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Post by ponytail61 on Jul 29, 2016 1:04:40 GMT
Thought this was pretty interesting and if claims pan out could be a great breakthrough in cheap energy. Breakthrough solar cell captures carbon dioxide and sunlight, produces burnable fuel"Unlike conventional solar cells, which convert sunlight into electricity that must be stored in heavy batteries, the new device essentially does the work of plants, converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into fuel, solving two crucial problems at once. A solar farm of such "artificial leaves" could remove significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and produce energy-dense fuel efficiently. "The new solar cell is not photovoltaic it's photosynthetic," says Amin Salehi-Khojin, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at UIC and senior author on the study. "Instead of producing energy in an unsustainable one-way route from fossil fuels to greenhouse gas, we can now reverse the process and recycle atmospheric carbon into fuel using sunlight," he said. While plants produce fuel in the form of sugar, the artificial leaf delivers syngas, or synthesis gas, a mixture of hydrogen gas and carbon monoxide. Syngas can be burned directly, or converted into diesel or other hydrocarbon fuels. The ability to turn CO2 into fuel at a cost comparable to a gallon of gasoline would render fossil fuels obsolete." |
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Post by the light works on Jul 29, 2016 3:45:27 GMT
I was wondering how they planned to turn what is essentially a combustion byproduct into a combustible.
I think there has been talk of using solar energy as a power source for cracking water into oxygen and hydrogen, too.
one of those cases of use what is plentiful, but time sensitive, to produce something portable.
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Post by silverdragon on Jul 30, 2016 5:36:16 GMT
Not trying to be unnecessarily harsh here, but, Sorry, I dont "Understand" how this is any better than re-inventing the tree.
Why not just grow plants for bio-diesel.
Or Trees for large chunks of not-coal.
In the current polluted climate of deforestation, why not just grow more tree?.
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Post by GTCGreg on Jul 30, 2016 14:12:04 GMT
Really sounds like a step in the right direction. Rechargeable fuel, just add sunlight. Hopefully they will get it to the point where it is commercially viable.
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Post by the light works on Jul 30, 2016 14:59:06 GMT
Really sounds like a step in the right direction. Rechargeable fuel, just add sunlight. Hopefully they will get it to the point where it is commercially viable. you're a conservative. aren't you contractually obligated to not believe in solar energy systems?  |
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Post by GTCGreg on Jul 30, 2016 16:14:41 GMT
Conservative yes. But I am not contractually obligated to anyone. I do believe in ALL energy sources. Provided they can be made commercially viable.
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Post by OziRiS on Jul 30, 2016 23:58:51 GMT
Not trying to be unnecessarily harsh here, but, Sorry, I dont "Understand" how this is any better than re-inventing the tree. Why not just grow plants for bio-diesel. Or Trees for large chunks of not-coal. In the current polluted climate of deforestation, why not just grow more tree?. The problem with plants is they're only carbon neutral. They take in carbon when they're in bloom, but when they decay, they re-release that carbon back into the atmosphere. Well, unless they're buried deep enough in the ground, which is what happened to the ancient trees we've been burning as coal for the past two centuries. If this system works, we could actually permanently remove some of the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere by storing it in some way and putting it back into the ground where we took it from to begin with. This could be the beginning of the end of global warming. If it becomes viable enough to be a permanent substitute for oil and coal, we could easily control the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If we only use 9 out of 10 units of the carbon this system soaks up and then store every 10th unit deep in the ground, we could keep doing that until carbon levels are back in the pre-industrial butterzone. Once we're at that point, we start using 10 out of 10 units and we're completely carbon neutral. Take too much out of the atmosphere? Just dig up some of that stored carbon and burn it at a controlled rate until we're back to normal again. Even the CO 2 belched out by erupting volcanoes wouldn't be as much of a problem for us anymore. We can just go back to only using 9 out of 10 units until we've soaked up whatever amount the volcano spit out and we're good to go again! We'd be able to actively control our climate on a global scale! You know what that is? That's the first step in terraforming! How completely freaking awesome would it be if we could master that?! |
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Post by the light works on Jul 31, 2016 1:27:26 GMT
Not trying to be unnecessarily harsh here, but, Sorry, I dont "Understand" how this is any better than re-inventing the tree. Why not just grow plants for bio-diesel. Or Trees for large chunks of not-coal. In the current polluted climate of deforestation, why not just grow more tree?. The problem with plants is they're only carbon neutral. They take in carbon when they're in bloom, but when they decay, they re-release that carbon back into the atmosphere. Well, unless they're buried deep enough in the ground, which is what happened to the ancient trees we've been burning as coal for the past two centuries. If this system works, we could actually permanently remove some of the carbon dioxide in our atmosphere by storing it in some way and putting it back into the ground where we took it from to begin with. This could be the beginning of the end of global warming. If it becomes viable enough to be a permanent substitute for oil and coal, we could easily control the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If we only use 9 out of 10 units of the carbon this system soaks up and then store every 10th unit deep in the ground, we could keep doing that until carbon levels are back in the pre-industrial butterzone. Once we're at that point, we start using 10 out of 10 units and we're completely carbon neutral. Take too much out of the atmosphere? Just dig up some of that stored carbon and burn it at a controlled rate until we're back to normal again. Even the CO 2 belched out by erupting volcanoes wouldn't be as much of a problem for us anymore. We can just go back to only using 9 out of 10 units until we've soaked up whatever amount the volcano spit out and we're good to go again! We'd be able to actively control our climate on a global scale! You know what that is? That's the first step in terraforming! How completely freaking awesome would it be if we could master that?! have to admit, that would be a world changer. |
