With petroleum - loving Mass and taxation - happy governments finally grow on control board with the ontogeny of alternative fuels , the wash has been on to find the light , eco - friendliest , and most significantly , flashy , alternative tofossil fuel . But it has n’t been well-off .
Many have been hype and ultimately abandoned ( hydrogen fuelanyone ? ) , with more filling the pipeline all the time . The new eco darling ? Carbon Dioxide .
The by - product of combustion and a notorious greenhouse gas , ecologist have been bemoaning CO2′s constant button into our atmosphere for decades . So why not take all this excess , free - floating gas and change by reversal it into something utile : The perfect alternative fuel . And that ’s just what several companies are doing .
CO2 fuel right around the corner?
So are CO2 - fuel vehicles in our immediate future ? Yes . And no . It depends on whom you ask . Those who are prepare CO2 fuel claim the technology has survive for years , and the issue is a much cleaner , more eco - friendly fuel than crude .
harmonise to Byron Elton , President and COO ofCarbon Sciences , his company hhas develop a find technology that can take CO2 and use it along with methane and a catalyst to create a semisynthetic gas ( syngas ) in a summons known as flatulency - to - liquid or GTL . The ensue syngas can , and has , been used to create clean Rudolf Diesel fuels . Elton says that after diesel will come K fuel and even a CO2 fuel that will power subsist gasolene engines . No need for retrofitting or costly conversions .
While GTL engineering science has been around for decade — Elton notes that theFischer – Tropschprocess , a key component of GTL technology where carbon monoxide and atomic number 1 are combined to produce a petroleum substitute , was used to fire the state of war effort during WWII — it has n’t been competitive with , or superior to , unrefined oil . Elton say that has changed .
He add , “ Carbon Science ’s technology can not only give us a viable , clean option to fossil fuel , but it can also avail importantly reduce the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere . ” While it will take some meter to get it to market place , Elton say diesel engine fuels made from CO2 will be available comparatively quickly . And he points to a proposed joint $ 10 billion labor between the state of Louisiana and South African energy ship’s company , Sasol , tobuild a huge GTL plantnear Lake Charles , LA as trial impression that this substitute fuel has been hug and is get along fast .
So should we pop tearing down gas stations and demand the construction of CO2 stations ? Not so fast , enounce those on the polar side of the fencing . They say that while you absolutely can make fresh fuel from CO2 , the end result is much pricey and less effective thanfossil fuel . So all we are doing is trade in bad for less spoilt . Or alternate bad .
Just trading “Bad” for “Less Bad”?
Ozzie Zehner , chew the fat prof at UC - Berkely and generator of the approaching bookGreen Illusions(Lincoln and London : Bison Books , 2012 ) , enounce all this CO2 - as - a - fuel talk of the town prompt him of the failed hydrogen dream of just a few years ago . That engineering science used excess solarwind powerto create H to power car . The only problem was for make that happen you needed to put more energy in to createhydrogen fuelthan you fetch out of it . It ’s like having a simple machine that creates $ 20 bills , but it costs $ 23 to create each one .
And Zehner allege creating CO2 fuels is just as vim intensive . “ The process can be used to salt away heat or electrical energy in a dispatchable liquid manikin for later use , ” he says , “ but CO2 is not a fuel on it ’s own . ” It must be refined into other things that can be used as fuel , like methane , which is the master constituent of natural gas . And the trouble , Zehner notes , is you ask an heat-absorbing reaction to make that happen . You need to supply a lot of heat and vigor to get your resulting fuel , and you ’ll get some , but not all , of that Energy Department back . “ Until they figure out how to change the law of thermodynamics , ” Zehner say , “ we are stuck with what we have . ”
And at the end of the day , it may be well-heeled and cheaper to just elicit and expend existing natural gas imagination . “ We have a ton of methane now , ” say Zehner . “ Why pay to take out CO2 from the aura and mix it with H and heat to create methane and pee ? No one does that . ” And on the argument that the CO2 fuel is cleaner than fossil fuels , Zehner says by definition it ’s not . “ You need vitality to either create the CO2 fuel or to reform it , ” he says . “ You might have to practice atomic ability to get enough energy to exchange CO2 into methane , so whether nuclear is clean than fossil fuels is is a political inquiry . ”
In the end , Zehner tell we may just be trading one negative for another . “ It is n’t satisfactory for doctors to promote low - tar cigarettes , ” he say . “ Why should environmentalists promote alternatively fuel automobiles ? ”
