Climate rewind: Scientists turn carbon dioxide back into coal

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/all-news/2019/feb/carbon-dioxide-coal

Climate rewind: Scientists turn carbon dioxide back into coal

Researchers have used liquid metals to turn carbon dioxide back into solid coal, in a world-first breakthrough that could transform our approach to carbon capture and storage.

The research team led by RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, have developed a new technique that can efficiently convert CO2 from a gas into solid particles of carbon.

Published in the journal Nature Communications, the research offers an alternative pathway for safely and permanently removing the greenhouse gas from our atmosphere.

Current technologies for carbon capture and storage focus on compressing CO2 into a liquid form, transporting it to a suitable site and injecting it underground.

…

…

“By using liquid metals as a catalyst, we’ve shown it’s possible to turn the gas back into carbon at room temperature, in a process that’s efficient and scalable.

…

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-08824-8

[msongs]

1. great, we can pay coal miners to put back in the ground. nt

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. OK by me!

"The government should pay people to dig holes in the ground and then fill them up." — John Maynard Keynes

[NNadir]

2. All we need is a few tens of zetajoules of energy to overcome the energy released when it burned...

...and the entropy when it poisoned the air.

Let me guess.

It's going to come from magic wind and solar energy, even though they have done absolutely zero to slow the release of carbon dioxide.

[hunter]

4. Wouldn't it be a lot easier to quit fossil fuels?

This is like looking for a magic pill that makes it safe to smoke.

And no doubt, if the smokers in our homes and workplaces and airliners had such a pill, they would demand non-smokers take it so they had the freedom to smoke anywhere they pleased.

[caraher]

5. Thermodynamics says yes

I think this is characteristic of the "bargaining" stage of grief.

[hunter]

6. You nailed it.

A hat tip to you that's not in any way sarcastic or ironic.

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. Easier, but not sufficient

We need to decrease atmospheric concentrations of carbon, not just emissions:
https://www.colorado.edu/today/2017/07/31/inevitable-warm-earth

[hunter]

8. How do you propose we do that?

There are many ways to make coal

I don't think wind turbines are among the best.

Your friend, Don Quixote.

[OKIsItJustMe]

9. Some sort of non-carbon sourced electricity (obviously)

So, wind turbines are a possibility. Solar may be preferable. Intermittency isn't a problem (make coal while the sun shines.)

Ideally, nuclear fusion, but… well… we have a shortage of it at the moment.

[NNadir]

10. See? Don't worry be happy.

The wind and solar industry have been so wonderful at phasing out fossil fuels - and don't give us any shit about the fact that we hit 412+ at the Mauna Loa carbon dioxide observatory this week - that we can afford to wait around for them to turn all the world's carbon dioxide into coal.

If not, we can wait for nuclear fusion, and if we hit 450 ppm or 500 ppm while we wait for the chance to make coal out of air, well, who cares?

Fukushima was much, much, much, much worse than anything we can imagine. The submersion of New York City? Nah, think of Fukushima.

The death of 70 million people every decade from air pollution?

Fukushima was worse.

Personally I don't know what's worse, reading a marketing release from a University referring to a scientific paper that the reporter didn't read or can't understand, or circulating the release as happy talk.

We're completely out of our minds. We'd rather lull ourselves into a stupor based on our 1960's "back to nature" fantasies and kill the future, than simply look at the numbers.

We are not going to solve this problem by making coal whenever the sun is shining and the wind is blowing.