Energy Citations Database (ECD) - - Document #952162
Herein is even more confirmation, from our US Department of Energy's southwestern labs, that Carbon Dioxide can, efficiently and productively, be reclaimed, and then be recycled into liquid hydrocarbon fuels.
First, we remind you that we have previously cited two of the co-authors of the report we enclose herein, Richard Diver and James Miller, previously, with regards to the USDOE's development of technologies that would, if implemented, enable such profitable recycling of Carbon Dioxide.
And, some of the wording of the report we enclose herein might thus ring very familiar, especially in regards to the dangers we face by continuing our uncorrected dependence on unreliable sources of natural petroleum.
As in one of those reports: USDOE Calls for CO2 Recycling Revolution | Research & Development | News; concerning the: "Initial Case for Splitting Carbon Dioxide to Carbon Monoxide and Oxygen; 2007; James E. Miller; Sandia National Laboratories; Albuquerque, NM"; even the specific phraseology concerning the need to "adopt revolutionary thinking about energy and fuels", is replicated.
Comment follows excerpts from the initial link in this dispatch to:
View Document; Access Individual Pages; DOI:10.2172/952162
"Title: Summary report : Direct approaches for recycling carbon dioxide into synthetic fuel.
January, 2009
OSTI ID: 952162; Report Number: SAND2009-0399; DOE Contract: AC04-94AL85000
Authors: Mark Allendorf, et. al.
Research Organization: Sandia National Laboratories; Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
Abstract: The consumption of petroleum by the transportation sector in the United States is roughly equivalent to petroleum imports into the country, which have totaled over 12 million barrels a day every year since 2004. This reliance on foreign oil is a strategic vulnerability for the economy and national security.
Further, the effect of unmitigated CO2 releases on the global climate is a growing concern both here and abroad.
Independence from problematic oil producers can be achieved to a great degree through the utilization of non-conventional hydrocarbon resources such as coal ... .
Revolutionary thinking about energy and fuels must be adopted. We must recognize that hydrocarbon fuels are ideal energy carriers, but not primary energy sources. The energy stored in a chemical fuel is released for utilization by oxidation. In the case of hydrogen fuel the chemical product is water; in the case of a hydrocarbon fuel, water and carbon dioxide are produced.
The hydrogen economy envisions a cycle in which H2O is re-energized by splitting water into H2 and O2, by electrolysis for example. We envision a hydrocarbon analogy in which both carbon dioxide and water are re-energized through the application of a persistent energy source (e.g. solar). This is of course essentially what the process of photosynthesis accomplishes, albeit with a relatively low sunlight-to-hydrocarbon efficiency. The goal of this project then was the creation of a direct and efficient process for ... conversion of CO2 to CO ... , one of the basic building blocks of synthetic fuels.
This process would potentially provide the basis for an alternate hydrocarbon economy that is carbon neutral, provides a pathway to energy independence, and is compatible with much of the existing fuel infrastructure.
Introduction: The reliance on petroleum imports has national security implications beyond the threat to the economy. Increasing attention has recently been given to the fact that the recent high price of oil is driving one of the largest transfers of wealth in history at a rate of $700 billion a year (and) this transfer is predominantly away from Western-style democracies.
This wealth transfer has helped promote “Petroleum-nationalism” in Latin America and elsewhere, and some are as blunt to say that the U.S. and others are funding both sides of the “war on terror”.
In any case, it is clear that U.S. dependence on foreign petroleum has significant and likely increasing foreign policy implications. A recent task force report from the Council on Foreign Relations expressed it as follows:
'"The lack of sustained attention to energy issues is undercutting U.S. foreign policy and U.S. national security. Major energy suppliers—from Russia to Iran to Venezuela—have been increasingly able and willing to use their energy resources to pursue their strategic and political objectives. Major energy consumers, notably the United States, but other countries as well, are finding that their growing dependence on imported energy increases their strategic vulnerability and constrains their ability to pursue a broad range of foreign policy and national security objectives. Dependence also puts the United States into increasing competition with other importing countries, notably with today’s rapidly growing emerging economies of China and India.
At best, these trends will challenge U.S. foreign policy; at worst, they will seriously strain relations between the United States and these countries."'
The reliance on foreign oil is thus a strategic vulnerability for the economy and national security.
Independence from problematic oil producers could be achieved to a great degree through the utilization of non-conventional hydrocarbon resources such as coal ... .
This approach has the advantages of consistency with the current fuel infrastructure and a sound and relatively mature technological basis. However, tapping into and converting these resources into liquid fuels exacerbates the problem of green house gas (GHG) emissions as they are carbon rich, but hydrogen deficient.
Revolutionary thinking is required if the coupled problems of energy (transportation) security and climate change are to both be addressed. Hydrocarbon fuels are ideal energy carriers, but they can no longer be thought of as primary energy sources. Rather, it is necessary that we take the realistic view that our conventional hydrocarbon fuels are in fact “stored sunlight” and “sequestered carbon.”
(Keep in mind that is how Coal was, long ago, formed: Ancient plant life “stored sunlight” and “sequestered carbon”.)
The overall efficiency of these processes in terms of sunlight to fuel was quite low, particularly for oil and natural gas. For oil, the sunlight to stored energy efficiency is estimated to be only about 0.0002%. It follows that the average U.S. gallon of gasoline is estimated to have begun as approximately 90 metric tons of
ancient plant matter.
Biofuels, e.g. bio-ethanol, can be thought of as modern approach to improving upon this efficiency, shortening the time scale, and making the process more inherently cyclic and sustainable.
