Liquid hydrocarbon fuel created from CO2 and water in breakthrough one-step process

As scientists look for ways to help remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, a number of experiments have focused on employing this gas to create usable fuels. Both hydrogen and methanol have resulted from such experiments, but the processes often involve a range of intricate steps and a variety of methods. Now researchers have demonstrated a one-step conversion of carbon dioxide and water directly into a simple and inexpensive liquid hydrocarbon fuel using a combination of high-intensity light, concentrated heat, and high pressure.

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CrazyNeutrino said:

Liquid hydrocarbon fuel created from CO2 and water in breakthrough one-step process

As scientists look for ways to help remove excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, a number of experiments have focused on employing this gas to create usable fuels. Both hydrogen and methanol have resulted from such experiments, but the processes often involve a range of intricate steps and a variety of methods. Now researchers have demonstrated a one-step conversion of carbon dioxide and water directly into a simple and inexpensive liquid hydrocarbon fuel using a combination of high-intensity light, concentrated heat, and high pressure.

more…

I bet it has shockingly low efficiency. If you have a look at the Gibbs free energy of the reaction of CO2 and H2O you’ll find that by applying high-intensity light, concentrated heat, and high pressure to these chemicals you end up with products CO2 and H2O.

One of my jobs at CSIRO was to look at a single step process for turning raw biomass into usable liquid fuels using a combination of heat and pressure, just like the above. I found that all carbohydrates ended up as carbon and water. All bio-oils were directly transformed into usable crude oil. The proteins also contributed a bit to the resulting usable liquid fuel. But since the overall reaction was primarily oil gives oil, it was far more advantageous to use the initial bio-oil as a fuel directly.