Extracting Fuel From the Air We Breathe

Carbon dioxide is a colorless and odorless gas that vital for the life on Earth. Life depends on CO2, plants and trees use it to grow food and oxygen, and we all need them the most. Our Atmosphere needs it to keep us warm from the extreme temperature changes.

But, we humans ruined this circle in a short period with the releasing high amount of CO2 to the atmosphere, and still the vast majority of the vehicles we use run on fossil-based fuels. There are many Fossil-fueled power stations around the world which are still active. This couple year we see severe changes in energy gathering methods. New renewable energy gathering stations are built; many countries start to invest on big solar or wind power gathering projects every day. The number of hybrid car manufacturing is increasing, and the plug-in automotive industry is finding new investors for itself. And, these changes are very hopeful for cleaner Earth for the future. Still, we need more investments in plug-in cars and renewable energy fields, this will take years. At the same time, we are pumping an enormous amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere more than our Earth fragile ecosystem can handle. Earth is getting hotter, polar ice melts rapidly, the sea temperature is rising with the salinity.

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So, we need a solution to get rid of the CO2 that our Earth does not need until the Sun powered technologies are enough for our energy need. There are some ways to get rid of this extra gas, the researchers from the University of Southern California discovered a way to convert CO2 into methanol ( CH3OH ). The system sucks the CO2 from the air through a solution called ” pentaethylenehexamine ” ( which has lots of carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen in it). So when the carbon dioxide sucked in with some heat, CO2 latches onto available hydrogens and the reaction left with methanol and water.

The research team in California aren’t the only ones that are working in this area. In the center of Canada’s Oil region, a company called Carbon Engineering (CE) is currently developing a system that sucks the CO2 from the air. For that, they are using a large wall of fans, after several chemical steps later, the system produce pure CO2, which can be used to generate ultra-low emission fuels. The Canadian company is planning to build a plant which can capture 1,000,000 tons of CO2 a year, which can be released by 213,000 cars based on EPA’s numbers.

Methanol can be used to produce biodiesel. Also, this technology can be very helpful for our Earth to keep the balance. For now, the system can’t compete with the low oil price today but soon we will run out of oil and gas, and we will rely on these kinds of technologies and the sun. And we are hoping to have a brighter future.

For more info about this project, please visit the company’s website.

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