Comment by xaedes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xaedes | Hacker News Reader

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The Fischer–Tropsch processes - they are talking about that , don't they, at least very similar - for converting CO or CO2 and methan into liquid fuel seem so attractive... They are feeding on both of the worst green house gases to make fuel. Basically that makes it the reverse process to our climate-sins of burning fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow.

If we could use the Fischer-Tropsch processes to process atmospheric CO2 and methan on a really large scale we could recycle burnt fuel and create a global equilibrium. Fuel would then be used as energy storage instead of energy source. Fuel is an attractive energy storage, because it is simple, has high energy density and we have LOTS of experience and legacy hardware powered by fuel.

From the view point of a simearth/civilization/4x/colonization/strategy game player that is a technology I would like to unlock.

Obviously simplistic view, because it is not that easy... Like the article states: "However, they have the major disadvantage that they are not robust. If there are certain other substances in the exhaust gas stream besides carbon dioxide, for example sulfur, the catalyst quickly loses its activity. It is said that the catalyst is poisoned."

Good to see them make progress in that area!

That's the argument of biofuels as well, correct? If you're growing plants and then burning them, and regrowing them again, the net carbon in the atmosphere didn't change. This is ignoring particulate pollution though.

Fossil fuels are an issue because we're pulling up carbon that's been sequestered for eons and putting it back in the air.

> That's the argument of biofuels as well, correct?

In principle, yes. Though everybody except the agriculture lobby has realized that there isn't near enough arable land on the planet for replacing anything close to current fossil fuel usage.

You could even argue that it would be a net negative because plants convert carbon from the atmosphere into their own bodies, so even when they are burned to release the majority of their hydrocarbons they still take some with them in the form of carbon soot and ash.

If we could convert all of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere into carbon and oxygen that would be great (maybe a little messy but great)

Biofuels are a clear dead end.

There is nowhere near enough spare farmland for it to do any good, but it could do unlimited harm.

We need to be returning farmland to forest, jungle, and wetland, instead.

Agreed - fuel as energy storage is the future. Build out a lot of excess solar and wind capacity, and then use all the excess capacity to continually generate fuels by extracting greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere. So we still burn fuel and use the atmosphere to buffer our emissions, but it all gets extracted out so we no longer have the same negative externalities (as long as the full cost of extraction is paid by the consumer of the fuel, which presumably could be done with a tax if implemented correctly).

Methanol is a poor choice for storing energy. It needs carbon from somewhere.

Ammonia and hydrogen will be practical: ammonia stored at low pressure, and hydrogen underground.

Thinking about unintended consequences, wouldn't it be ironic if carbon capture and conversion to longer hydrocarbons got to be so efficient that we started to draw down the atmospheric CO2 levels too low and over corrected the global warming problem...

Burning it as fuel would put it back. It would become a closed cycle.

The ones used for plastics, lubricants, fertilizers, etc... wouldn't be returned so quickly.

Or it will be stored/hoarded underground again.

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