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Post by GTCGreg on Jul 31, 2016 3:24:02 GMT
My son (and daughter) work at Argonne National Laboratory, where this discovery was made. In fact, my son knows two of the researchers working on this project. He said that the thing that everyone is really excited about at the lab is that, while electro voltaic solar cells are only around 15% efficient at converting the sun's light into usable energy, they believe that this method can be made over 90% efficient. In addition, they say that the cells are not that difficult or expensive to mass produce. Here's another explanation of the process in an Argonne press release. www.newswise.com/articles/a-new-leaf-scientists-turn-carbon-dioxide-back-into-fuel |
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Post by the light works on Jul 31, 2016 4:03:08 GMT
My son (and daughter) work at Argonne National Laboratory, where this discovery was made. In fact, my son knows two of the researchers working on this project. He said that the thing that everyone is really excited about at the lab is that, while electro voltaic solar cells are only around 15% efficient at converting the sun's light into usable energy, they believe that this method can be made over 90% efficient. In addition, they say that the cells are not that difficult or expensive to mass produce. Here's another explanation of the process in an Argonne press release. www.newswise.com/articles/a-new-leaf-scientists-turn-carbon-dioxide-back-into-fuelI am reminded of the old adage about things that sound too good to be true. |
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Post by OziRiS on Jul 31, 2016 10:45:07 GMT
Let's just hope the oil, gas and coal industries decide to actively invest in this technology, instead of trying to buy their way into making it disappear.
The fact that the basics of the method have already been published for the world to see makes it harder for them to bury its existence, so that's a good first step, but I wouldn't be surprised if short-sighted industrialists started lobbying heavily to suppress it.
There's been a lot of talk among American scientists over the past decade about the US falling behind other countries when it comes to technological innovations. If both government and industry gets behind this, America could become the leader of a second industrial revolution.
Let's hope the people with the heavy wallets realize the potential here.
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Post by GTCGreg on Jul 31, 2016 13:19:15 GMT
My son (and daughter) work at Argonne National Laboratory, where this discovery was made. In fact, my son knows two of the researchers working on this project. He said that the thing that everyone is really excited about at the lab is that, while electro voltaic solar cells are only around 15% efficient at converting the sun's light into usable energy, they believe that this method can be made over 90% efficient. In addition, they say that the cells are not that difficult or expensive to mass produce. Here's another explanation of the process in an Argonne press release. www.newswise.com/articles/a-new-leaf-scientists-turn-carbon-dioxide-back-into-fuelI am reminded of the old adage about things that sound too good to be true. That's for sure. Guess only time will tell. Argonne, as well as the other national labs. have a pretty good program for commercializing their discoveries. Hopefully this will move along quickly. |
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Post by the light works on Jul 31, 2016 13:55:28 GMT
I am reminded of the old adage about things that sound too good to be true. That's for sure. Guess only time will tell. Argonne, as well as the other national labs. have a pretty good program for commercializing their discoveries. Hopefully this will move along quickly. the question in my mind is size vs. production capacity. traditional solar cells have to be pretty big and on a pretty light vehicle to produce as much energy as it takes to move them anywhere near full time. how many square feet of cells would it take to make a fueling station for, say, a 40 mile a week vehicle. (my power company prints a monthly magazine, which once featured a story of a farmer who had converted his farm pickup to solar/electric - in a sunny climate, he generated enough power for his weekly grocery trip; completely self contained. |
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Post by GTCGreg on Jul 31, 2016 15:48:29 GMT
That's for sure. Guess only time will tell. Argonne, as well as the other national labs. have a pretty good program for commercializing their discoveries. Hopefully this will move along quickly. the question in my mind is size vs. production capacity. traditional solar cells have to be pretty big and on a pretty light vehicle to produce as much energy as it takes to move them anywhere near full time. how many square feet of cells would it take to make a fueling station for, say, a 40 mile a week vehicle. (my power company prints a monthly magazine, which once featured a story of a farmer who had converted his farm pickup to solar/electric - in a sunny climate, he generated enough power for his weekly grocery trip; completely self contained. You can only get so much energy out of a square foot surface of sunlight. But let's assume the farmer is using 15% efficient solar cells and can now get 90% efficiency conversion. That would mean he could now go 240 miles using the same area of cells. That is, assuming they can get 90% as they hope to. Along with the added benefit that they would actually be removing CO 2 from the atmosphere, that would definitely be a game changer for solar energy. |
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Post by OziRiS on Jul 31, 2016 18:13:07 GMT
Wait, am I misunderstanding something here?
