USDOE Converts CO2 to Diesel Fuel

The alliance team members include Sandia National Laboratories, Renewable Energy Institute International (REII), Pacific Renewable Fuels, Pratt Whitney Rocketdyne (a United Technologies Division), Quanta Servicesn (NYSE: PWR), Desert Research Institute and Clean Energy Systems. In addition, commercial partners have signed on to advance work on the first round of commercial plants.

The project team has received a first phase of funding from the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) to demonstrate these technologies.

As envisioned, the solar reforming technology platform will be co-located next to industrial facilities that have waste CO2 streams such as coal power plants, natural gas processing facilities, ethanol plants, cement production facilities and other stationary sources of CO2.

"Sandia began working on research, development and demonstration of solar reforming technologies more than 20 years ago. We are pleased for the opportunity to extend these concepts in a public/private partnership that we expect will accelerate commercialization to accomplish our joint goals of CO2 emissions reduction and domestic fuel production," said Ellen Stechel, recycling CO2 program development lead for Sandia National Laboratories.

A solar reforming system is currently being demonstrated in Sacramento, Calif., and demonstrations will continue both at Sandia's facilities in New Mexico and at a power plant project site in Bakersfield, Calif. Planning for the first round of commercial plants is under way at several locations in the U.S. The project team anticipates that deployment of the first commercial plants can begin in 2013. In May, renewable fuel company Joule announced an additional $30 million in funding for a process it says can directly produce liquid fuel from sunlight and waste carbon dioxide (CO2) using proprietary microorganisms."

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First, we have previously documented other technical efforts to demonstrate that seemingly disparate knowledge from the disciplines of biotechnology and chemical engineering could be combined to achieve synergies in the development of practical Carbon Dioxide recycling technology.

So, the planned use of "proprietary microorganisms", as above, should be unsurprising.  

Note above, as well, that, as we have earlier documented, clean, green corn "ethanol plants" rank right up there with "natural gas processing facilities" as major emitters of CO2.

We have earlier documented why and how Corn Ethanol and Natural Gas, "America's Clean Energy Alternative", in different ways and for different reasons, are, like Cement kilns and breweries, major sources and causative agents of CO2 emission.

But, like Coal-fired power plants, dozens, even hundreds, of them taken together would still, in terms of their CO2 emissions, be dwarfed by the most modest of volcanoes.

And, don't be sidetracked by the planned use of "solar reforming".

We still, in cloudy Appalachia, have plenty of environmental energy, Hydro and Wind, we could harness to the task of recycling Carbon Dioxide.

And, there might, therein, be an opportunity for Coal People and Environmentalists to slide together into a team harness.

Aside from all of that, herein is further, and credible, evidence that the opportunity exists "to commercialize technologies that" among other possibilities "convert waste carbon dioxide (CO2) into diesel fuel".