As before, the starting point is the photosynthetic conversion of CO2 and H2O to hydrocarbons. Additional chemical or biological steps are then undertaken to produce a hydrocarbon fuel. The overall sunlight to fuel efficiency is dependent on location and the process specifics and is thus difficult to define precisely or to generalize. However, it is still generally quite low, although significantly better than that for oil.
One can put an upper limit on the biomass approach by considering the efficiency of the photosynthetic step alone. Photosynthesis is generally measured to be 2.5% efficient at best, but is currently less than 0.5% for rapidly growing large area crops. It is commonly accepted that the solar to ethanol efficiency from corn kernels is less than 1%. The maximum possible efficiency is estimated to be 4.6% (to) 6% ... under current atmospheric conditions.
The broad goal of this project was to develop technology for efficiently converting CO2 and H2O, the same basic building blocks nature uses, to hydrocarbon fuels, using only sustainable, carbon-neutral energy sources. Specifically the project focused on the creation of a direct and efficient CO2 splitting (2CO2 → 2CO + O2) process that can be efficiently driven by (various) sources of thermal energy. (And, such) CO2 splitting (is) a foundation for synfuel production.
Briefly, CO is one fundamental component, the other being H2, of syngas, the key intermediate for synfuel production.
Hydrogen can be produced renewably with commercially available technologies, e.g. via photovoltaic-driven electrolysis.
(And) it has been calculated that current technology would allow hydrocarbons to be manufactured from CO2 and electrolytic H2 with an electrical to hydrocarbon efficiency of roughly 40-50%.
Thermochemical cycles for water splitting are under development in our laboratories and elsewhere. These avoid the efficiency-sapping sunlight to electrical energy conversion required for electrolysis and may somewhat improve the overall efficiency of both hydrogen and subsequent hydrocarbon production.
Additionally, at high temperatures, CO2 is thermodynamically less stable than H2O. Thus, thermochemically splitting CO2 in a process analogous to water splitting is thermodynamically feasible and also provides a direct route to manufacture CO for syngas and hydrocarbon production.
Conclusion: Energy is by far the largest human endeavor on the planet; global expenditures measured roughly $3 trillion in 2005, or more than twice the amount spent on agriculture and 3 times the amount on defense. Tremendous capital is invested in the current hydrocarbon infrastructure, however massive capital investments will continue to be necessary, even if we choose to preserve the fossil fuel paradigm.
Applying renewable energy resources to recycle CO2 is a new paradigm for storing and transporting energy that preserves much of the hydrocarbon infrastructure, while offering a more environmentally sound future.
Thermochemical cycles for splitting water and carbon dioxide have promise as methods to realize this paradigm. Carbon Dioxide Splitting has been demonstrated over both iron- and ceria-based monolithic materials of the type required for a solar reactor such as the CR5.
Carbon deposition is a possible concern for the Fe-based materials, however deposition of measurable quantities was not observed in this effort. This may be due to the high temperatures and relatively large excess of CO2 employed in these studies. As work proceeds towards pushing the reactions to lower temperatures and higher conversions, this problem may yet present itself. Cofeeding steam with CO2
is one potential solution. "
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We'll close our over-long excerpts there, since the USDOE echoes reports of similar developments in Israel and Switzerland, wherein Water is used to prevent such deposition of Carbon on catalyst surfaces in reforming reactions between, in those specific instances, Methane and Carbon Dioxide.
The USDOE technology disclosed herein seems to be a refinement of, or advancement on, those other, "reforming", processes, since Methane, even though we can make it from CO2 via the 1912 Sabatier process, isn't really needed, apparently, as a co-reactant in this USDOE concept.
And, since the CO2-recycling "solar reactor" designated as "CR5", about which we have previously reported, is specifically identified, here is a news release directly from the USDOE's Sandia National Lab which might provide you with a little more background on it:
"Sandia's Sunshine to Petrol Project Seeks Fuel From Thin Air
Team to chemically transform carbon dioxide into carbon-neutral liquid fuels
Using concentrated solar energy to reverse combustion, a research team from Sandia National Laboratories is building a prototype device intended to chemically “reenergize” carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide using concentrated solar power. The carbon monoxide could then be used to make hydrogen or serve as a building block to synthesize a liquid combustible fuel, such as methanol or even gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
The prototype device, called the Counter Rotating Ring Receiver Reactor Recuperator (CR5, for short), will break a carbon-oxygen bond in the carbon dioxide to form carbon monoxide and oxygen in two distinct steps. It is a major piece of an approach to converting carbon dioxide into fuel from sunlight.
Providing funding for Sunshine to Petrol is Sandia’s internal Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program. The research has also attracted interest and some funding from DoD/DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).
“What’s exciting about this invention is that it will result in fossil fuels being used at least twice, meaning less carbon dioxide being put into the atmosphere and a reduction of the rate that fossil fuels are pulled out of the ground,” Diver says."
As an example, he says, coal would be burned at a clean coal power plant. The carbon dioxide from the burning of the coal would be captured and reduced to carbon monoxide in the CR5. The carbon monoxide would then be the starting point of making gasoline, jet fuel, methanol, or almost any type of liquid fuel.
The prospect of a liquid fuel is significant because it fits in with the current gasoline and oil infrastructure."
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So, according to our US Department of Energy herein, we can, using only "sustainable" and "carbon-neutral energy sources", start with Carbon Dioxide - reclaimed from a "coal power plant", and Water, and thereby produce "synthetic fuels (which could) provide the basis for an alternate hydrocarbon economy that is carbon neutral, provides a pathway to energy independence, and is compatible with much of the existing fuel" distribution system, that is, "the current gasoline and oil infrastructure".