This report, from our own, United States, Idaho National Laboratory, is notable in one very key respect, relative to the many international and domestic reports we've so far cited, demonstrating that Carbon Dioxide, as arises from our use of coal, is a valuable raw material resource from which we can manufacture needed liquid fuels and chemicals.
Explanatory comment follows the excerpt, which includes an unfortunately somewhat dense Abstract, from which we have edited some over-long discussion:
"Hybrid Heterogeneous Catalysts for Hydrogenation of Carbon Dioxide
Authors: L.M. Petkovic; H.W. Rollins; D.M. Ginosar; K.C. Burch; Idaho National Laboratory
DOE Contract Number: DE-AC07-99ID-13727
Conference: 232nd - ACS National Meeting & Exposition,San Francisco, CA,09/10/2006,09/14/2006
Abstract:
Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide, a gas often associated with global warming, have increased considerably since the beginning of the industrial age. In the U.S., stationary CO2 sources, such as electricity generation plants, produce about one-third of the anthropogenic CO2 generation. Reports indicate that the power required to recover 90% of the CO2 from an integrated coal-fired power-plant is about 10% of the power-plant capacity. This energy requirement can be reduced to less than 1% if the recovered CO2 is applied to the production of synthetic fuels. However, the lack of efficient catalysts along with the costs of energy and hydrogen has prevented the development of technologies for direct hydrogenation of CO2. Although the cost of hydrogen for hydrogenating CO2 is not economically attractive at present, the future production of hydrogen by nuclear power sources could completely change this scenario. Still, an efficient catalyst will be essential for commercial application of those processes. The objective of the work presented here was the development of hybrid catalysts for one-step carbon dioxide hydrogenation to liquid fuels. The hybrid catalysts, which were prepared by two novel techniques, included a copper/zinc oxide catalytic function distributed within an acidic zeolitic matrix. Results of catalyst activity and selectivity studies at atmospheric pressure are presented in this contribution. ... One hundred milligrams of a commercial syngas-to-methanol catalyst along with the same amount of a commercial zeolite catalyst was utilized under the same reaction conditions for comparison purposes."
The rather tiresome, tire-rut thinking embodied in "the cost of hydrogen for hydrogenating CO2 is not economically attractive at present, the future production of hydrogen by nuclear power sources could completely change this scenario" is, as we have in other reports documented, being dispelled by research leading to the use of environmental energies to obtain the needed hydrogen, and/or the use of various hydrogen-donor materials, perhaps derived from biological sources, as co-feeds in the CO2 hydrogenation process.
We think the key point, out of all of this, is: The energy needed to capture a power plant's CO2, which just might be ultimately required by law, "can be reduced to less than 1% (in energy equivalents of the plant's capacity) if the recovered CO2 is applied to the production of synthetic fuels."
That doesn't state the entire economic case. There will be NO costs incurred by coal-use industries to geologically sequester the CO2 in service to Big Oil's petroleum reservoir scavenging efforts. And, all the money spent on CO2 recycling into fuels stays in the US, rather than being sent to OPEC for their petroleum fuels, and all the concomitant, costly military imbroglios our co-dependent relationships with them seem to entail. Plus, the environment gets cleaned a little, whether or not it needs it, and money thus isn't squandered by various ideological camps in unproductive and conflicting propaganda campaigns about the dangers of CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants.
It's another coal-based win-win for the US, for all of us.