Climate change

[mike777]

While this sounds rather ominous, it is not different from that observed today. Starting from their temperature enddate of 2005, they are looking 42 years into the future. Going back 42 years from today (1971), the warmest years (CRU data) were 1944 (+0.121C), 1941 (+0.078), 1878 (+0.028), and 1940 (0.020). The last year cooler than the hottest year from 1880-1972 was 1993 (+0.106), so the past 20 years have all been hotter than the hottest year prior, and that is half the future timeframe stated in the article. Even starting from the previous warmest year, 1944, this was achieved after 50 years. So, it would not take much warming to accomplish this feat.

 

 

 

Can we recycle carbon dioxide into methanol for use as fuel as one viable option to reduce overall greenhouse emissions?

[Al_U_Card]

Can we recycle carbon dioxide into methanol for use as fuel as one viable option to reduce overall greenhouse emissions?

Mike....water vapor is THE GHG.

 

CO2 is the vehicle by which your tax dollars are being extricated from your wallet.

 

Time to focus on the pickpocket I would dare say. :ph34r:

[FM75]

Can we recycle carbon dioxide into methanol for use as fuel as one viable option to reduce overall greenhouse emissions?

 

CO₂ + 3 H₂ → CH₃OH + H₂O

 

At the cost of 3 moles of Hydrogen gas for each mole of Carbon Dioxide.

Any guess as to whether we can generate Hydrogen, which does not appear in a free form naturally on earth, at 3 times the rate that we generate Carbon dioxide? (Hint, if the answer is yes, NiMH, Lithium Ion, and other standard electric batteries would be well in the rear view mirror of cars driving around with electric motors driven by fuel cells.)

[mike777]

CO₂ + 3 H₂ → CH₃OH + H₂O

 

At the cost of 3 moles of Hydrogen gas for each mole of Carbon Dioxide.

Any guess as to whether we can generate Hydrogen, which does not appear in a free form naturally on earth, at 3 times the rate that we generate Carbon dioxide? (Hint, if the answer is yes, NiMH, Lithium Ion, and other standard electric batteries would be well in the rear view mirror of cars driving around with electric motors driven by fuel cells.)

 

 

thanks for the reply. I thought there are new developments in chemistry, a new way to convert carbon dioxide into methanol that now makes it profitable. For starters I thought there was a 2011 study The Future of Natural Gas by Ernest Moniz that concluded that methanol is the best use of natural gas or shale gas in transportation. Also work done by George Olah. Also I read Iceland is converting carbon dioxide from geothermal sources into methanol using cheap geothermal electrical energy.

-------------

 

Dr. Ernest Moniz’s views on methanol as a transportation fuel

 

By Alan Bryce on April 18, 2013 in Fuel methanol production, Methanol cars, Natural gas to methanol, Open Fuel Standard

 

Dr. Ernest Moniz, distinguished MIT professor and President Barrack Obama’s nominee for US Secretary of Energy, played an integral role in a 2010 MIT study that concluded that methanol is the ‘liquid fuel most efficiently and inexpensively produced from natural gas.’ A portion of the record from the April 9th Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources hearing on his nomination is featured below. This excerpt certainly supports the views of supporters of the Open Fuel Standard and the adoption of methanol as a transportation fuel.

 

 

 

SEN. CANTWELL: As I understand it, today the U.S. produces roughly 280 million gallons of methanol, primarily from the steam reformation of natural gas, and by 2015 that number will increase to one billion gallons. On the ground that means three methanol plants will be reactivated in Texas and a fourth will be moved from Chile to Louisiana to take advantage of today’s lower natural gas costs. In a study published in 2010, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded that methanol was the ‘liquid fuel most efficiently and inexpensively produced from natural gas,’ and they recommended methanol as the most effective way to integrate natural gas into our transportation economy.

 

Dr, Moniz, I would appreciate knowing if you were involved with this study and your personal views as to the potential of using methanol to power our transportation system given America’s now abundant supplies of cheap natural gas. I understand that at today’s natural gas prices methanol costs about 35 cents a gallon to produce, and for the past five years the wholesale price for natural gas-derived methanol has ranged between $1.05 and $1.15 a gallon. How do you think the price of methanol will change over the next decade as the price of natural gas changes?

