http://www.cuantaciencia.com/pdf/2009/CO2metano.pdf
As a foreword, we must warn that the title on the first page of the document we enclose herein, via the initial link and attached file, is in error.
The second page bears the correct title, as replicated in our excerpts.
In any case, we urge you to recall our many reports of the "tri-reforming", CO2-recycling, technology, which has been espoused by a number of Penn State University scientists, including Craig Grimes and the 2010 winner of the American Chemical Society's "Storch Award" for Fuel Chemistry, Chunsan Song.
In order to manufacture Methanol, and other liquid hydrocarbons, from Carbon Dioxide, Penn State has explained how Carbon Dioxide, recovered from whatever source, can be reacted with Methane and Steam, and made thereby to form a synthesis gas suitable for catalytic condensation into various hydrocarbons.
It is, apparently, similar to the technology NASA intends to utilize to manufacture rocket fuel on the planet Mars, out of Water recovered from ice on the Martian surface combined with Carbon Dioxide recovered from the Martian atmosphere.
In the NASA scheme, as we've earlier documented, a version of the 1912 Nobel Prize-winning Sabatier process, wherein Carbon Dioxide is transformed into Methane, is posited to be used to produce the Methane needed for the reaction with more Carbon Dioxide, and with Water, to form the rocket fuel.
And, NASA intends, it seems, to utilize a small nuclear reactor to drive that initial Sabatier conversion of Carbon Dioxide into the needed Methane.
We say nuts to more Three Mile Islands, and urge you to recall our several recent reports, wherein the US Department of Energy's "Green Freedom" (TM) technology, which uses Solar energy to capture Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and then to transform it into fuels, is explained.
Herein, Penn State University confirms that USDOE concept, by revealing how Sunlight, in a version of what we can only refer to as "artificial photosynthesis", can be utilized to transform Carbon Dioxide into Methane.
Comment follows excerpts from:
"High-Rate Solar Photocatalytic Conversion of CO2 and Water Vapor to Hydrocarbon Fuels
Oomman K. Varghese, Maggie Paulose, Thomas J. LaTempa, and Craig A. Grimes
Materials Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University
American Chemical Society, January 2009
Efficient solar conversion of carbon dioxide and water vapor to methane and other hydrocarbons is achieved using nitrogen-doped titania nanotube arrays, with a wall thickness low enough to facilitate effective carrier transfer to the adsorbing species, surface-loaded with nanodimensional islands of cocatalysts platinum and/or copper.
All experiments are conducted in outdoor sunlight at University Park, PA.
Intermediate reaction products, hydrogen and carbon monoxide, are also detected with their relative concentrations underlying hydrocarbon production rates and dependent upon the nature of the cocatalysts on the nanotube array surface.
Using outdoor global AM (sunlight, as specified) a hydrocarbon production ... is obtained (and, the) rate of CO2 to hydrocarbon production obtained under outdoor sunlight is at least 20 times higher than previous published reports, which were conducted under laboratory conditions using UV illumination.
A possible avenue for sustainable development is to use photocatalysts for the conversion of CO2 into hydrocarbons with the help of solar energy. A process involving only water and carbon dioxide is very promising as it can form a useful carbon cycle: CO2+2H2O = CH4+2O2 (and, CH4+2O2 = CO2+2H2O).
In 1979 Honda and co-workers demonstrated photocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide to organic compounds ... by suspending both oxide and non-oxide semiconductor particles in water.
(We remind you, without linkage, that we earlier reported those Japanese CO2-recycling developments. The West Virginia Coal Association maintains, in their R&D web site archives, a now sizeable, and searchable, library of reports documenting such CO2-recycling developments, by the above-noted Honda and many other Japanese scientists.)
In summary, we have demonstrated that high rate photocatalytic conversion of carbon dioxide can be achieved using sunlight ... (although) cocatalysts are essential for high rate CO2 conversion."
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Again, the hydrocarbon Penn State specifies to be made from Carbon Dioxide, using sunlight to drive the process via the specified reactions, is "CH4", Methane.
And, Methane, once we have it, as herein synthesized by Penn State University from Carbon Dioxide, using nothing but Coal Country sunshine to drive the process, can be - as we have many times documented, and as we will further document - further reacted, "bi-reformed" and "tri-reformed", with even more Carbon Dioxide, and made thereby to synthesize hydrocarbon fuels.