I was under the impression that the solar energy was only used to drive the catalysts that convert CO2 into CO, allowing it to be stored and converted back into regular hydrocarbon fuel.
This might even kill the idea of the electric car, because if we're reusing the carbon let into the atmosphere by combustion engines, then that effectively makes the combustion engine a carbon neutral piece of machinery, doesn't it?
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Post by GTCGreg on Jul 31, 2016 19:55:38 GMT
Wait, am I misunderstanding something here? I was under the impression that the solar energy was only used to drive the catalysts that convert CO 2 into CO, allowing it to be stored and converted back into regular hydrocarbon fuel. This might even kill the idea of the electric car, because if we're reusing the carbon let into the atmosphere by combustion engines, then that effectively makes the combustion engine a carbon neutral piece of machinery, doesn't it? From what I read, your understanding is correct. The cells they are talking about convert CO 2 to CO. We already have effective ways of converting CO to liquid fuels like bio-diesel. One of the big disadvantages of electrical energy is storing it. We just don't have very good ways of doing that. If these solar cells basically produced liquid hydrocarbon fuels and, at the same time, removed CO 2 from the atmosphere, there would be no reason not to keep the IC engine. Of course, that assumes that all vehicles are going to get their fuel from these fuel cells which I'm sure isn't going to be the case. I don't see this as being a cure for all our energy needs, but it would be a step in the right direction. |
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Post by OziRiS on Jul 31, 2016 23:45:19 GMT
Wait, am I misunderstanding something here? I was under the impression that the solar energy was only used to drive the catalysts that convert CO 2 into CO, allowing it to be stored and converted back into regular hydrocarbon fuel. This might even kill the idea of the electric car, because if we're reusing the carbon let into the atmosphere by combustion engines, then that effectively makes the combustion engine a carbon neutral piece of machinery, doesn't it? From what I read, your understanding is correct. The cells they are talking about convert CO 2 to CO. We already have effective ways of converting CO to liquid fuels like bio-diesel. One of the big disadvantages of electrical energy is storing it. We just don't have very good ways of doing that. If these solar cells basically produced liquid hydrocarbon fuels and, at the same time, removed CO 2 from the atmosphere, there would be no reason not to keep the IC engine. Of course, that assumes that all vehicles are going to get their fuel from these fuel cells which I'm sure isn't going to be the case. I don't see this as being a cure for all our energy needs, but it would be a step in the right direction. I thought I got that right  No, this won't be the cure for all our energy needs, but pair it with wind and solar and we're well on our way to at least reducing the amount of oil, gas and coal we burn to the point that it may not be a problem for our climate anymore. And, as I said, the most exciting thing looking a hundred years or more into the future is the potential for further exploration into terraforming. If we can further split the CO into carbon and oxygen, that could give us a way to start filling up the atmosphere of Mars with enough O 2 to make the air breathable to humans. If we can keep converting CO 2 into CO and further into carbon and oxygen at a steady, controllable, predictable rate, Mars' lack of a magnetic field might not be a problem as far as the solar wind blowing away the O 2, because we'll just keep replenishing it. This is REALLY far off into the future, but as the old saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Depending on how this thing develops over the coming decades and even centuries, future generations of humans may look back at this as that first step. |
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Post by silverdragon on Aug 1, 2016 7:27:35 GMT
If I remember rightly....
There was a method in use to solar power produce Hydrogen....
Except the solar cell required to produce a light duty days worth of hydrogen for your average vehicle was the size of a car park, and cost more than running the vehicle on Petrol for 50,000 miles?.
How is that different from this technology?.
Again, to produce enough energy to power us into the future, how big will the power plant replacement, in hectares, be, to soak up enough sunlight to replace a conventional power plant.
And then, if you produces the plant "Rapeseed" to get rapesead oil, how would the difference be in field size and production plant size to get a fuel from that oil, as Bio-Diesel, in just one alternative.
And isnt getting oil from plants another way of using sunlight to produce energy?..
Just mother matures way...
And the rapeseed "leftovers" from the production plant can be used a cattle feed and ultimately futilizer for the next crops?.
I am all in favour of alternative ways.
