Green Freedom

Here's a new idea (at least to me): why don't we sequester CO2 emissions right back into the form of gasoline and pump it into our cars and airplanes? This is the line of research being pursued right now at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Scientists there are pursuing the relatively simple concept that CO2 can be chemically absorbed from the air, using liquid potassium carbonate, for later conversion to synthetic gasoline. The chemical reaction involved is: (CO2 + CO3 +H2O -> 2HCO3), where CO3 comes from potassium carbonate (K2CO3).

While this technology has been explored in the past, the scientists at LANL claim that they have finally figured out a way to make CO2-scrubbing energy efficient enough to be carbon neutral and to produce competitive prices at the pump. The only glitch? The processing plants that would capture/convert CO2 to synthetic gasoline require a significant energy input. In order to maintain the carbon neutrality that makes this process so appealing, LANL scientists suggest nuclear energy. They tout nuclear as being the most cost effective at this point, although in the future, perhaps renewables (such as wind and solar) will be able to take up the slack. LANL has figured that with an initial investment of $5 billion in a nuclear plant, they can generate prices of between $3.40 and $4.60 at the pump.

This is certainly an interesting avenue for our country to be pursuing; leave it to Americans to find an economical and 'carbon neutral' way to keep plugging along at the status quo emissions-wise. I am somewhat skeptical, however, of the feasibility of this project. It seems unlikely that sucking air into towers attached to geographically dispersed production plants could actually have any effect on the overall concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere. Also, what about the other toxins spewed from the tailpipes of our cars and trucks? Perhaps this will be a viable solution for some technologies (jetliners, for example), but I think we're barking up the wrong tree as far as cars are concerned. Internal combustion engines are extremely inefficient machines, and I think that the most viable solution to this problem is to switch to fuel cell or battery-powered cars that we can plug into a grid powered with an integrated system of renewable energy sources. For airplanes this is not yet a reality; perhaps LANL's innovative ideas will effectively neutralize the carbon input/output of jetliners by powering them instead with synthetic gasoline.

Jeffery Martin, the principal investigator on the project will be presenting LANL's ideas tomorrow (February 20, 2008) at the Alternative Energy NOW conference in Florida. For more information, check out the official public release on Green Freedom from LANL. Also, running the search "Green Freedom" on the LANL site will yield access to some good pdf's detailing the science behind this technology.