• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Scientist figures out how to turn CO2 into solid, while releasing energy

Status
Not open for further replies.
D

Davidion

Member
http://phys.org/news/2012-05-lemons-lemonade-reaction-carbon-dioxide.html

Making carbon-based products from CO2 is nothing new, but carbon dioxide molecules are so stable that those reactions usually take up a lot of energy. If that energy were to come from fossil fuels, over time the chemical reactions would ultimately result in more carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere—defeating the purpose of a process that could otherwise help mitigate climate change.

Professor Yun Hang Hu’s research team developed a heat-releasing reaction between carbon dioxide and Li3N that forms two chemicals: amorphous carbon nitride (C3N4), a semiconductor; and lithium cyanamide (Li2CN2), a precursor to fertilizers.

“The reaction converts CO2 to a solid material,” said Hu. “That would be good even if it weren’t useful, but it is.”

And how much energy does it release? Plenty. Hu’s team added carbon dioxide to less than a gram of Li3N at 330 degrees Celsius, and the surrounding temperature jumped almost immediately to about 1,000 degrees Celsius, or 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit, about the temperature of lava exiting a volcano.

Hu’s work is funded by the National Science Foundation and detailed in the article “Fast and Exothermic Reaction of CO2 and Li3N into C–N-Containing Solid Materials,” authored by Hu and graduate student Yan Huo and published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry.
Click to expand...

Science? Science.
 
M

marrec

Banned
Wait so... you can get a 3 fold temperature increase using this chemical reaction? I hope this isn't 5-10 years out...
 
Z

Zapages

Member
Very Cool! I wonder if this could change the world of electric cars in the future with a proper cooling system to take account the 1,000 degrees Celsius.

The whole article if anyone is interested: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp205499e

jp-2011-05499e_0007.gif
 
D

Davidion

Member
Volimar said:
Neat, but....

I'm always cautiously optimistic about these kinds of stories. I've been hurt before...

>.>
Click to expand...

Yeah I'm not about to jump on the ENERGY CRITHIS THOLVED bandwagon, but it seems like an interesting and potentially important development.

Someone more knowledgeable about the subject can speak more about this; I'm sure this has its share of caveats.
 
M

marrec

Banned
I guess the real question is how viable this reaction is. Li3N isn't exactly rare and is pretty easy to make, but what kind of conditions need to be present for the reaction with CO2 to take place?

I guess I should read the paper.
 
C

cutmeamango

Banned
Gonna dust off my periodic table and my enthalpy table and see if they are telling the true.
Who am I kidding? I bombed chemistry like HCl meeting Al
 
S

Scrow

Still Tagged Accordingly
from reddit

The experiment injected nearly pure CO2 onto the lithium nitride. It would preferentially react with water and oxygen before CO2, although if you exposed the heated material to air it could react with all three just as easily. Basically, you would need to filter and purify CO2 first. The manufacturing process for Li3N involves burning lithium in the presence of pure nitrogen, which itself takes up energy. Assuming that you could obtain a renewable heat source, such as concentrating solar arrays, this could be a viable option.
Click to expand...
full thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/txage/a_materials_scientist_at_michigan_technological/

comments go into more detail
 
S

s7evn

Member
And how much energy does it release? Plenty. Hu’s team added carbon dioxide to less than a gram of Li3N at 330 degrees Celsius, and the surrounding temperature jumped almost immediately to about 1,000 degrees Celsius, or 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit, about the temperature of lava exiting a volcano.
Click to expand...

Seems like we would need to find a way to control the reaction speed in order to obtain the most energy from it (slow build up of energy to generate power in a similar manner to how nuclear works at least). Or we need some way to maintain this reaction temperature and then figure out what to do with all the byproduct we have left over.
 
E

ezrarh

Member
As always, be cautiously optimistic and critical with anything that tries to say "energy crisis can be solved or solve global warming" but at least for this, they're demonstrating a very interesting reaction. The thing I'm interested in would be how long would the reaction last relatively to the amount of lithium nitride you have and what exactly is it being converted to and what do you do with that byproduct? Can you convert it back to lithium nitride and how much energy would that take? I don't have the time to read the paper right now but it might be worth a read.
 
PJV3

PJV3

Member
marrec said:
Ya, the process of creating the Li3N takes up energy and the boiling point of Lithium is 1350C so it takes a significant amount of energy to make it. It's a better solution for the sequestered CO2 we have currently though.
Click to expand...

And how much energy does it release? Plenty. Hu’s team added carbon dioxide to less than a gram of Li3N at 330 degrees Celsius, and the surrounding temperature jumped almost immediately to about 1,000 degrees Celsius, or 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit, about the temperature of lava exiting a volcano.
Click to expand...

Are these for different stages of the product, it seems to be hardly worth it.
I admit i don't fully undestand this stuff.
 
D

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
Isn't the point of this to remove excess CO2 from the Atmosphere? So the fact that this makes some useful byproducts is good news for the economic viability, and it may be possible to use the Energy created from the reaction to create the materials needed to do the reaction in the first place.
 
E

Evlar

Banned
Sounds to me like it's generally suited for industrial-scale processes. It might be viable for scrubbing some CO2 from power plant byproducts.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

NASA makes oxygen on Mars using a toaster-size device
39
2K
Torrent of Pork replied
MIT engineers develop a new way to remove carbon dioxide from air
33
2K
MaestroMike replied
Scientist invents way to trigger trigger artificial photosynthesis to reduce C02 lvls
38
6K
BeforeU replied
  • Locked
How climate change is rapidly taking the planet apart and towards human extinction
9 10 11 12 13
634
67K
Inquisitive_Ghost replied
  • Locked
NYMag: The Uninhabitable Earth - Famine and economic collapse sooner than you think
2 3 4 5
224
30K
AJUMP23 replied
Top Bottom