An efficient new process can convert carbon dioxide into formate, a material that can be used like hydrogen or methanol to power a fuel cell and generate electricity.

Engineers develop an efficient process to make fuel from carbon dioxide::An efficient new process can convert carbon dioxide into formate, a material that can be used like hydrogen or methanol to power a fuel cell and generate electricity.

    • @SkybreakerEngineerEnglish
      36•1 year ago

      When they say it’s efficient, they mean at not letting CO2 go, not in energy cost. Looks like step one is capturing it which is already energy intensive, and step 2 is reacting it with a strong base. So it takes a lot of stuff as input.

      And they did this on a lab bench, not at scale in a plant.

    • @thisisawayoflifeEnglish
      6•1 year ago

      Burning it creates enormous clouds of Trioxin 2-4-5.

    • @pigupEnglish
      3•1 year ago

      That it burns the shit back into the atmosphere.

      • @[email protected]English
        6•1 year ago

        Yes, but if it could provide as an alternative to digging up oil and gass, and get the energy needed to make the transformation from sun, wind or other sustainable sources. It could lower the amount of new CO2 being put into the atmosphere as well as work as a way to store excess energy from wind and sun.

        • @[email protected]English
          3•1 year ago

          Yeah, it would basically act as a battery except much better energy and power density, and faster ‘charging’.

          The downside is invariably that round trip energy efficiency (electricity in vs electricity out) is somewhere between ‘much worse’ and ‘terrible’.