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I’m trying to understand how this isn’t a perpetual motion machine.

I can burn some coal, turn C and O2 into energy and CO2, then use a fraction of the energy to split it back into C and O2 and be left with some energy still (quite a bit apparently). So I can repeat as much as I like.

What am I missing?

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From the original paper, the end result is "highly oxidized carbon", "akin to that of slightly crystalline graphene oxide". So they're not claiming to split CO2 into C and O2, but more to vitrify the carbon oxide in a solid phase. This, presumably, takes significantly less energy than reducing the carbon, and you can't burn the output product.

OK, so in layman's terms, they are putting CO2 into a solid. This sounds nice. What exactly is this?

I tried googling around, but the only hits I get are for dry ice, which this clearly isn't.

I guess the key concern with CO2 is that it gets vented into the atmosphere. If we could solidify it, we could stick it back into the mines and that's one problem off our list.

The incredible inefficiency of the combustion engine, and this process is 92% efficient (not 100%).

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