Food, Fuel and Plastic from pollution

Carbon is used for many things and a lot of that carbon is acquired from oil, it makes a lot of sense to use Carbon obtained from direct air capture to make those products.

Plastics are some of the most common materials over 311 million tonnes are various plastics are produced every year, of that 230 million tonnes is carbon.

It is not a vast  amount as just under 3% of global CO2 output, the equivalent of 33.8 million mature trees. One of the problems is in breaking the CO2 bonds recently a new Technique doubles conversion of CO2 to plastic component.

NASA long had an ambition to turn astronauts CO2  waste into food and a Finnish company has managed the trick see Food from thin air. This flour like product would be a good replacement for soya flour,which is currently decimating the amazon basin. 

There have also been recent improvements in the processes for converting CO2 into long chain hydrocarbons suitable for jet engines and potentially other heavy fuel systems like diesel.

 New Iron-based Catalyst Converts Carbon Dioxide into Jet Fuel

State of The Synthetic Hydrocarbon Art

Some of the first steps in the replacement of fossil hydrocarbons with synthetics and the journey has started in am oil rich country, Norway. From January, jet fuel in Norway must contain 0.5% of biofuel, at the moment the cost is four times the cost of fossil fuel.This fuel must be made of waste fats and vegetable oil, but not palm oil. SAS have a stated aim of powering all it domestic flights by biofuel. Norway plans to increase the required proportion to 30% by 2030.

This is obviously unsustainable for the entire aviation industry. Which means Europe’s first power-to-liquid demo plant in Norway plans renewable aviation fuel production in 2023. makes sense.

This uses the techniques outline in my blog Extinction Rebellion's biggest mistake but chemistry doesn't stand still. In February, Waseda University  in Japan announced.

Scientists developed a new method to convert carbon dioxide to methane with an electric field at low temperatures. In comparison to previous methods, this new method can produce any amount of methane whenever necessary. Because methane is a valuable gas which can be used to generate heat and electricity, this method could be exploited to help reduce the use of fossil fuels and prevent global warming.

The process drops the temperature of the conversion from 300-400°C to 100°C, not only does this use a different catalyst but also adds an electric field. Reducing the temperature required gives a large reduction in the energy required. The conversion to methane is only half of the 2 energy intense processes involves in making methane.

The other energy intense process is the production of hydrogen from water and that is currently an area of intense research as not only does it have bearing on the production of synthetic hydrocarbons but hydrogen is a potential energy in its own right. Only its low density and difficulty in storage make it a less than ideal fuel. The Royal Society gave 4 options given in "Options for producing low-carbon hydrogen at scale".
They are Thermochemical Routes to Hydrogen, Electrolytic Routes to Hydrogen, Biological Routes to Hydrogen and Solar to Fuels Routes to Hydrogen all of which have their niche usage. The ball has begun to move.

There is also artificial photosynthesis a process which looks to perform the complete production in a single device a synthetic leaf.

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