 

DR. MONIZ: I was the co-director of this study. Its findings and recommendations were achieved by the consensus of the 19 faculty and senior researchers involved in the study. The U.S. has significantly increased domestic natural gas and oil production over the last several years, with important implications and possible opportunities for diversifying the nation’s transportation fuel mix. This diversification remains an economic and national security imperative. The President’s All-of-the-Above Energy policy supports more choices for Americans among available modes of transportation and types of fuel.

 

There are many conversion routes for deriving liquid fuels from natural gas. Methanol is simplest and, like ethanol, needs modest engine modifications for flex fuel operation (possibly even tri-flex-fuel). More complex and costly conversion could yield “drop-in” fuels. If confirmed, I am committed to exploring the safe and environmentally sustainable development of all economically viable transportation fuels to increase consumer choice, reduce prices, improve our balance of trade, and enhance national security. Clearly higher natural gas prices would increase methanol costs, and conversely for lower prices. While I won’t speculate on the future price of methanol, I appreciate both the economic and diversity benefits of methanol as a transportation fuel, as well as the challenges it poses to both fueling infrastructure and vehicle design, especially in the context of ability to meet future environmental emissions standards over a wide range of tri-flex-fuel operation.

 

SEN. CANTWELL: The seminal Massachusetts Institute of Technology Institute report entitled “The Future of Natural Gas 2011” found that “methanol could be used in tri-flexible-fuel, light-duty (and heavy-duty) vehicles in a manner similar to present ethanol-gasoline flex fuel vehicles, with modest incremental vehicle cost. These tri-flex-fuel vehicles could be operated on a wide range of mixtures of methanol, ethanol and gasoline. For long distance driving, gasoline could be used in the flex-fuel engine to maximize range. Present ethanol-gasoline flex-fuel vehicles in the U.S. are sold at the same price as their gasoline counterparts. Adding methanol capability to a factory 85% ethanol blend (E85) vehicle, to create tri-flex fuel capability, would require an air/fuel mixture control to accommodate an expanded fuel/air range with addition of an alcohol sensor and would result in an extra cost of $100 to $200, most likely at the lower end of that range with sufficient production.” Dr. Moniz, were you involved with this study and do you generally agree with its conclusions? What can DOE do to promote greater adoption of tri-flexible-fuel vehicles?

 

DR. MONIZ: I was the co-director of this study. Its findings and recommendations were achieved by the consensus of the 19 faculty and senior researchers involved in the study. Flex fuel vehicles were also a topic discussed in detail at a MIT symposium last year. Such vehicles may help enhance US energy security by diversifying our sources of liquid fuels. If confirmed, I would recommend that this technology pathway be examined in the Quadrennial Energy Review.

[mike777]

Exploring the Methanol Economy: Here is a tape of the NPR talk.

 

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=5369301&m=5369302

 

 

 

This week, President Bush called for greater reliance on ethanol as a fuel source, along with increased use of alternative fuels such as biodiesel and hydrogen. Nobel Laureate George Olah says that the answer isn't ethanol or hydrogen — it's methanol.

 

Guests:

 

George Olah, Nobel laureate in chemistry, 1994; co-author, Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy; Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker distinguished professor of organic chemistry, University of Southern California

[Daniel1960]

Can we recycle carbon dioxide into methanol for use as fuel as one viable option to reduce overall greenhouse emissions?

Mike,

Another options that has existed for quite some time is the Fischer-Tropsch process. Germany used it extensively in WWII due to their lack of petroleum resources. The basic reaction is:

 

CO + 3H2 + catalyst → CH4 + H2O

 

Recently, research has progressed in the following reation:

 

CO2 + 4H2 + catalyst → CH4 + 2H2O

 

Tweaking the catalyst and reaction conditions, changes what hydrocarbons can be synthesized.

[onoway]

I keep wondering when governments will start using the mountains of waste, sewage and other organic waste, to produce methane. A pig farmer in the States ran his entire operation, including fuel for his vehicles, from the methane produced by the pigs back in the early 1940s. In the 1960's Harold Bates was running his vehicle around on the production of a little chicken and pig manure. http://www.nfb.ca/film/bates_car_sweet_as_a_nut/ His adapter is no longer available.

