Singapore scientists discovers how to turn Carbon Dioxide into Methanol

Singapore scientists discovers how to turn Carbon Dioxide into Methanol

inventorspot.com

The third smallest sovereign nation in the world has just made an enormous contribution to relieving the world's debt to the environment. Singapore researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) have discovered how to turn carbon dioxide into methanol.

In case you're not jumping out of your skin yet, the IBN research was immediately sent to Angewandte Chemie, published by the German Chemical Society, and the prestigious journal called it a "hot paper," and "very important."

(visit the link for the full news article)

Wow!!

I hope this works at a mass scale and this gets into the hands of.. well.. every scientist and methanol corporations around the world invest heavily in this patent.

I'll follow this story and see how it unfolds over the next few weeks... Seeing how as we see enhanced "Water fueled" car engines come and go every few months... Hopefully this story sticks around.

inventorspot.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

2009

This is old news from from 2009.
Hows it being going since then?

Edit - this process, although it may function as a chemical reaction is much like burning water to get hydrogen and oxygen. It can physically be done, but you have to get more energy put into the system than what you get back.

The 'easy' reaction is burning Methanol to get Carbon Dioxide (among others). The reverse reaction is like pushing bricks up a hill.

A few minutes spent with google before posting would have revealed this, about this old news.

reply to post by CanadianDream420

It would be nice to see a breakthrough that could convert waste CO2 into consumable fuel. But I have to wonder what energy it takes to do so taking the entire cycle into account. I'll have to go do some reading I guess. This plus another article I ran across the other day citing a very promising catalyst that would improve H2 production efficiency would be good news. If real. If it can be productionized. If economically viable.

I remain hopeful.

Dont get too worked up over this. The process still takes energy to activate the CO2 and the first law of thermodynamics states that you cant get more out of a process than you put into it.

reply to post by CanadianDream420


What is Caron Dioxide?

Is it something like a spell checker?

Originally posted by alfa1
This is old news from from 2009.
Hows it being going since then?

Edit - this process, although it may function as a chemical reaction is much like burning water to get hydrogen and oxygen. It can physically be done, but you have to get more energy put into the system than what you get back.

The 'easy' reaction is burning Methanol to get Carbon Dioxide (among others). The reverse reaction is like pushing bricks up a hill.

A few minutes spent with google before posting would have revealed this, about this old news.

Yeah, looks like a few news outlets rehashed this 2009 story today. Must have been a new press release.

As for energy consumed, it is possible to reduce the energy needed to form methanol using catalysts - in this case - d N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) as an organocatalyst - but I wonder just how they'd achieve economical or even useful energy budget for the conversion. Maybe a chemist familiar with this process could weigh in?

Oh, and yes, they can't overcome the laws of Thermodynamics and Conservation of Matter and Energy. So nothing for free.

Do not hold your breath over it. The singapore government are very conceited,arrogant and money mad.They will not release anything that they do not gain tremendously The area bounding indonesia,malaysia and singapore is destined to disappear beneath the indian ocean and the south china sea when the volcanoes in the ring of fire erupts starting with anak krakatua.

I could see this technology being usefull coupled with a low impact natural energy source.

As well make a few more saltwater purification machines and do the same....

We may not get back sa much as we put in, but at least we wouldnt be only paying lip service to environmental protection...


Peace.

Originally posted by alfa1
2009

This is old news from from 2009.
Hows it being going since then?

Edit - this process, although it may function as a chemical reaction is much like burning water to get hydrogen and oxygen. It can physically be done, but you have to get more energy put into the system than what you get back.

The 'easy' reaction is burning Methanol to get Carbon Dioxide (among others). The reverse reaction is like pushing bricks up a hill.

A few minutes spent with google before posting would have revealed this, about this old news.

edit on 25-4-2011 by alfa1 because: clarity

Who said anything about free energy? I think you need to read what is actually posted. Google can't help you with that. This is about taking carbon dioxide out of the air, regardless of how much energy it takes to do it.

Originally posted by CastleMadeOfSand
Who said anything about free energy? I think you need to read what is actually posted. Google can't help you with that. This is about taking carbon dioxide out of the air, regardless of how much energy it takes to do it.

Actually, if energy was not a concern it is not difficult to convert CO2 into something that isn't a greenhouse gas and that could be stored away safely or re-burned to get some of the energy back. Hell, we could convert it back into petroleum and pump it back into the ground.

But where did that energy come from? These days most of the available energy comes from fossil fuels, so unless this is coupled with some new energy source your "energy doesn't matter" contention just doesn't cut it.

Looks like a few other folks (from other countries) have published articles in other journals on reactions using the same NHC-catalyzed techniques and their contention that it may be a useful way to sequester CO2.
One Such Article

Who said anything about free energy? I think you need to read what is actually posted. Google can't help you with that. This is about taking carbon dioxide out of the air, regardless of how much energy it takes to do it.

If it requires energy - which it does - as opposed to being "free energy," that means we have to supply the energy. The ways that we supply energy produce carbon dioxide, hence the original problem of so much of it in the air. The reasoning is circular.

You're talking about using some of the energy we produce to remove some of the carbon dioxide from the air. Since whatever energy we devote to this process will have produced carbon dioxide to begin with, we can't gain any ground in this manner. And, to echo previous posters, it doesn't make sense to think of this as an energy source because you have to put more in than you could ever get out.

It's an interesting exercise for chemists, but this process is of no use.

I didn't see a article date within the link. Sorry man.

Close thread mods.

Unless they discover some serious ways to enhance this technology, throw it into the scrap heap with everything else. Another one of these techs that would be helping to produce pollution while "solving" it.
And yes i was wondering why this was in the breaking news section, did you try searching for similiar threads op?

The conversion of CO2 to methanol is readily accomplished in many ways that are far less expensive that the silanes that were used. The energy and costs to make the silane immediately eliminate it as a possible practical synthesis on a scale larger than a chem lab.
The key to all of this CO2 conversion is inexpensive hydrogen and that requires inexpensive energy that is CO2 free. Of course, if you had such inexpensive energy, you wouldn't have to worry about converting CO2 in the first place.

Maybe the co2 emissions in petrol/deisel could be converted to methanol,and rerouted back through the engine,in order to achieve high mpg/more efficient engine?

That could be good maybe.

Still not proper "free" or green energy though.
And we certainly don't want to be taking vast amounts of co2 from the atmosphere to make methanol IMO.
Wouldn't do the plants/carbon cycle much good
(Unless you get the same amount of co2 back when the methanol is burned I guess?
Does that happen I wonder?)