Cover story on Artificial Photosynthesis in c&en

The cover story for the most recent issue of Chemical and Engineering News (c&en) wason  solar fuels (aka artificial photosynthesis systems), and includes a nice overview of approaches that researchers are taking in this field: (the story starts on pg. 32):

http://cen.acs.org/articles/94/i46/artificial-leaf-sprout-combat-climate.html?type=paidArticleContent

 

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H2 production vs. CO2 reduction

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CO2, hydrogen, solar, solar fuels

Here is a recent viewpoint article published in ACS Energy Letters discussing the merits of using solar energy (or solar-derived electricity) to 1.) split water for H2 production, or 2.) reduce CO2 into liquid hydrocarbon fuels:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsenergylett.6b00377

There is a lot of active research ongoing for both of these pathways, so this is an important discussion to be having.

The article nicely articulates the reasons for not performing CO2 reduction from CO2 captured from coal fired power plants.  However, there are other sources of CO2 as well, such as cement plants, or  capturing CO2 directly from air (so-called negative emissions) as discussed in this article:

http://www.pnas.org/content/109/33/13156

 

 

Mass balance on biofuels

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biofuel, corn, LCA

Here is a recent summary article on a recent life cycle analysis (LCA) study comparing CO2 emissions associated with biofuels (e.g. corn ethanol) to CO2 emissions from gasoline:

http://phys.org/news/2016-08-biofuels-decrease-heat-trapping-carbon-dioxide.html

The full study was just published in the journal Climatic Change and is titled “Carbon balance effects of U.S. biofuel production and use”:

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-016-1764-4

CNTs from CO2 and Electricity

Tags

carbon nanotubes, climate change, CO2 reduction, electrochemistry, solar

Prof. Stuart Licht’s group at George Washington University recently published an article in NanoLetters on the use of high temperature electrolysis to convert CO2 into carbon nanotubes (CNTs) (and other morphologies) and O2:

The process takes place at around 800 C in a molten carbonate salt, which can easily absorb CO2 from air or a flue stream as the carbonate is converted to carbon at the cathode in the electrochemical reactor.  The process could be run as a STEP process (solar thermal electrochemical process), using the sun to heat the electrolysis solution and provide electricity for the electrochemical reaction.

In addition to providing an useful means of sequestering excess CO2 in the atmosphere in the form of solid carbon, there could be great economic incentive for such a process. This article is cited as saying that CNT’s sell for about $25,000 per ton.