 

Presently, it is possible in India to buy even residential size digesters to process kitchen waste for cooking gas. In the meantime governments look for ever more places to dump garbage.

[blackshoe]

You mistake, I think, the purpose of government.

[Al_U_Card]

You mistake, I think, the purpose of government.

To "ensure" the "rights" of the individual citizen against the "will" of the "majority" rule.

 

Everything else is a boondoggle or an inflation of the needs to meet an end. :lol:

 

p.s. And once corporations become "citizens", we all become just a rather puny pawn in their end-game.

[FM75]

Mike,

Another options that has existed for quite some time is the Fischer-Tropsch process. Germany used it extensively in WWII due to their lack of petroleum resources. The basic reaction is:

 

CO + 3H2 + catalyst → CH4 + H2O

 

Recently, research has progressed in the following reation:

 

CO2 + 4H2 + catalyst → CH4 + 2H2O

 

Tweaking the catalyst and reaction conditions, changes what hydrocarbons can be synthesized.

 

Mike, Daniel.

The key missing part of the picture in both my chemical "equations' and these are the thermodynamic component - energy. Burning carbon, either semi-pure as in coal, or in a hydrocarbon form, methane, ethane, methanol, etc. is exothermic. You get out more energy than it takes to start the reaction - so you can boil water, or move pistons as a result of detaching the hydrogen creating water and carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.

 

In practice, these reactions are usually very hot and are done with the oxygen in air, forming oxides of nitrogen, NOx, as well. Very costly "smokestacks" are used to control the emission of NOx. They are multi-million dollar engineering projects with stacks roughly 5000-6000+ feet long with cross-sections on the order of 15x20 feet. When they work well, they capture tons of gypsum. Design errors can cause them to fail, somewhat catastrophically.

 

The second law of thermodynamics rules out turning the carbon oxides back into fuel without supplying more than the energy gained from creating it in the first place. Once that is clear, it should be obvious that it is a fool's errand to try to envision ways of converting the waste into fuel. You can think of all of the earth's hydrocarbons as a store of some of the solar energy incident on the earth since it was formed.

 

The point about reactions in which hydrogen is a reagent is that free hydrogen just does not exist for a very long time. It reacts strongly with oxygen to form water (exothermically - so getting it back out costs more than what you got when it combined, whether "explosively" or in a controlled reaction as found in a fuel cell). So virtually all of the hydrogen on the planet is in the form of water - the majority, hydrocarbons, and metal hydrides.

 

What makes hydrocarbons so useful as fuels is the high energy density, whether you are measuring the density in volume or mass terms. That is why it is the fuel of choice for transportation.

 

What is sad is that it is so predominant for electric generation. This country built 25% of its generation capacity, for the most part in about 15 years - 1965-1980. Building at that rate for the next 33 even using the technology from 50 years ago, could have put us in a position of generating 75% of our capacity today (That is not just idle speculation, based on wild guesses - France actually did it). Then only a modest amount of peaking power would be required from hydrocarbons.

[onoway]

You mistake, I think, the purpose of government.

oh? here, waste is managed by government regulation, including the recurring search for dumps for garbage. Hydro is a government owned/run business and so is natural gas. How is it inappropriate to expect the tax dollars to be used more efficiently? Futile, perhaps, but why inappropriate?

[mike777]

The argument is it is govt regulations, crony capitalism and political favoritism that hinders innovation. I understand many believe a lack of regulations and too little govt involvement is the problem. Hence the discussion. :)

 

Your post is an excellent example of that discussion. I put up several posts recently that discussed a possible market based innovation to battle CO2 and which is being hindered by regulations. You discuss an option based on our tax dollars. Both may work or fail but why not let the markets openly compete and choose?

 

 

btw efficently is great word, how do you define and measure it if we are going to demand science?

[Al_U_Card]

While the entire exposé is enlightening, at about 33 minutes in, Dr. Tim Ball explains just how the IPCC was formed and functions. Boondoggle plus...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOyBfihjQvI#t=2407

[Daniel1960]

Mike, Daniel.

