Is there any type of technology that can use pollutants from the air as an alternative fuel?
This is an idea of mine, but i don’t know what items would have to be used to construct and successfully develop such technology. So any input at all is helpful. Please and thank you!
Well not as they are but the pollutants can be chemically reformed into fuels.
At Sandia Labs, they heated iron cobalt oxide discs to 2600 degrees fahrenheit causing the oxides to give off their oxygen atoms, the discs rotate away from the heat source cooling to 2000 degrees fahrenheit at which point they are exposed to H2O and CO2, the oxides pull an oxygen atom out of each molecule leaving H which quickly bound with other H to form H2 and pulling an oxygen atom from CO2 leaving CO (they would actually produce the H2 and CO in separate reactors in order to ensure that it is H2 and CO they are getting. They call this their CR5 reactor.
The beauty of this is that H2 and CO are the basic building blocks for synthesizing linear hydrocarbons hence it’s possible to synthesize methane, methanol, gasoline and diesel from the mixture. The reactions are called Fischer Tropsch reactions and are exothermic so energy does not have to be added, indeed heat must be removed in order to synthesize the larger hydrocarbons, if the heat is allowed to build, the reactions would just produce methane.
This has been done on rather large scales before and is the fundamental process behind GTL, CTL, and BTL technologies, it’s also the fundamental process used in the upgraders to transform the heavy oils of the tar sands and shale oils into something that is more valuable. This is the technology used to lower the sulfur content of our diesel fuel since the US has been plagued by smelly high sulfur diesel which is why diesel cars were considered undesirable here in North America while they were quite popular in Europe where the diesel was naturally low in sulfur. Recently there’s been progress in making the FT reactors quite small and portable to the point where they can be trailered to where feedstocks such as storm debris is available rather then transport the bulky biomass to the refineries. This is also the fundamental process proposed in the NASA Mars Direct mission where robotic units are first sent to mars to synthesize rocket fuel from the CO2 atmosphere, previously they were planning on transporting the hydrogen from Earth but now that subterranean water has been found to be quite wide spread on Mars, all the raw materials can be obtained from Mars itself.
So it’s possible to take CO2 and H2O which are products of combustion, add energy and synthesize gasoline and diesel fuel. It’s not really an alternative fuel but an alternative source for the standard fuels.
The Fischer Tropsch technology is from the 1920′s so we’ve had the technology for about 90 years now, it’s just a matter of economics for investors to invest in the plants needed to do this.
Check out the company Carbon Sciences(CABN.ob) they actually have a biocatalytic process that turns CO2 into fuel of all types. They have been featured on CNN, Fox news, MIT technology review and popular science.
none, nada, zilch, zero, zip, zero, . the laws of thermo preclude your idea from working. all the crap listed above require more enegy input that you can get out.