Carbon Dioxide Recycling: Turning Lemons into Lemonade

Carbon dioxide (CO2) needs to be reduced faster than the population can realistically shift from fossil fuels to renewable power. Meeting this challenge has been agreed by global entities to be a pressing need as this dual crisis of energy and climate threatens our way of life, as well as the security of nations. Yet, with conversations around government projects like the clean coal plant FutureGen in the United States and cap-and-trade schemes, CO2 recycling seems to be a solution that is being overlook.

Until recently, the main approaches contemplated by large emitters for mitigating CO2 include geologic and ocean storage. These methods, however, have challenges concerning energy requirements and the viability of long-term storage. In addition, the cost of monitoring and leak prevention of the stored CO2 is an ongoing process that leaves uncertain success and currently no commercial deployment.

In mid-May, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu ann-ounced before the National Coal Council that US$2.4 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act would be designated to expand and accelerate commercial deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has earmarked $1 billion for clean energy technology, mostly aimed at CCS. China’s first near-zero-emissions coal plant won state approval recently and two other pilots are in the works, including one in Inner Mongolia that could be the largest sequestration project in the world.

Carbon repurposing is an attractive option considering 30% of total global liquid-fuel demand could be met by 2030 by processing 25% of the CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants. For decades, oil and gas industries have utilized carbon capture as a method to enhance oil and gas recovery. However, only recently has the dialogue surrounding carbon capture shifted from a recovery tool to a potential environmental solution.

Companies and government agencies are developing methods to repurpose CO2. Globally, patents have been applied for in most countries for the recycling of CO2 from the flue gas produced in hydrocarbon combustion.

Low-cost fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, have powered humanity into a new era of advanced technology and modern life. Today, industrialization has reached a global scale, consuming more fossil fuel than ever before. Demand for these depleting resources has driven the price of energy to higher levels than most would have thought imaginable, and in the process, released billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

Carbon dioxide emissions from the use of fossil fuels have been scientifically accepted as the cause of global warming and climate change (see Human-Caused Heat, Not CO2, Main ‘Global Warming’ Problem: Scientists for an alternative theory). Annual CO2 emissions are projected to increase from 28 billion metric tons in 2005 to 34 billion metric tons in 2015 and more than 42 billion metric tons in 2030. The largest and most concentrated source of CO2 emissions is the growing use of coal-powered electricity generation, especially in developing countries where coal is abundant and inexpensive. Based on historic growth trends, crude oil production will peak in 2037 at a volume of 53 billion bbl per year. Some analysts claim peak oil has already occurred.

While there is little debate the global population must reduce its dependency on carbon-releasing, petroleum-based products, questions remain about the viability of CCS technology options. Some environmental groups claim widespread deployment of CCS is not possible until 2030 or beyond. The question then becomes: why are we focusing on the development of options that are expensive to transport and potentially dangerous to store, when we can profitably recycle the carbon post-capture into commercially viable fuels?

Recycling provides an efficient approach to produce renewable fuels, mitigate CO2 emissions and curb demand for imported oil, enabling energy independence as well as providing the most direct path to produce renewable fuels utilizing existing infrastructure, including supply chain and vehicles to ensure cost-effective and non-disruptive deployment.

Some of the known approaches for CO2 to fuel recycling include: direct photolysis, which uses light energy to break off the oxygen atoms CO2; and chemically reacting CO2 gas with hydrogen gas (H2) to create methane or methanol. These conventional engineering approaches require significant amounts of energy because of high-pressure and high-temperature chemical processes. For certain applications such as military and space, the high cost of these technologies may be justifiable, but there is growing concern these approaches will not be economically viable in creating transportation fuels for global consumption.

Santa Barbara, California-based Carbon Sciences is developing a technology to recycle CO2 emissions into gasoline and other fuels. Working at the intersection of chemical engineering and bio-engineering disciplines, the company is developing an energy efficient biocatalytic process to help meet the fuel needs of the world.

The CO2 -to-Fuel approach uses cost-effective, renewable biomolecules to catalyze certain chemical reactions required to transform CO2 and water (H2O) into fuel molecules. Since the process occurs at low temperature and low pressure, less energy is required than other approaches.

The energy efficient biocatalytic processes used in Carbon Sciences’ technology occurs in certain micro-organisms where carbon atoms – extracted from CO2 – and hydrogen atoms – extracted from H2O – are combined to create hydrocarbon molecules, allowing these processes to operate on a large industrial scale through advance nano-engineering of the biocatalysts and efficient process design.

Most of the renewable alternatives to fossil fuel today are based on the same fundamental concept of recycling CO2 into fuels. However they are done through intermediaries such as terrestrial crops or micro-organisms, where CO2 and water are transformed into complex energy molecules. These molecules, such as sugars, carbohydrates, lipids and cellulose are stored inside the intermediary’s biomass. They have to be extracted, broken down and further refined into hydrocarbon fuel equivalents.

The technology is based on the direct molecular transformation of CO2 and water into fuel molecules through an energy efficient biocatalytic process. The resulting fuels are molecularly identical to fuels used today such as gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. The difference between fuels produced with this technology and those from petroleum is that CO2 -to-Fuel is made from CO2 emissions and not dug up from the Earth. Unlike biofuels, they can be used as-is in today’s infrastructure, supply chain and vehicles.

With a forecast of more than 43 billion tons of annual CO2 emissions by 2030, there is an abundant supply of raw material available to produce renewable liquid fuels for global consumption and reduce dependence on petroleum.

Carbon dioxide recycling is part of a portfolio of solutions designed to address two critical challenges – stabilizing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and producing new supplies of liquid hydrocarbon fuels to help reduce dependence on petroleum. The technology would not only work with a number of new “green” technologies under construction, but also benefits the global economy and environment from the investments made in these scalable technologies and processes for recycling CO2.

Byron Elton brings business experience and personal commitment to environmental ideals to his role as chief executive officer at Carbon Sciences.