Carbon Recycling and the Zinc Economy

Just when you thought there wasn't anything else that could be recycled. First it was cans and newspapers, then electronics and plastics, and recently sewage.

But yes, there are some scientists who believe they have a better idea than capturing carbon dioxide and storing it underground to prevent global climate change. They want to capture carbon dioxide and recycle it. In short they want to capture carbon dioxide from either various sources (coal plants, breweries, cement factories etc) or perhaps eventually from the atmosphere itself and using renewable energy and a variety of suggested technologies turn it into fuels. It may sound like something out of science fiction but then again the internet would have in 1950, now wouldn't it?

And in many ways it makes more sense than the hydrogen economy. Why?

One reason is like the joke about the man who was asked why he robbed banks, and answered "That's where the money is." Namely those carbon-carbon bonds that fossil fuels and most alternative fuels (ethanol, algal oil, biodiesel) are so rich in, contain much more energy than hydrogen-hydrogen bonds.

Also there's the benefit of being able to store liquid based carbon fuels without any special technology. With hydrogen fuels engineers are still debating which technology would make the most sense for storing hydrogen. And many of the canidates are likely to be expensive, heavy, and/or take a long time to perfect.

Basically recycled carbon fuels and hydrogen are both ways of storing energy (hopefully renewable) rather than sources of energy. But storing energy as hydrocarbon fuels that our society is currently familiar with has so many obvious advantages. One proposed technology involves using solar chemical energy to convert carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and combine it with water to produce fuel. Other ideas involve combining hydrogen with carbon dioxide to create methanol or using biocatalysts to produce methanol using water, carbon dioxide, and electricity.

Furthermore methanol can be converted into several different types of fuels and/or substances that can be combined with algal oil into order to create designer fuels for a variety of applications.

Is this a real possibility? Many researchers believe so. While it is hard to tell exactly when and how widely such technologies will be applied, the idea of being able to recycle a fair amount of carbon dioxide into liquid fuels definitely makes the idea weaning society off high levels of fossil fuels and drastically cutting greenhouse gas emissions lot simpler than having to do it entirely with some combination renewable electricity and batteries, nuclear power, and biofuels. This post is not meant to make a case that carbon recycling is "better" than solar, wind, tidal, nuclear, energy efficiency, or at least some types of biofuels.
I am however making a case that carbon recycling is likely to be more practical than the hydrogen economy. Many people are attracted to the idea of hydrogen energy because nothing but water comes out of the tailpipe. And this is understandable.
However, in the case of the carbon dioxide emitted in the case of recycled carbon fuels will also likely have a lower or non-existant contribution to rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

Another proposal to store renewable energy involves a using zinc air fuel cells for applications such as cars, machinery, or small scale generations. Basically a zinc air fuel cell combines zinc metal (stored as fuel in very small pellets) and oxygen to produce electricity and zinc oxide, which is a sort of white powder. In addition to those small zinc pellets being much more portable and storable as fuel than hydrogen and in some ways safer than hydrocarbon fuels, the zinc oxide can be collected and reclaimed right back into small zinc pellets, possibly using renewable energy. Basically a zinc vehicle would run much like an electric vehicle, but unlike an electric vehicle it could probably refueled (while collecting the zinc oxide of course!!) relatively quickly rather than taking hours to recharge.

Of course, many people will find that these ideas aren't as sexy as the hydrogen economy. But they might prove to be more succesful ways of using the world's ample renewable energy on a large scale basis.

Hopefully this provides some more food for thought. And

Say Goodnight Readers!