The key missing part of the picture in both my chemical "equations' and these are the thermodynamic component - energy. Burning carbon, either semi-pure as in coal, or in a hydrocarbon form, methane, ethane, methanol, etc. is exothermic. You get out more energy than it takes to start the reaction - so you can boil water, or move pistons as a result of detaching the hydrogen creating water and carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.

 

In practice, these reactions are usually very hot and are done with the oxygen in air, forming oxides of nitrogen, NOx, as well. Very costly "smokestacks" are used to control the emission of NOx. They are multi-million dollar engineering projects with stacks roughly 5000-6000+ feet long with cross-sections on the order of 15x20 feet. When they work well, they capture tons of gypsum. Design errors can cause them to fail, somewhat catastrophically.

 

The second law of thermodynamics rules out turning the carbon oxides back into fuel without supplying more than the energy gained from creating it in the first place. Once that is clear, it should be obvious that it is a fool's errand to try to envision ways of converting the waste into fuel. You can think of all of the earth's hydrocarbons as a store of some of the solar energy incident on the earth since it was formed.

 

The point about reactions in which hydrogen is a reagent is that free hydrogen just does not exist for a very long time. It reacts strongly with oxygen to form water (exothermically - so getting it back out costs more than what you got when it combined, whether "explosively" or in a controlled reaction as found in a fuel cell). So virtually all of the hydrogen on the planet is in the form of water - the majority, hydrocarbons, and metal hydrides.

 

What makes hydrocarbons so useful as fuels is the high energy density, whether you are measuring the density in volume or mass terms. That is why it is the fuel of choice for transportation.

 

What is sad is that it is so predominant for electric generation. This country built 25% of its generation capacity, for the most part in about 15 years - 1965-1980. Building at that rate for the next 33 even using the technology from 50 years ago, could have put us in a position of generating 75% of our capacity today (That is not just idle speculation, based on wild guesses - France actually did it). Then only a modest amount of peaking power would be required from hydrocarbons.

I never said this approach was practical. Germany employed the Fischer-Tropsch process during WWII out of necessity. That would be the only reason to do so today also.

[mike777]

I never said this approach was practical. Germany employed the Fischer-Tropsch process during WWII out of necessity. That would be the only reason to do so today also.

 

 

regarding methonal...there a few recent updates in regards to chemistry.

given the costs of transportation fuel, I only request an open field of competition, not political favors. this is one and only one example of why govt is the problem not the solution.

 

 

Recent nobel prize winner Fama and his radical comments on the govt bailout of wall street is another example.

[onoway]

 

 

The second law of thermodynamics rules out turning the carbon oxides back into fuel without supplying more than the energy gained from creating it in the first place. Once that is clear, it should be obvious that it is a fool's errand to try to envision ways of converting the waste into fuel. You can think of all of the earth's hydrocarbons as a store of some of the solar energy incident on the earth since it was formed.

 

 

oops clipped off the end of the post.

I cannot argue with you about the laws of thermodynamics but it seems to me you are missing the point that the waste is ALREADY created and it is going to give off methane whether we collect and use it or not.

 

The huge smokestacks you mention are irrelevant and unnecessary as has been shown in hundreds if not thousands of these systems in use now. Not only does the process allow us to collect the methane but leaves us with a usable waste product for fertilizers to help restore degraded lands. This is actually a process which Milwaukee has been using for decades and selling the resultant product, though as far as I know it only applies to organic waste, I don't think that there is any element of sewage involved. The problems with sewage are (aside from the obvious ones of pathogens which might survive the attention of anaerobic bacteria) but heavy metal contamination and such, so such a product is better not used on food crops but can be used for trees and parks and such.

 

People are collecting methane produced in low cost pits and storing it in inner tubes. I've even seen a photo which I regret not saving as I've never been able to find it again, of someone riding a motorized bicycle down the street powered by methane in a balloon. (NOT recommended!) If higher tech or more purity is wanted, it can be run through a filter of waste iron filings or steel wool and /or water, both just pieces of stuffed pvc pipe.

