[ExI] Scientists Just Created a Catalyst That Turns CO2 Into Jet Fuel

Adrian Tymes atymes at gmail.com
Mon Jan 4 06:16:28 UTC 2021


I'll believe it when they can produce fuel cost numbers.  Good progress if
they really do get the cost down, though.

On Sun, Jan 3, 2021 at 9:06 PM John Grigg via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> An amazing development for the protection of the environment!  :  )
>
> "For years now, chemists have been trying to apply this idea to one of the
> most environmentally damaging sectors of our economy: the aviation
> industry. Not only do planes emit huge amounts of CO2, they also pump other
> greenhouse gases like nitrogen oxide directly into the upper atmosphere,
> where their warming effect is greatly increased.
>
> The fossil fuels they burn to create all these emissions are hydrocarbons,
> which means they are made up of a combination of carbon and hydrogen.
> That’s led some to suggest it might be possible to create synthetic
> versions of these fuels by capturing the CO2 planes produce and combining
> it with hydrogen extracted with water.
>
> If the energy <https://singularityhub.com/tag/energy/> used to power
> these reactions came from renewable sources, their production wouldn’t lead
> to any increase in emissions. And when these fuels were burned they would
> simply be returning CO2 captured from the atmosphere, making the fuel
> effectively carbon neutral.
>
> It’s a nice idea, but the process of turning CO2 into useful fuels is more
> complex than it might sound. Most efforts so far have required expensive
> catalysts—substances that boost the speed of a chemical reaction—or
> multiple energy-intensive processing steps, which means the resulting
> fuel is far pricier than fossil fuels.
>
> Now though, researchers from the University of Oxford have developed a new
> low-cost catalyst that can directly convert CO2 into jet fuel, which they
> say could eventually lay the foundation for a circular economy for aviation
> fuel.
>
> “Instead of consuming fossil crude oil, jet aviation fuels and
> petrochemical starting compounds are produced from a valuable and renewable
> raw material, namely, carbon dioxide,” they write in a paper in *Nature
> Communications* <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20214-z>*."*
>
>
> https://singularityhub.com/2021/01/03/scientists-just-created-a-catalyst-that-turns-co2-into-jet-fuel/
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