http://www.green-energy-news.com/arch/nrgs2008/20080048

DON’T BURY IT, MAKE THINGS FROM CARBON DIOXIDE.

Global warming can’t be put on the back burner just because the cost of petrol is high. Seeking conservation, efficiency and alternatives to petroleum is a better choice than searching for more oil. The Arctic is set for another record year of ice melt. If we let this go on too much longer Greenland and Antarctica will melt significantly too. When low lying cities are under water it won’t matter what the price of fuel is.

Global, sustained high energy costs may force people to conserve fuel, purchase new more efficient vehicles or use alternative fuels. Global, sustained high energy costs may – eventually – take vehicles out of the greenhouse gas equation altogether. Though clean cars would help, eliminating climate changing emissions from vehicles completely won’t cool off and save the planet. Eventually something will have to be done about removing greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants, or eliminating the plants themselves. If those steps won’t cool us down we’ll have to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. A monumental task to say the least.

There’s still talk about capturing and sequestering underground the main culprit, carbon dioxide. Carefully done and monitored (like for centuries) this could work. But better yet, what if carbon dioxide was turned into more of an industrial resource than it is today? If it had more value, had a greater price on it – then powerplant operators would have some incentive to extract it from their smoke stacks. They’d make money at selling their waste.

Now carbon dioxide for industry is manufactured. But it could be sourced from power plants’ exhaust.

Already we use carbon dioxide for a number of things:

--- It’s the fizz in soft drinks;

--- As dry ice it keeps foods frozen for shipment;

--- It’s used as a compressed gas for some pneumatic tools;

--- It can be used to fill bicycle tires;

--- It can be used in greenhouses (hot houses) to enhance plant growth;

--- CO2 is used in some kinds of fire extinguishers;

--- It’s used to remove the caffeine from coffee;

--- It’s injected into oil wells to enhance oil recovery;

--- Increasingly, carbon dioxide is being used or considered by chemical or pharmaceutical companies for new products.

Combined industrial and commercial uses of carbon dioxide are likely to be tiny. compared with the global amount of carbon dioxide emitted from power plants. And, some of the carbon dioxide used in industrial production is eventually released into the air – the fizz goes out of our soft drinks, for instance. Still, there are more uses for carbon dioxide in the development pipeline that may actually make a reduction in global CO2 emissions:

--- Carbon dioxide makes an excellent refrigerant for air conditioning systems, heat pumps, refrigerators and freezers. There’s an initiative afoot, the Cool War led by Alliance for CO2 Solutions, to see currently used refrigerants in automotive air conditioning systems in Europe replaced with CO2. CO2 works more efficiently as a refrigerant, they say, thus takes less power to run the systems saving fuel. CO2 also has a lower global warming potential than other refrigerants. Opponents say the equipment is more costly and the release of CO2 can be toxic.

Still, supporters say that just switching to CO2 as the refrigerant in vehicles would reduce planet wide greenhouse gases emitted from cars and trucks by 10 percent. Using CO2 in stationary air conditioning equipment, would drop emissions another 3 percent.

--- Some would like to bubble CO2 into algae ponds to enhance its growth to make biodiesel fuel. There’s certainly a large global market for biodiesel. One would think that with significant commercialization of CO2-enhanced biodiesel from algae, large amounts of CO2 from power plants could be put to work displacing CO2 released from petroleum diesel.

--- CO2 is released in the manufacturing of quicklime, mostly calcium and the basis for cement, but absorbed again as the cement-based product like concrete or mortar sets and hardens. Carbon Sciences (CSI), of Santa Barbara, California wants to use carbon dioxide from coal power plants to make a wide array of calcium and carbon dioxide – calcium carbonate – products.

--- CO2 could also become a component of a new fuel. In a process under development by Mantra Energy, CO2 would be broken apart and mixed with water to make a fuel suitable for fuel cells as well as formic acid, formates and oxygen. Of course it would take energy to do this, as CO2 with its strong chemical bond, doesn’t break up easily. But there is an excess supply of greenhouse gas free power on the grid – such as off-peak nuclear power, off-peak hydro and wind turbines that churn in the dark and generate power that is not sold.

Mantra calls the process that converts carbon dioxide into useful products ERC (electro-reduction of carbon dioxide). ERC was developed at the University of British Columbia.

The company says pilot project-sized ERC units are projected to be available within 12 months. A 100 metric ton per day plant is projected to be available to customers within 24 months and a 600 metric ton per day plant will follow shortly thereafter. The fuel cell that would use the carbon dioxide/water fuel is planned to be developed concurrently.

Individually each carbon dioxide using process and the resulting product might do little to reduce levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. But together they might add up to significant cuts. It seems silly that CO2 is manufactured for industrial use when CO2 is freely released from fossil power plants and is doing us harm. That ugly power plant exhaust needs to be put to work.