When such fossil fuels are burned to generate electricity, to heat our houses or propel our cars and airplanes, they release carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O). They are also non-renewable on the human time-scale.
The scientific challenge is to reverse this process, by making hydrocarbon fuels and products through chemically recycling spent CO2 into a convenient fuel called methanol.
This process would, in effect, mimic the natural process of photosynthesis, which, using the energy of the Sun, recycles CO2 and water into new plant life. It would also produce new hydrocarbon sources on the short human time-scale, since plant life turns into fossil fuel over hundreds of millions of years.
The ‘methanol economy’ made possible by this process can eventually liberate mankind from its dependence on diminishing oil, natural gas and coal reserves while mitigating global warming caused by their excessive combustion — producing CO2.
Methanol is an excellent fuel for transportation. It is also adequate for fuel cells, which are capable of producing energy in reaction with atmospheric oxygen.
Methanol produced on a large scale will be also able to replace oil and natural gas to produce synthetic hydrocarbon and products such as plastics, which we are so used to.
For now, methanol can be efficiently produced from still-existing sources of natural gas or coal. New approaches, now in development, would allow chemical recycling of CO2 from the exhaust gases of fossil-fuel-burning power plants and other industrial or natural sources.
The emissions of fossil-fuel-burning power plants and chemical plants contain high concentrations of carbon dioxide. Because the large amounts of CO2 released into the atmosphere contribute greatly to global warming, it is now generally agreed that it must be captured and stored through the presently proposed process called sequestration. But, rather than simply sequestering CO2, chemical recycling would be more innovative. Water can provide the required hydrogen for converting CO2 to methanol using any energy source. Eventually, atmospheric CO2 can be recycled, using catalytic or electrochemical processes. I am optimistic for the future. Humankind is an ingenious species, which always seems to find ways of overcoming adversities and challenges. In the coming decades, we must face the fact that our nature-given, non-renewable fossil fuel resources are finite and diminishing, while both our population and consumption are growing.
If we wish to continue living at a comparable or even higher standard of living as we do today, while not further endangering our environment, we need to develop new solutions starting now. Regulations and energy savings, however sensible they may be, cannot solve our problems on their own. Certainly, we can extend our oil and gas reserves through more economical use with conservation and fuel-efficient technologies, particularly in the transportation sector (such as hybrid engines and fuel cells).
In reality, mankind will have to rely on all possible solutions available. By replacing the ‘petroleum economy’, the ‘methanol economy’ holds great promise for the future. After all, the inescapable reality is that we live in a carbon-based global environment.
Nature has shown us its own way to sustain itself in that environment by recycling CO2 into new plant life.
Human activities, however, increasingly seem to affect nature’s own way. Scientific advance now allows us to reverse this: supplement nature with mankind’s own alternative.
(c) 2007 Nobel Laureates Plus.
Distributed By Tribune Media Services, Inc.
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George Olah, a professor of chemistry at the University of Southern California, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1994. His most recent book, written with Alain Goeppert and G.K. Surya Prakash, is Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy."
We did highlight one passage, above, almost as an aside: "methanol can be efficiently produced from still-existing sources of ... coal".
We wanted to make certain that was clear. Even though this article is about recycling CO2 into methanol, this Nobel Laureate states unequivocally that "methanol can be efficiently produced from ... coal".
And, once we have methanol, we can, as through ExxonMobil's "MTG(r) Process", convert it into gasoline, and, as Olah suggests, more permanently sequester it, by replacing petroleum feed stocks "to produce synthetic ... products such as plastics."
Instead of wasting a lot of money to pump it all down leaky geologic storage rat holes, "Let's Chemically Recycle CO2"