Liquid Fuel from CO! - The Speculist

On Wednesday night's FastForward Radio show we spoke briefly about the opening of taking charge of our planet while providing energy for our economy.

I brought up the theory of capturing CO2 to have liquid fuel. Certainly we have atmospheric CO2, but to get the concentrations of CO2 to do this economical, you'd probably need to get CO2 from industry.Industry would start at the chance.

hey'd get paid for something they'd thrown out in the past, and feel like heroes for doing it.

Once you get a sufficient provision of CO2 you want to change it to CO - which is carbon monoxide.CO2 is a static molecule that requires a sound bit of zip to go down to O2 and CO.You could get the energy from solar power. And, in a way, we take a validation of concept - today's liquid fuel is stored solar power through natural processes.

But, nuclear is the smarter choice to get up and exit quickly with this idea.Nuclear is the only proven way to get massive amounts of power without greenhouse gas emissions.

Once you get sufficient CO2 (probably not a problem), and sufficient power (which can be done through nuclear, maybe solar, or even wind) you could make all the CO you need.From there its an easy, proven process to make hydrocarbon fuels.Countries that have been separated from the world's oil supply - Nazi Germany and South Africa under apartheid- did this using the Fischer-Tropsch process.

America has been called the Saudi Arabia of coal.Through the same Fischer-Tropsch process coal could be made into liquid fuel.The conflict is that carbon from coal is currently sequestered. If you do and burn liquid fuel from coal, then the carbon currently locked up in the coal would be released to the atmosphere.

Since we could produce massive amounts of carbon-neutral liquid fuel with atmospheric CO2 and CO2 that's currently polluting our air from industry, when not consider doing it that way?

It will, of course, come downward to the economics.

More here.