Carbon Sciences Announces Major Breakthrough to Recycle CO2 Into Gasoline
We sometime ago alerted you to the Carbon Dioxide recycling expertise of Carbon Sciences, Inc.
In this very recent news release from them, they affirm the point we have documented over the past months from multiple, independent and credible, sources:
Carbon Dioxide can be productively recycled, into liquid hydrocarbon fuels and plastics manufacturing raw materials.
The excerpt:
"Jan 25, 2010 16:01 ET
Carbon Sciences Announces Major Breakthrough to Recycle CO2 Into Gasoline
New Process Technologies Also Shorten Time to Market and Reduce System and Operating Costs
SANTA BARBARA, CA--(Marketwire - January 25, 2010) - Carbon Sciences Inc. (OTCBB: CABN), the developer of a breakthrough technology to recycle carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into gasoline and other portable fuels, today announced the development of certain process technologies that will allow for the production of gasoline, shorten the time to commercialization and reduce the system and operating costs of its CO2-to-Fuel technology.
The company's current approach is an enzyme-based process used to transform CO2 into low-level fuels, such as methanol. Dr. Naveed Aslam, chief technology officer of Carbon Sciences, has now discovered a new and more cost efficient process to produce gasoline, a high-level fuel, from CO2. The key features of this breakthrough includes (1) the of use flue emissions directly from coal-fired power plants or industrial factories, eliminating the need for "clean" CO2, (2) the use of brackish water, eliminating the need for distilled freshwater as the source of hydrogen and reaction medium, (3) mild operating conditions, eliminating the need for capital intensive stainless steel equipment, and (4) a highly scalable system to transform large quantities of CO2 into gasoline for use in the existing transportation infrastructure.
(Note, that, as in other reports from other sources we've brought to your attention, raw flue gas can be used in some Carbon Dioxide recycling technologies. We are thus spared the costs of CO2 separation, purification and concentration.)
Elaborating on the business implications of this new breakthrough, Byron Elton, CEO of Carbon Sciences, said, "We always wanted to produce high-level fuels, such as gasoline, but knew that additional steps would be required to reach this goal. Now, we have the way to go directly to gasoline." Mr. Elton commented further, "The United Nations' IPCC estimates that the cost of simply capturing CO2 for applications, such as underground sequestration or transformation into products, can range from $45 to $73 per ton of CO2. This cost is perhaps the single biggest economic barrier to any large-scale CO2 applications, such as carbon sequestration. However, by being able to use a raw CO2 flue gas stream in our CO2-to-Fuel technology, we are no longer dependent on the success or commercial availability of carbon capture systems. In addition, unlike biofuels based on growing plants to absorb CO2 from the air, our CO2-to-Fuel process is an industrial process that can produce fuel in minutes to hours, not months to years, to meet the demands of the world. These breakthroughs demonstrate why we continue to believe that Carbon Sciences is developing the most powerful and sustainable fuel technology in the world."
(We'll note the "additional steps" mentioned by Elton, above, likely include some of those we have documented in other of our reports, wherein Carbon Dioxide is first transmuted into Methane and/or Methanol prior to final conversion into higher, gasoline-range hydrocarbons.)
Commenting on the development roadmap, Dr. Aslam stated, "We are very excited about these new processes. Our end-to-end CO2 to fuel system will have several modules. We have determined that one of these modules can function as a standalone system for use by a sizable part of the energy industry for the production of gasoline. Inquiries from potential strategic partners have further validated our decision to focus on this module. We are anticipating a shorter than normal development cycle for this module and are hoping to achieve commercialization in less than one year."
About Carbon Sciences Inc.
Carbon Sciences Inc. is developing a breakthrough technology to recycle carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into the basic fuel building blocks required to produce gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and other fuels. Innovating at the intersection of chemical engineering and bio-engineering disciplines, we are developing a highly scalable biocatalytic process to meet the fuel needs of the world. Our solution to energy and climate challenges is to enable a sustainable world of fuel consumption and climate stability by recycling CO2 into fuel. For example, Carbon Sciences' breakthrough technology can be used to recycle CO2 emitted from fossil fuel power plants into gasoline to run cars and jet fuel to fly aircraft."
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The release concludes with the standard, required disclaimer about "forward-looking" statements, and such; but, really, all we really had to do was look back, far back, into the last century - when Paul Sabatier was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for demonstrating that Carbon Dioxide could be recycled back into combustible hydrocarbons, for showing the world that CO2 is a valuable raw material resource.
Do we really prefer to allow our coal-use industries to be enslaved into Big Oil's service, by forcing them to, at their cost, collect all their CO2 by-product, and then pump it to and down leaky old oil wells in an expensive scrounging of last petroleum dregs? Have we worked at mining too much low coal without our caps on, and bumped our noggins a few too many times?