 

It seems to me to be more of a fool's errand to have the future depend on the sun's energy stored in the dead bodies of dinosaurs or whatever than from the waste which is being generated in such immense quantities every day across the planet. It's always possible to make things more complicated than they need be.

[FM75]

I cannot argue with you about the laws of thermodynamics but it seems to me you are missing the point that the waste is ALREADY created and it is going to give off methane whether we collect and use it or not.

 

The huge smokestacks you mention are irrelevant and unnecessary as has been shown in hundreds if not thousands of these systems in use now. Not only does the process allow us to collect the methane but leaves us with a usable waste product for fertilizers to help restore degraded lands. This is actually a process which Milwaukee has been using for decades and selling the resultant product, though as far as I know it only applies to organic waste, I don't think that there is any element of sewage involved. The problems with sewage are (aside from the obvious ones of pathogens which might survive the attention of anaerobic bacteria) but heavy metal contamination and such, so such a product is better not used on food crops but can be used for trees and parks and such.

 

People are collecting methane produced in low cost pits and storing it in inner tubes. I've even seen a photo which I regret not saving as I've never been able to find it again, of someone riding a motorized bicycle down the street powered by methane in a balloon. (NOT recommended!) If higher tech or more purity is wanted, it can be run through a filter of waste iron filings or steel wool and /or water, both just pieces of stuffed pvc pipe.

 

It seems to me to be more of a fool's errand to have the future depend on the sun's energy stored in the dead bodies of dinosaurs or whatever than from the waste which is being generated in such immense quantities every day across the planet. It's always possible to make things more complicated than they need be.

We were not discussing garbage that still contained hydrocarbons, but carbon oxides. That can't be converted into methane or any other hydrocarbon without a net LOSS of energy.

 

The smokestacks are hardly irrelevant. The removal of NOx from the exhaust gas is all about prevention of acid rain. They are not relevant to carbon management, but extremely important, nonetheless.

 

As to the non-scaleable technology, that is like fantasy. We like to read it maybe, but it should not be taken seriously.

 

To determine whether your ideas scale, such as methane production from chicken farms, do the research and math to determine how many chickens/farms we could convert, how much that would produce, and compare that to real current usage. Running cars on MacDonald's used cooking oil is typical of "solutions" that don't scale.

[onoway]

We were not discussing garbage that still contained hydrocarbons, but carbon oxides. That can't be converted into methane or any other hydrocarbon without a net LOSS of energy.

 

The smokestacks are hardly irrelevant. The removal of NOx from the exhaust gas is all about prevention of acid rain. They are not relevant to carbon management, but extremely important, nonetheless.

 

As to the non-scaleable technology, that is like fantasy. We like to read it maybe, but it should not be taken seriously.

 

To determine whether your ideas scale, such as methane production from chicken farms, do the research and math to determine how many chickens/farms we could convert, how much that would produce, and compare that to real current usage. Running cars on MacDonald's used cooking oil is typical of "solutions" that don't scale.

http://www.c2es.org/technology/factsheet/anaerobic-digesters quick facts:

Anaerobic Digesters

 

Quick Facts

 

Anaerobic digesters provide a variety of environmental and public health benefits including: greenhouse gas abatement, organic waste reduction, odor reduction, and pathogen destruction.

Anaerobic digestion is a carbon-neutral technology to produce biogas that can be used for heating, generating electricity, mechanical energy, or for supplementing the natural gas supply.

 

In 2010, 162 anaerobic digesters generated 453 million kWh of energy in the United States in agricultural operations, enough to power 25,000 average-sized homes.[1]

 

In Europe, anaerobic digesters are used to convert agricultural, industrial, and municipal wastes into biogases that can be upgraded to 97 percent pure methane as a natural gas substitute or to generate electricity. Germany leads the European nations with 6,800 large-scale anaerobic digesters, followed by Austria with 551.

[2]

In developing countries, small-scale anaerobic digesters are used to meet the heating and cooking needs of individual rural communities. China has an estimated 8 million anaerobic digesters while Nepal has 50,000.[3]

 

Figure 1: Number of operating anaerobic digesters in select European countries.

