite similar to current fuel systems used. There would not be a need for a radical change in engines as well as refueling stations. What is intriguing is that if fuel could be produced from atmospheric carbon, driving cars would thus be completely carbon neutral.
Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, have a team of scientists who have created a Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5). A machine collecting carbon dioxide emitted by power plant’s exhausted fumes. Yet, they suggest that in the future they will be able to capture CO2 directly from the air.
The CR5 system has big parabolic-mirrors that intensify sunlight on two chambers divided by rotating rings of cerium oxide. The cerium oxide is heated up to 1500 degrees celsius as the rings spin. The machine releases oxygen in one of the chambers. However, the oxygen is sprayed away.
The ring continues to spin and the newly de-oxidised cerium shifts into the second chamber. In that chamber carbon is injected. The de-oxidised cerium will now take a molecule of oxygen to generate cerium oxide and carbon monoxide.
A team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology located in Zurich has developed a similar machine. However, this apparatus uses zinc oxide, calcium oxide and steam to produce a steam of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The system that they have invented can already collect and use atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Yet, these two reactors are not fully prefect. The one that the New Mexico team is working on can only operate for a few seconds per trial. The Swiss model can only generate roughly 10 KW. However, both the reactors are expected to be improved in terms of yield capacity and consistency.
Generating usable fuel from carbon dioxide and solar energy is a promising solution. It will help in bring down the level of greenhouse emissions.
Ken Caldeira from the Carnegie Institution of Washington at Stanford University, California said to new scientists (news) “This area holds out the promise for technologies that can produce large amounts of carbon-neutral power at affordable prices…”
He also suggested that this CR5 technology could evolve the future of energy to another level.
Source: New Scientist and Telegraph
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