{"id":46673,"date":"2017-10-18T07:20:14","date_gmt":"2017-10-18T05:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=46673"},"modified":"2021-09-09T21:36:36","modified_gmt":"2021-09-09T19:36:36","slug":"could-co2-be-the-new-fuel-feedstock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/could-co2-be-the-new-fuel-feedstock\/","title":{"rendered":"Could CO<sub>2<\/sub> be the new fuel feedstock?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A number of high-profile projects have been cancelled recently, including the Kemper power plant in Mississippi and a joint venture between UK utility SSE and Shell at Peterhead in Scotland.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps it is time to take a different approach. A growing number of researchers and businesses are taking advantage of the abundance of CO2 to use it as a feedstock.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists at Stanford University, for example, recently announced they have discovered a way to create ethanol at room temperature, using electricity, water and CO2 thanks to the development of a copper catalyst. The California Institute of Technology is working on the same issue, and may be producing even better results. Although there is a long way to go before this technology becomes commercial, if it does so, it could solve two environmental issues in one go \u2014 not only would the fuel displace CO2 from fossil fuels, it would also reduce the amount of land given over to growing fuel rather than food.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, in Germany, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology has produced synthetic fuel using solar power and CO2 from the air. The institute\u2019s INERATEC initiative has created a pilot mobile chemical plant that fits into a shipping container and can be used off the grid to produce 80 liters a day of petrol, diesel and kerosene. This could allow remote communities to produce their own sustainable fuel rather than shipping in diesel for generators and vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>An Australian company is taking another approach, by capturing carbon emissions and turning them into building materials, in a process that mimics natural weathering of rocks by rainfall, but vastly speeded up. The CO2 is captured and reacted with low-grade minerals to create solid carbonates.<\/p>\n<p>Mineral Carbonation International has launched a A$9 million research program at the Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources in New South Wales to convert CO2 into solid carbonates that can be used in building materials such as concrete, bricks and plasterboard.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce proven feasible both economically and environmentally, mineral carbonation plants operating at industrial scale around the world could limit further emissions from big greenhouse gas emitters in cement, steel making and power generation whilst we transition our planet to cleaner forms of energy, to renewables and other zero emission technologies,\u201d the company says.<\/p>\n<p>MCI hopes to produce 20,000 to 50,000 metric tons of \u2018green\u2019 concrete by 2020, anticipating strong demand for more sustainable building products.<\/p>\n<p>In Texas, Net Power is building a demonstration power plant that will use the CO2 it produces to drive its own turbines, potentially enabling it to capture its emissions at no cost \u2014 vastly improve the efficiency and environmental impacts of gas-fueled power plants.<\/p>\n<p>Many of these projects are a long way from commercialization, but they suggest that treating CO2 as a resource rather than a waste product may be the way to remove it from the atmosphere.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A number of high-profile projects have been cancelled recently, including the Kemper power plant in Mississippi and a joint venture between UK utility SSE and Shell at Peterhead in Scotland. Perhaps it is time to take a different approach. A growing number of researchers and businesses are taking advantage of the abundance of CO2 to [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572,5571],"tags":[13305,10743],"supplier":[1563,13225,13757,1122],"class_list":["post-46673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","category-co2-based","tag-fuel","tag-useco2","supplier-karlsruher-institut-fuer-technologie-kit","supplier-mineral-carbonation-international-mci","supplier-net-power-llc","supplier-stanford-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46673"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=46673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}