 

this does not constitute scalability? (The bold lettering was mine, to focus on the pertinent points)

[FM75]

http://www.c2es.org/...robic-digesters quick facts:

 

 

this does not constitute scalability? (The bold lettering was mine, to focus on the pertinent points)

 

Correct. It does not constitute scalability. There are probably 25,000 McDonald's franchises in this country. Powering 25,000 cars does make a case for converting a significant percentage of cars to run on waste cooking oil. 25,000 homes on some remote island would be significant. It is not in the US, Canada, or even Mexico.

 

When you use all of a resource for a tiny minority of consumers needing the resource, you have exceeded capacity, before you even started.

[onoway]

Correct. It does not constitute scalability. There are probably 25,000 McDonald's franchises in this country. Powering 25,000 cars does make a case for converting a significant percentage of cars to run on waste cooking oil. 25,000 homes on some remote island would be significant. It is not in the US, Canada, or even Mexico.

 

When you use all of a resource for a tiny minority of consumers needing the resource, you have exceeded capacity, before you even started.

First of all: The data about the US you referred to was not talking about running 25 000 cars on used oil from 25 000 McDonalds, they are talking about providing the energy needs for 25,000 HOUSES from 162 farms. It's an entirely different system or process than making biodiesel from used oil. It would be nice if people made SOME effort to understand what was being said - or even read the data provided!! - before they attacked it. Sheesh.

 

It's difficult to exceed the capacity of a resource consumers are renewing every day at a level that we cannot keep up with even when we just dump it in landfills or tow it out to sea to dump it there, not even taking into account sewage. You seem to be fixated on McDonalds and used oil, is it within your capacity to understand METHANE production...not biodiesel.. applies to all organic waste from the contents of dirty diapers to mouldy lettuce, including but not limited to, used cooking oil? Cooking oil might be better used to make biodiesel, I've no idea and it is not part of what I was proposing. Methane production from waste is being commonly done in Europe, India, China, other parts of Asia, South Africa, Australia,obviously to a limited degree in the States, probably in every country in the world now, some large and some small scale. Don't let the facts that it is scalable and IS WORKING in places around the world disturb your uninformed confidence that it won't work.

[Daniel1960]

First of all: The data about the US you referred to was not talking about running 25 000 cars on used oil from 25 000 McDonalds, they are talking about providing the energy needs for 25,000 HOUSES from 162 farms. It's an entirely different system or process than making biodiesel from used oil. It would be nice if people made SOME effort to understand what was being said - or even read the data provided!! - before they attacked it. Sheesh.

 

It's difficult to exceed the capacity of a resource consumers are renewing every day at a level that we cannot keep up with even when we just dump it in landfills or tow it out to sea to dump it there, not even taking into account sewage. You seem to be fixated on McDonalds and used oil, is it within your capacity to understand METHANE production...not biodiesel.. applies to all organic waste from the contents of dirty diapers to mouldy lettuce, including but not limited to, used cooking oil? Cooking oil might be better used to make biodiesel, I've no idea and it is not part of what I was proposing. Methane production from waste is being commonly done in Europe, India, China, other parts of Asia, South Africa, Australia,obviously to a limited degree in the States, probably in every country in the world now, some large and some small scale. Don't let the facts that it is scalable and IS WORKING in places around the world disturb your uninformed confidence that it won't work.

While you guys can argue whether there are more cars or homes in this country, 25,000 of either is a miniscule fraction of the total. If either could be scaled up by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude, then we some real potential. If it can, then we have a real source of energy (whether heating or propulsion). If not, then we may have a reasonable method of reducing waste.

[onoway]

While you guys can argue whether there are more cars or homes in this country, 25,000 of either is a miniscule fraction of the total. If either could be scaled up by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude, then we some real potential. If it can, then we have a real source of energy (whether heating or propulsion). If not, then we may have a reasonable method of reducing waste.

You also managed to miss the point. You do know that electricity loses a good deal of its capacity to do work over distance, right? So at a minimum, if you have hydro being produced relatively locally by from waste produced locally, that alone cuts back on the amount of electricity that needs to be produced because it doesn't have to be pushed through lines for hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles. That says nothing of the infrastructure which now needs all sorts of maintenance and fancy systems/gadgets to prevent one failure somewhere in the line from wiping out the power across a huge area, as happened a few years back when apparently something in a switching station failed and plunged most of the eastern US and a small area of Canada into darkness. That's two points.

 

Another point is that finding places to PUT garbage is becoming more of an issue all the time, it's being towed out to sea and dumped..hardly an environmentally sensible thing to do with plastic gyres in both the Atlantic and Pacific ocean getting larger by the day and plastic contamination now found in every ocean in the world - and that's just the plastic. The other option generally involves trucking it long distances to someplace which has exchanged " not in MY back yard" to "well ok, but it's gonna cost you plenty." It is costing every community more every year to get rid of (hide somewhere) their garbage. It's a resource we are not only wasting but we are PAYING to waste it. We are paying trucks to haul it away, often hundreds of miles and then paying more to dump and bury it.

 

This seems to be stupid, when instead we could avoid all of that and have the waste be producing electricity..or even simply use the methane as we now use natural gas, and have another usable product at the end which could be an excellent medium for growing food. No pollution and two high quality usable products. It would also preempt a lot of need for such things as fracking and poisoning the environment with things like the tar sands; not entirely, but to a large extent. Perhaps that alone is why we don't - we might annoy the big oil companies and cut into their profits.

 

If people are convinced that the processor must be the size of Mount Everest and nothing smaller deserves consideration under any circumstances then there's no point in trying to discuss anything which might suggest a variety of sizes to be appropriate, depending on location. I guess they eat only ostrich eggs. It doesn't matter if they have to come from a lot further away, cost more to produce, lead to waste because many people couldn't eat a whole one, they're bigger so must be better seems to be the conviction of the day.

[FM75]

You also managed to miss the point. ... snip

 

Actually neither of us missed "the point". We were discussing a question raised that was on topic. Reminder the topic is [global] climate change and what we can do about it.

 

Whether converting CO2 (and some form of hydrogen) to methane and some form of oxygen might help was on topic.

The question was whether CO2, a waste gas produce burning carbon and hydrocarbons in power plants and transportation could be usefully converted to methane to use as a fuel for electric generation or transportation. That question is on topic because increasing the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is believed by many to be a driver for climate change by reducing the amount of incident energy received from the sun that is re-emitted back into space. In other words, there is not a balance between the energy that hits the earth and the energy that leaves the earth. If the balance is positive the earth must get warmer globally, if not locally. It is also on topic because if we could convert the CO2 to methane, there might be a hope that we could achieve energy neutrality. As was pointed out in the answers, it is possible to convert CO2 to methane, but it can't meet the thermodynamic requirement to be energy neutral. So the question has been answered.

 

Chicken farms, and other popular media items do not make the hurdle of being on topic.

You were offered the chance to demonstrate by proposing that chicken farms were globally significant but declined to do so for reasons we can only guess at. To be clear about it, we can now settle the chicken farm question. Can chicken farm production of methane be globally significant? What was offered was that some farmer somewhere ran his tractor or farm equipment from [only?] the waste from his chickens. Applying a bit of numeracy here, let's assume that if we could power 1/4 of the US cars on chicken manure, we would consider this globally significant. What would that mean? Well for starters half of the two car families and one quarter of the one car families would need to become chicken farmers. OK, so now what? Now the waste from the chicken is taken care of, but we have chickens that are now waste instead of manure.

 

Look at that! We are able to see, without even using an envelope or pencil, that the question was off topic. We did not even need to resort to knowing how much motor fuel we use each day, nor how many chickens it would take to replace some given percentage of that. All we had to do was ask ourselves a simple question and work out the answer. Not all questions are that easy, because for some we really do need to do the math and research.

 

How else could we have known that the chicken farm solution was off-topic for not scaling?

If one does not have the science or math skills to really work out whether an approach is feasible, the best thing is to assume that there are many smart people anxious to start their own company and make their fortunes - and investors willing to fund them to make theirs. If an idea has been published, i.e. you know about it, assume that there are a 1000 people far brighter than you that also know about it, and that one percent of those (10) are out there trying to create a startup to "monetize" the idea - even if the idea won't work!