Its just if it works dont fix it, and unless you can do something ten times better and half the cost to the environment to produce the alternative, whats the environmental cost of producing this technology per unit anyway, in plastics and metals (mining etc) and how does that stack up on "green" costs?..
It may replace a farms worth of Rapeseed per year in running costs, but if you had to mine six farms worth of land open-cast mining to get enough metals to make the production plant materials and to make that same unit in the first year, and that six farms worth will take 50 yrs or more to recover to be useful land, is it worth it?... to the environment that is?..
Unless we decide that farming was still a good way to produce a reasonable crop, and start with the re-forestation of the wilderness we had no right in intruding into, this generation of "Me-first" self centred kids on the streets today will not consider this a worthwhile effort, just yet....
Your right, we will have to wait and see what the future brings.
Revisit this thread in 50 yrs if your still here and let us know?..
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Post by OziRiS on Aug 1, 2016 10:42:55 GMT
From the article in the OP:
Not every hydrocarbon we burn is used to run cars, you know. A large part of it is oil, gas and coal used to heat homes, drive factories and make electricity. If we make enough of these plants to more or less replace other hydrocarbons completely for those purposes, much of this syngas won't need to be converted into biodiesel, but can be used as is.
The interesting thing, as you say SD, is whether the system can become efficient enough that it can more or less just take over the existing spaces occupied by structures that burn hydrocarbons today, or if it'll be so inefficient that we'll need to expand these plants to 3, 6 or even 12 times the size of what we have now. If they have to become much bigger than anything we already have, that might create entirely new environmental problems.
However, if they can hit the 90% efficiency that Greg's son was talking about, imagine what could be achieved by converting an existing solar farm into this new system. That's space we're already using for a system that's far less efficient, which could potentially end up cranking out 6 times as much energy as we get from it today. That would actually reduce our impact on the environment.
But let's see where this goes. As I said in an earlier post, I wouldn't be surprised if the fossil fuel industry would be lobbying heavily to have this suppressed. They've already been doing it for years to create doubt that there even is such a thing as manmade global warming and they've been having success with it too. If they can keep enough people believing that, no one will make an effort to get this off the ground. Who would want to invest in a solution to a problem they don't believe exists?
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Post by silverdragon on Aug 1, 2016 15:34:14 GMT
I do, which is why I base my workings out on pints of bio- diesel, that can run many kinds of power plants, and if you run it right, use the waste heat to heat homes and water.
A Tax Write-off on the "Old" equipment?... i know, cynical, but many of the old solar plants havnt paid back what it cost in investment yet, so they have to keep running until they do?..
My neighbour has solar panels on his roof, and right steaming he is about them as well, because he is finding out that the pay-back time for good usage is about 15 yrs to pay off what it cost to install.
But.
The panels are ONLY guaranteed for 10 yrs....
And now he finds out that the technology in them may require replacing in about 11 to 12 yrs anyway.
I know I have selected certain parts of your post to "pick" at, but dealing with it all in reverse, who would want to "invest" in something like that?.
If it works, ME!.
I would be interested in anything that can replace fossil fuels, because despite what they say, I dont believe there will be an endless supply.
I already know I will need sooner or later some sort of alternative to the way I get my energy today.
I am planning the new house already..yeah, we are moving the dragon cave.
In the new house storage sheds will be a concrete mixer, and next to the furnace will be a drying room, and waste bits of paper/cardboard/wood and other combustible without pollution materials will be mushed up in the mixer and turned into fuel "bricks" for winter use.
I plan on using underground heat source to help as well, and use heat pumps wherever I can, and have huge filters on the exhaust of that furnace to catch pollutants.
I also plan on re-forestation of another patch of ground to continue my carbon negative lifestyle.
Not because of any form of social pressure to do so, its just I like Trees around the place, much better than the view of another housing estate on the next hill over, and they keep the high winds of storms away from the property anyway, so it all helps.
I plan on solar farming to help produce the power I need, maybe even sell some back to the grid, because I am also planning a water farm if there is a river through the property, and use the pools for the fish.
Can I still do this at this age?.
I have healthy KIDS who are eager to get involved and learn something about the subject.
Maybe they will go on to build their own energy negative homes, to "farm" the local weather, be it by rain or sun, and pas back energy to the grid to pay for it all?..
If that is what I leave behind, my kids energy bill free for life, then I have done my job.
Is it all a pipe dream?.
At the moment yes.
But we are getting there somehow...
And I can help wondering if the waste we produce at home cant somehow be used to make new energy....
Why cant someone invent a home furnace that is pollution free to burn household rubbish and produce energy that way?.
Sure beats sending it all to landfill?.
Or is there a way to "invent" some kind of anerobic action that once minced up, will eat all the trash down and just produce waste gas that we can use?.. bit like having a septic tank that eats "anything".
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