Creators of a one-step process called STEP (Solar Thermal Electrochemical Photo) claim a world of benefits, including pulling carbon dioxide from the air and turning it into useful things, such as fuels, cement, and cheap carbon fiber. The process can also purify and desalinate water, according to many of the 300 peer-reviewed papers by Dr. Stuart Licht of George Washington University and his graduate students. The elevator speech regarding their research can be found on the home page for the group. “A new fundamental solar process has been introduced. STEP efficiently removes carbon from the atmosphere and generates the staples needed by society, ranging from fuels, to metals, bleach and construction materials, at high solar efficiency and without carbon dioxide generation. By using the full spectrum of sunlight, STEP captures more solar energy than the most efficient solar cell or photoelectrochemical processes.” According to the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), the sample of nanofibers Dr. Licht showed participants at the Autumn Meeting of the …
Bacterium + Nitrogen = Ethanol
78 percent of all the air we breathe is nitrogen, the most abundant gas in the Earth’s atmosphere. This readily available substance may do more than just give us something for inspiration (there’s a pun there), it may power our vehicles and heat our homes. The catch is that it has to be combined with the bacterium Zymomonas mobilis, which gives off ethanol when exposed to the gas. James B. McKinlay and a team of biologists at Indiana University at Bloomington work with a cluster of unlikely materials to produce, among other things, biofuels. His laboratory posts the following description of the team’s work: “Nearly all of our society’s energy and chemical needs are met by fossil fuels. Microbes have evolved a profound diversity of metabolic attributes which can be harnessed as sustainable alternatives for the production of fuels and chemicals. Our lab seeks to understand the metabolism underlying the production of useful compounds and to engineer strains for enhanced production …
New Clean Fuels –Different Approaches to Synthetic Liquid Fuels
Two different companies attempting to provide clean energy and reduce carbon emissions are turning to CO2 emissions as a source for their drop-in fuel. Others, such as Joule, have explored this path, using CO2 from the atmosphere or from industrial exhaust, mixing that with engineered algae, exposing it all to sunlight, and making a synthetic form of gasoline or Diesel fuel. Both of the new entries, NewCO2Fuels and Global Biofuels, use CO2 and sunlight with different technologies to achieve similar results. NCF explains its motivation and technique in its introduction. “NewCO2Fuels is developing an innovative and breakthrough technology providing a revolutionary, cost-effective solution to two global concerns: CO2 emissions and diminishing liquid fuel reserves. Our product uses a proprietary technology that generates liquid fuels by using CO2 emissions and water as feedstock, and high-temperature heat sources such as concentrated solar energy.” The video shows the basic process, which can base its source “feedstock” on CO2 from gas well drilling, coal extraction, industrial …
Audi, Joule and SolarFuel Announce e-Fuel Production
Biofuels have issues – and like a sulky mate, hit us repeatedly with contradictory demands or unanswerable questions. If we plant fuel crops everywhere, their growth leaches the soil and their use as an oil/fuel substitute deprives the starving billions of food. This intractable reality seems to leave us nowhere to go. Audi, and its partner Joule (in America) are promoting a non-fossil compressed natural gas made by a process that mimics photosynthesis, and that pulls CO2 from the atmosphere as part of its makeup. Audi has a clever plan, as presented at the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) 2013 Government/Industry Meeting. In Europe, SolarFuel will provide motive power for the first Audi g-tron compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles. Joule explains its process: “Unlike fuels produced from agricultural or algal biomass, Joule produces fuels directly and continuously from sunlight and waste CO2 – avoiding costly raw materials, pretreatment and downstream processing. The company’s Helioculture™ platform uses photosynthetic microorganisms as living catalysts to produce fuel, not …