Carbon dioxide to gasoline major breakthrough

Even the average person who is not exposed to the subject of chemistry will know the name carbon dioxide. Although it is not the gas with the strongest greenhouse response, the one that poses the greatest threat to the Earth's environment exists.

All of this is, naturally, the glory that human activity has put on it.

Carbon dioxide and global warming

Carbon dioxide is a part of our atmosphere that is not only very common but also abundant. There are many ways in which carbon dioxide is produced on Earth. Generally speaking, plants and animals, manure, humic acids, etc. all release carbon dioxide, while animals also produce carbon dioxide between their breaths.

But the carbon dioxide produced in these ways is not a bad thing for the planet. As a greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide absorbs long-wave radiation from the ground and thus emits longer radiation waves to the ground, which provides an insulating effect on the earth, making the difference in temperature between day and night on earth not too great.

However, as human development accelerated after the industrial revolution, the negative effects of carbon dioxide became apparent as its levels in the air increased dramatically.

Both the processing and the use of fossil fuels emit large amounts of CO2 into our lives. The rapid development of industrial processes has made our planet completely unable to cope with this amount of carbon dioxide, and this is what has led to the phenomenon of excess.

When there is too much CO2, the once insulating effect becomes a warming effect, and this effect increases as CO2 emissions increase.

In recent years, the greenhouse effect and global warming have become major topics of discussion, and the biggest "contributor" to this is carbon dioxide, or human activity to be exact.

But human activity is a process that cannot be stopped. In today's life, although low-carbon travel has been promoted, from the statistics, carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise: 1.75 billion tons of global emissions in 2020, and 1.85 billion tons in 2021. This shows that relying on consciousness to protect the environment is not very effective.

So we can only let CO2 emissions continue? What can we do to remedy this and save the fate of the planet as the fundamental "culprit"?

What to do with carbon dioxide

In fact, besides being a greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide has some industrial or production uses in our lives. For example, the electronics industry needs high-solid carbon dioxide, and solid carbon dioxide can be used for food transportation or as a freezing agent ......

However, all these applications require either high purity carbon dioxide or clean carbon dioxide, and the carbon dioxide we have in our lives does not meet this requirement. Therefore, this is a process of creating CO2.

To solve the problem of excess CO2, many countries have adopted various means to treat it, such as methane. However, because of the low cost and efficiency of this method, it simply cannot be widely promoted.

For this reason, scientists have begun to think about turning carbon dioxide into something more economically viable, such as turning it into gasoline.

Carbon dioxide to gasoline

This idea has been realized, and not only that but a breakthrough has been made, with a full 1000 times more efficient.

Scientists from all over the world have been working tirelessly to solve the low conversion rate of carbon dioxide to gasoline, and the results finally came to light in a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

They found a special catalyst in this conversion: a compound made of ruthenium. Ruthenium is an extremely rare substance, found in very small quantities throughout the earth's crust, which is why it appeared so late as a catalyst.

However, despite its rarity, ruthenium is more stable than gold. Therefore, it plays an important role in the process of turning carbon dioxide into gasoline. Because of ruthenium, the team at Stanford University that specializes in turning carbon dioxide into gasoline says it is 1,000 times more efficient than previous conventional conversion methods.

So, can such a big technological improvement pause the rate of global warming?

A technological breakthrough, but a long road ahead

Although we have made great technological advances in solving the CO2 problem, the future outlook is still not objective for now. First and foremost, there is the issue of efficiency. Although efficiency has increased, ruthenium is too scarce to be widely used, much less used in the commercial economy. The methods that exist in the laboratory can only provide us with an idea, but they are not the path that has been blazed.

Secondly, although CO2 can be converted more efficiently into gasoline, it still cannot replace conventional fuels. This means that CO2 will continue to be emitted into the air. Even if it could be used, the amount of carbon dioxide today would only be equal to or even outstrip the rate of use and emissions.

As a result, there is no real reduction in the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. Moreover, if ruthenium is used extensively, it may become increasingly scarce and eventually become a valuable and scarce resource.

Either way, it is not realistic to hope for a "waste to energy" solution. To truly curb the global warming process, we must ultimately rely on our efforts.

Either we reduce our dependence on traditional fuels or reduce our emissions, otherwise, global warming will not stop.

Perhaps it is more desirable to reduce CO2 emissions in the future than to utilize it. Gasoline cannot replace conventional fuels, but combustible ice can replace them to a large extent. China has made great progress in the technology of mining combustible ice, and its experience has become more and more abundant.

It is believed that in ten years, combustible ice will gradually be widely used in our life!