Carbon Capture Strategy Could Lead to Emission-Free Cars

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?id=1707

Carbon Capture Strategy Could Lead to Emission-Free Cars

ATLANTA (February 11, 2008) —Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a strategy to capture, store and eventually recycle carbon from vehicles to prevent the pollutant from finding its way from a car tailpipe into the atmosphere. Georgia Tech researchers envision a zero emission car, and a transportation system completely free of fossil fuels.

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Technologies to capture carbon dioxide emissions from large-scale sources such as power plants have recently gained some impressive scientific ground, but nearly two-thirds of global carbon emissions are created by much smaller polluters — automobiles, transportation vehicles and distributed industrial power generation applications (e.g., diesel power generators).

The Georgia Tech team’s goal is to create a sustainable transportation system that uses a liquid fuel and traps the carbon emission in the vehicle for later processing at a fueling station. The carbon would then be shuttled back to a processing plant where it could be transformed into liquid fuel. Currently, Georgia Tech researchers are developing a fuel processing device to separate the carbon and store it in the vehicle in liquid form.

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Georgia Tech’s near-future strategy involves capturing carbon emissions from conventional (fossil) liquid hydrocarbon-fueled vehicles with an onboard fuel processor designed to separate the hydrogen in the fuel from the carbon. Hydrogen is then used to power the vehicle, while the carbon is stored on board the vehicle in a liquid form until it is disposed at a refueling station. It is then transported to a centralized site to be sequestered in a permanent location currently under investigation by scientists, such as geological formations, under the oceans or in solid carbonate form.

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[eppur_se_muova]

1. I'm betting this is not gonna prove practical.

Too complicated, too much dead weight being hauled around.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. I'm not too worried about the complication

If I'm reading things right, in essence, it's a fuel reformer, with a tank of water to dissolve the CO₂ into. (I wonder how much water you would need to hold the CO₂ from a standard tank of gasoline...)

I'd kind of expected to see fuel reformers in use in cars before now anyway (I'd hoped the fuel cell development would go faster than it has.)

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Bear in mind that any CO2 produced will weigh nearly 3x the fuel burned ...

If it's stored as carbonate, more than 5x, even with the lightest counterion.

Dissolved in H2O, wouldn't it be reasonable to assume the H2O would be at least equal in weight to the CO2? That would be 6x the weight of the fuel ...

If the "liquid form" is hydrocarbon, then only a fraction of the energy will be used by burning part of the hydrogen. Large fuel capacity (and weight) would be needed.

This sounds like an effort to keep using petroleum-derived fuels, no matter what. And the "carbon-free" nature ultimately comes down to that magic "sequestration" again ... i.e. sweeping it under the rug.

Hell, it's only Georgia Tech. :D

[OKIsItJustMe]

5. sweeping it under the rug

Not quite.

Their ultimate goal is to create a cycle, where the recovered CO₂ is used to create new fuel.

However, I admit to being dubious about the scheme.

[NNadir]

4. One can always expect an anti-nuke to enunciate Fisher-Tropsch garbage.

First off, one doesn't get hydrogen from capturing carbon dioxide.

Secondly, while Fisher-Tropsch chemistry works, it is precisely the thing that all environmentalists must fight.

The car culture is terminally ill. It's all over except for the denial.

[Javaman]

6. And the hiden joke is...

keep burning fossil fuels!! Weeeee!!!

:banghead: