OSU: Turning carbon emissions into methane fuel - New method offers potential for abundant energy savings, study finds

[OKIsItJustMe]

Turning carbon emissions into methane fuel
New method offers potential for abundant energy savings, study finds

Tatyana Woodall
Ohio State News
[e-mail]

Chemists have developed a novel way to capture and convert carbon dioxide into methane, suggesting that future gas emissions could be converted into an alternative fuel using electricity from renewable sources.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a greenhouse gas that accounts for a large part of Earth’s warming climate, and is produced by power plants, factories and various forms of transportation. Typical carbon capture systems aimed at reducing its presence in the atmosphere work to lower carbon dioxide emissions by isolating CO2 from other gases and converting it to useful products. However, this process is difficult to implement on an industrial scale due to the massive amount of energy required for these systems to operate.

Now, using a special nickel-based catalyst, researchers have figured out a way to save much of this precious energy by turning captured carbon dioxide directly into methane, said Tomaz Neves-Garcia, lead author of the study and a current postdoctoral researcher in chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University.

…

“We are going from a molecule that has low energy and producing from it a fuel that has high energy,” said Neves-Garcia. “What makes this so interesting is that others capture, recover and then convert carbon dioxide in steps, while we save energy by doing these steps simultaneously.”

…

http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/jacs.4c09744

[NNadir]

1. Um...um...um. It would be useful to understand the laws of thermodynamics to avoid credulity for this sort of thing.

The hydrogenation of CO₂ to make methane (or petroleum products in the FT process) has been known since the early 20th century.

One should avoid hyping perpetual motion machines. They don't fucking work,

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. This is not a perpetual motion machine, this is improved catalysis

Being able to make productive use of CO₂ is a good thing.™

[NNadir]

3. I guess there are people with such poor educations that they don't know how hydrogen is made. One could open...

...pretty much any scientific paper, on the subject and find out all about it.

On the other hand, one could be credulous and believe the fossil fuel inspired lie that hydrogen is "green."

Here's one, among many thousands, with a nice pie chart of the type they teach seventh graders to interpret:



The caption:

Figure 1. Global current sources of H2 production (a), and H2 consumption sectors (b).

Progress on Catalyst Development for the Steam Reforming of Biomass and Waste Plastics Pyrolysis Volatiles: A Review Laura Santamaria, Gartzen Lopez, Enara Fernandez, Maria Cortazar, Aitor Arregi, Martin Olazar, and Javier Bilbao, Energy & Fuels 2021 35 (21), 17051-17084]

I referred to this graphic, and reproduced it, discussing a paper in the journal I discussed above here: The current sources and uses of hydrogen.

Oh, wait!!! Some of it made from coal, so what we have here is not exactly a perpetual motion machine confined to methane, but a coal to methane scheme.

The carbon cost of making hydrogen in China has been reported:

Subsidizing Grid-Based Electrolytic Hydrogen Will Increase Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Coal Dominated Power Systems Liqun Peng, Yang Guo, Shangwei Liu, Gang He, and Denise L. Mauzerall Environmental Science & Technology 2024 58 (12), 5187-5195

The text is clear enough.

From the introductory text:

... Currently, nearly all hydrogen in China is either produced directly from fossil fuels (55% from coal gasification and 14% from steam methane reforming (SMR)) or as a byproduct of petroleum refining (28%), with only 1% coming from water electrolysis. (2) Producing 1 kg of coal- or SMR-based hydrogen emits roughly 19 and 10 kg of CO2, respectively. (3) In 2020, hydrogen production from fossil fuels in China emitted ∼322Tg of CO2, equivalent to 25% of total CO2 emissions from industrial processes, a number expected to rise with increasing hydrogen demand. (4) Industrial processes include production of nonmetallic mineral products, chemical, and metal products, as well as production and consumption of halocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride. (4)

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It is true that making hydrogen from methane is rather stupid as an energy carrier, since the physical properties of methane are nowhere near as bad as the physical properties of hydrogen, hydrogen's physical properties being horrible.

Of course, if one is an antinuke and doesn't give a fuck about the extreme global heating now observed worldwide, I guess this is OK.

Have a wonderful day.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. Please explain what this has to do with the OP

Perhaps you cut and pasted the wrong item?