Harvesting electricity from the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2013/july/harvesting-electricity-from-the-greenhouse-gas-carbon-dioxide.html

[font face=Serif]
EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE | July 23, 2013
[font size=5]Harvesting electricity from the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide[/font]

[font size=3]WASHINGTON, July 23, 2013 — A new method for producing electricity from carbon dioxide could be the start of a classic trash-to-treasure story for the troublesome greenhouse gas, scientists are reporting. Described in an article in ACS’ newly launched journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, the method uses CO2 from electric power plant and other smokestacks as the raw material for making electricity.

Bert Hamelers, Ph.D., and colleagues explain that electric power-generating stations worldwide release about 12 billion tons of CO2 annually from combustion of coal, oil and natural gas. Home and commercial heating produces another 11 billion tons. Smokestack gas from a typical coal-fired plant contains about 10 percent CO2, which not only goes to waste, but is a key contributor to global warming. Hamelers’ team sought a way to change that trash into a treasure.

They describe technology that would react the CO2 with water or other liquids and, with further processing, produce a flow of electrons that make up electric current. It could produce about 1,570 kilowatts of additional electricity annually if used to harvest CO2 from power plants, industry and residences. That’s about 400 times the annual electrical output of the Hoover Dam. Like that dam and other hydroelectric power facilities, that massive additional amount of electricity would be produced without adding more CO2 to the atmosphere, Hamelers pointed out.

Copies of the paper, with a detailed account of the research, are available from the ACS news media contacts above.[/font][/font]

[jeff47]

1. So....many.....errors.......

How 'bout this one:
Installed generation capacity at Hover Dam:
2,080 megawatts. That's 2,080,000 kilowatts. That's a wee bit more than 1,570 kilowatts.

But hey, maybe the article botched the units on that, and they meant 1,570 kilowatt-hours - which would make more sense with the "annually" context.

Hoover Dam's annual generation is 4.2 billion killowatt-hours.

And that doesn't even get to the chemistry problems - The reason plants have to use energy to convert CO2 into "stuff" is because CO2 has less energy than other forms of carbon. They don't describe enough of their system to show it can't possibly work, but this is a "hey, I invented perpetual motion" quality claim that requires extraordinary proof.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. You know…

I generally work under the assumption that a peer reviewed journal (such as Environmental Science & Technology Letters) is reviewed by peers, who (supposedly) know a bit about the field.

So, any (apparently) patently obvious flaws probably aren’t in the actual paper. (News releases are another matter.)

You may want to check it out: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/ez4000059

When two fluids with different compositions are mixed, mixing energy is released. This holds true for both liquids and gases, though in the case of gases, no technology is yet available to harvest this energy source. Mixing the CO[font size="1"]₂[/font] in combustion gases with air represents a source of energy with a total annual worldwide capacity of 1570 TWh. To harvest the mixing energy from CO[font size="1"]₂[/font]-containing gas emissions, we use pairs of porous electrodes, one selective for anions and the other selective for cations. We demonstrate that when an aqueous electrolyte, flushed with either CO[font size="1"]₂[/font] or air, alternately flows between these selective porous electrodes, electrical energy is gained. The efficiency of this process reached 24% with deionized water as the aqueous electrolyte and 32% with a 0.25 M monoethanolamine (MEA) solution as the electrolyte. The highest average power density obtained with a MEA solution as the electrolyte was 4.5 mW/m[font size="1"]²[/font], significantly higher than that with water as the electrolyte (0.28 mW/m[font size="1"]²[/font]).

[jeff47]

5. Yeah, that really doesn't help their cause.

They're claiming that a non-polar molecule gives them a significant polar charge just by mixing that non-polar molecule in solution. You'll get a little carbonic acid from the CO2 reacting with water, but it's not like it's going to become a highly charged solution.

In addition, the excerpt still doesn't explain the energy source. With burning fuel, the energy source is taking chemicals from a high energy state to a lower energy state. With fusion, it's the annihilation of a small quantity of matter. Batteries work because ions flow through the battery, while electrons flow around the circuit.

They're claiming they get electron flow by jamming an anion and a cation into water, and bubble CO2 through it. If this process worked, a two liter of Coke would work as a battery because of the CO2. That two liter can, but it's not the CO2, it's the electrodes decomposing in the acid solution.

The "Letters" versions of journals do not go through a thorough peer review. That's why they exist - to get papers published more quickly. This one has all sorts of red flags. There's a chance the full paper would address them, but this looks very odd.

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. And yet, it is peer reviewed

http://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2013/may/new-acs-journal-environmental-science-technology-letters-to-rapidly-publish-urgent-research-findings.html

[font face=Serif][font size=5]New ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters to rapidly publish urgent research findings[/font]

[font size=3]…

Dr. Susan King, Senior Vice President, Journals Publishing Group, adds, “Environmental Science & Technology Letters will use state-of-the-art peer-review management software and ACS’ proprietary automated composition technology. Readers will benefit from the rich online research experience enabled by the ACS ActiveView PDF format and the ACS ChemWorx platform, allowing readers to engage fully with the articles, annotate and sync PDF articles to a secure platform and share information about the article with collaborators around the world. Environmental Science & Technology Letters represents a step forward in achieving the ACS mission to ‘Advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and its people.’”

…[/font][/font]

[jeff47]

9. Again, it's not as peer-reviewed as a "real" journal.

It's more of a peer-proofreading.

Again, there's stuff that looks very odd. The full paper may address them. But these summaries don't make sense - which is not a good sign for the paper. The authors should have been able to write a better summary.

[NickB79]

4. Going the wrong way

We need to be shutting down these power plants, not making them bigger cash cows for the utilities.

Yes, yes, it will make the plants more efficient, requiring less coal to be burned for a given unit of energy. It will also guarantee that coal will then become cost-competitive with renewables again, and start a new round of coal-plant build-outs.

Short term, it looks like a winner. Long term, it's shit for the environment.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. Too many "ifs" and "coulds". This is energy in a very dilute form.

Hard to imagine how the cost of constructing machinery which functions on this scale could ever be repaid by such minor effects. You'd need to construct tens of thousands of installations around the world -- one at each CO2-producing power plant. If producing energy is your goal, it would be cheaper and easier to build another Hoover Dam.

Oh, and the inevitable byproduct would be billions of tons of CO2-charged water. What are you gonna do with that ? Dump it in the oceans ? Sell it to Coca-Cola ?

[Nihil]

8. More evidence that "Idiocracy" has been classified as a documentary?

> Oh, and the inevitable byproduct would be billions of tons of CO2-charged water.
> What are you gonna do with that ? Dump it in the oceans ? Sell it to Coca-Cola ?

It's the marketing plan that precedes "Brawndo: Gives plants (and people) what they crave. Electrolytes."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[wtmusic]

10. An offshoot of the Church of Renewables?

Let's call it TSM (Thermodynamics is a State of Mind).

Once you believe, anything is possible.