[onoway]

Actually neither of us missed "the point". We were discussing a question raised that was on topic. Reminder the topic is [global] climate change and what we can do about it.

 

Whether converting CO2 (and some form of hydrogen) to methane and some form of oxygen might help was on topic.

The question was whether CO2, a waste gas produce burning carbon and hydrocarbons in power plants and transportation could be usefully converted to methane to use as a fuel for electric generation or transportation. That question is on topic because increasing the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is believed by many to be a driver for climate change by reducing the amount of incident energy received from the sun that is re-emitted back into space. In other words, there is not a balance between the energy that hits the earth and the energy that leaves the earth. If the balance is positive the earth must get warmer globally, if not locally. It is also on topic because if we could convert the CO2 to methane, there might be a hope that we could achieve energy neutrality. As was pointed out in the answers, it is possible to convert CO2 to methane, but it can't meet the thermodynamic requirement to be energy neutral. So the question has been answered.

 

Chicken farms, and other popular media items do not make the hurdle of being on topic.

You were offered the chance to demonstrate by proposing that chicken farms were globally significant but declined to do so for reasons we can only guess at. To be clear about it, we can now settle the chicken farm question. Can chicken farm production of methane be globally significant? What was offered was that some farmer somewhere ran his tractor or farm equipment from [only?] the waste from his chickens. Applying a bit of numeracy here, let's assume that if we could power 1/4 of the US cars on chicken manure, we would consider this globally significant. What would that mean? Well for starters half of the two car families and one quarter of the one car families would need to become chicken farmers. OK, so now what? Now the waste from the chicken is taken care of, but we have chickens that are now waste instead of manure.

 

Look at that! We are able to see, without even using an envelope or pencil, that the question was off topic. We did not even need to resort to knowing how much motor fuel we use each day, nor how many chickens it would take to replace some given percentage of that. All we had to do was ask ourselves a simple question and work out the answer. Not all questions are that easy, because for some we really do need to do the math and research.

 

How else could we have known that the chicken farm solution was off-topic for not scaling?

If one does not have the science or math skills to really work out whether an approach is feasible, the best thing is to assume that there are many smart people anxious to start their own company and make their fortunes - and investors willing to fund them to make theirs. If an idea has been published, i.e. you know about it, assume that there are a 1000 people far brighter than you that also know about it, and that one percent of those (10) are out there trying to create a startup to "monetize" the idea - even if the idea won't work!

 

Quite amazing. First you insist that this must be about using oil from behind McDonalds, which had absolutely nothing to do with what I was saying. Now that has been pointed out, somehow you manage to reduce talking about all garbage to talking about chicken farms - which as far as I know were never even mentioned - and totally ignore the fact that METHANE - WHICH IS PRODUCED BY GARBAGE- organic waste - is far far more damaging than the "carbon emissions".

 

Organic waste is being produced in massive amounts every day everywhere.

Organic waste produces methane, (and compost) and we are paying people lots of money to put it in landfills or haul it out to sea or through sewage systems rather than use it. Maybe that makes sense to you but to me it's like running the furnace with the outside door wide open. That was the point of my original post on this aspect of climate change, and it most certainly IS on topic.

 

Then you pontificate that a process which is presently being successfully used all over the world in and out of cities and which you clearly have absolutely no clue about and no interest in learning about either "won't work"

 

Of course if you choose to focus on things which were neither said nor suggested and argue with them it seems a little like - well - let's say you clearly don't need anyone else involved for your own gratification. so, enjoy yourself.

[FM75]

I keep wondering when governments will start using the mountains of waste, sewage and other organic waste, to produce methane. A pig farmer in the States ran his entire operation, including fuel for his vehicles, from the methane produced by the pigs back in the early 1940s. In the 1960's Harold Bates was running his vehicle around on the production of a little chicken and pig manure. http://www.nfb.ca/fi...sweet_as_a_nut/ His adapter is no longer available.

 

Presently, it is possible in India to buy even residential size digesters to process kitchen waste for cooking gas. In the meantime governments look for ever more places to dump garbage.