Carbon Neutral Fuel. Why are we not doing it? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14953404
So I came across this article,

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

And what it basically says is that today we have the technology to remove carbon out of the air and can create fuel from it which can go into your car at roughly the same cost to you as it is now. And I have also read the same type of technology can do the same in removing carbon from the sea as well.

Now, apart from the clear indication that we can remove carbon out of the air (which is a good thing), we are also able to create fuel from it. This is very important. Because in my own nation of the UK we are currently investing in fracking. Personally I am not against this as I believe a nation needs to be self reliance as possible in fuel. But if you can have the same results using cleaner technology, you need to think long term and invest in that also.

So why isn't the world investing in this? Perhaps because oil is powerful I guess. But that isn't my point. Climate change is preventable. We have the technology out there today to stop it and maybe reverse the damage at the same time. It is here. We can invest in it. So if nations are not investing in it they are not taking the problem seriously. And I include the UK in this. So should climate change destroy the ecosystem in the next generation, they truly can say that the generation before fucked them over. And this is the proof.
#14953415
That paper isn't about the process of converting CO2 into fuel; it's about how to concentrate CO2 from the atmosphere - and it even requires the use of some natural gas to do it, so it's not carbon neutral.

https://www.cell.com/joule/pdf/S2542-43 ... 0225-3.pdf

As far as I can tell, the costs given are just "how much to get this CO2 out of the air". You then have to expend further energy to turn that CO2 into a usable fuel, if that's what you're doing.
#14953418
You didn't understand the article then. Although it is true energy is needed for the process to make gasoline, it doesn't mean the energy can't also be carbon neutral such as solar.

Nonetheless the main obstacle in climate change is removing carbon from the air. If the technology is there to do that and it also makes a viable by product to which can be sold to sustain the price of doing this then it isn't unconceivable to believe climate change can't be halted or even reversed - even under an energy dependent society that we live in today.

It is time to think outside the box.
#14953425
@B0ycey, I understand the paper; that's why it has a diagram at the top saying the inputs are either 8.81GJ of natural gas and no electricity, or 5.25GJ of natural gas and 336kWh of electricity, to capture 1 tonne of CO2 from the air. And the output for that is "fuels or sequestration".

The point is, as Suntzu says, cost. Yes, technically we can extract CO2 from the air. But people don't yet want to spend the money to do so. Like they don't want to spend the money to completely replace all electrical generation with renewable sources. This more efficient way of concentrating atmospheric CO2 may help eventually persuade people it's better than rising temperatures, but it's only a small part.
#14953427
Suntzu wrote:The problem is cost. Fossil fuel is very cheap, almost free, think cow shit and wood burned for cooking fuel.


They say it is competitive. So that answers that. They also say the more the world invests in the technology the cheaper it becomes to make fuel. But ultimately it is about saving the planet anyway. So when is too much carbon in the atmosphere a time to act in this technology?
#14953436
B0ycey wrote:They say it is competitive. So that answers that.


The article says it's competitive with a $200 per ton carbon price. The neoliberal technocratic elites can stick their carbon taxes right up their fucking asses because me and 100 million other Americans are never going to accept that regressive elitist bullshit.
#14953449
This seems to be a new technology, we might see it being used at some point in the future. One of the ironic things about this from a climate perspective is that once all the fossil fuels are used up, they can apparently pull carbon out of the air, make more fossil fuels and then burn them again, which suggests that we might be using fossil fuels for a very long time.
#14953459
Hong Wu wrote:This seems to be a new technology, we might see it being used at some point in the future. One of the ironic things about this from a climate perspective is that once all the fossil fuels are used up, they can apparently pull carbon out of the air, make more fossil fuels and then burn them again, which suggests that we might be using fossil fuels for a very long time.


The potency and energy of fossil fuels is undeniable. Renewables are improving but perhaps recycling carbon is the only solution. Electric cars are not safe yet and even then use electricity. At this point in the Earth's environmental cycle perhaps it isn't about reversing climate change but preventing it from getting worse. Although many of these refineries around the whole world would begin to reduce the carbons PPM in the air due to carbon by-product waste.
#14955714
As far as I know, hydrocarbon is very hard to beat as an energy source for cars. Theres nothing which is easily storeable and has equal or better amounts of chemical energy.

Sure you can put solar cells on the car and you can put batteries and electromotors inside so you save some of the gas, but so far we dont have efficient enough reuseable batteries to completely replace hydrocarbons. Theres also the problem how to reload batteries. Right now the only really fast way would be to keep replacing them. So you would reach a tanking station, and instead of tanking anything they'd remove your battery and give you one thats already reloaded. That requires they are standardized though, so everyone has the exact same battery.

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