She's pushing an agenda. Period. Nothing to see here. Move along, move along.

I have more confidence in the guys who are working on perpetual motion motors. Seriously.

Don't even talk to me about this until there is ethanol left over after converting some back into the electricity to power the reaction OR a solar cell is found that is efficient enough that we don't have to cover Arizona with them to have a net impact on the amount of global CO2 .... and then we can have the discussion as to whether we couldn't do better simply by letting the forests that once covered North America and the Amazon basin grow again.

Detroit used to be green when seen from the air. When it came under Democrat control under Coleman A. Young, it got rid of its forestry department. Now, the area that used to serve as a nursery (along Outer Drive) is used to dump bodies from time to time.

Not unrelated, I think, the city is now a disaster zone with vast areas looking like Dresden, Germany after the carpet bombing of WW2 acre after acre of barren fields where homes once stood. The real estate now sells for about the same as vacant farmland further west in the state.

Even though there is conflicting evidence I believe that planting trees is the best way of sequestering CO2. Every house I have moved to my wife and I planted trees. Where we live in Az for the past 26 yrs. we have planted about dozen trees on our property. Some were replacements for about three that had to come down due to beetle infestation. I even let some of the germinated evergreens just grow randomly also. If there was a public push for planting for moderately fast growing trees I would think there wouldn't such an propaganda war about climate change.

If you go back to the source of the article ORNL described at
http://newatlas.com/co2-ethanol-nanop...
there is a promo video that explains their plan to use excess solar/wind power (when there is an excess only) and "store" that energy that would otherwise be wasted by making ethanol. There is no assurance that this is the most efficient method to do so, but the scientist does claim it is over 60% efficient.
It is not a detailed explanation but at least there has been some thought on application. No comment on whether this is an unbiased source ;^)

Or electricity....

Where are they getting the energy for this endothermic reaction? Where are the getting the hydrogen? I have heard it is aqueous process so that would sort of explain that except for the question of the energy to separate out the hydrogen.

This could be very useful IF (big IF) it could be scaled up. Ethanol is useful because you can get the energy out really fast by burning it O2. I could envision this scaled up to be a better alternative to batteries for applications where you have energy but not at the time and place it's needed, e.g. solar or nuclear.

I really think the authors are just exploiting the fact that CO2 happens to be a main cause of global warming and also happens to be one of the reagents in the reaction. It's hard to envision this every being deployed on such a large scale that it puts a dent in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 more than just planting trees. It's one of those battery-like redox reactions, where electrons move from an electrode to an electrolyte bath. But even if we imagine it on a huge scale, you still release the CO2 when you burn it. It's not undoing the effects of extracting huge amounts of oil and coal and burning it. It's just moving Cs, Os, Hs, and electrons around in way that stores energy in a place you have to a place where you need it.

One thing we don't need is more ethanol unless it comes in a Wild Turkey bottle. ;)

It is interesting separate from AGW. Sounds like the nanoscale electrical fields affect the chemical process in a way not achievable in a macro reaction. That is cool if accurate. May end up being used elsewhere. Seems a little like bandgap in semiconductors.

Thank you for the explanation. It clears up lots of stuff, not only for this post. Very lucidly presented I'm tempted to say that you told me what's watt - but I wont.

When you burn ethanol you get carbon dioxide, water and energy. To make ethanol out of carbon dioxide you combine it with water and consume AT LEAST that same amount of energy. TANSTAAFL.

And it consumes more energy than it takes to produce it. The entire process is net loss - from an energy standpoint to a pocketbook one.

So can we get rid of ethanol subsidies now and go back to letting farmers grow corn for FOOD? If CO2 is so dangerous, put up a couple of plants running these catalytic converters and run yourself some ethanol!

There's been an easy way to convert water and air into ammonia for some time. Ammonia is a near perfect fuel, since the formula (NH3) contains no carbon. None of the alternate fuels create more energy than what it takes to produce them, so they're really an energy storage medium. Anhydrous ammonia contains more hydrogen by volume than the liquefied gas itself, and becomes a room temperature liquid under modest pressures similar to those used to liquefy propane, easily transported by pipeline.

Because your Objectivism would be in conflict with that. ;) Please don't get me started on government grants. This is a weekly temptation that I need a lot of strength to resist.

Actually this is a great reaction on Mars. If you add hydrogen to the CO2 atmosphere, you get Ethanol and energy. It's an exothermic reaction. On Earth, the oxygen in the atmosphere combines with your hydrogen and you get expensive water.

If other people can get government research grants to study perfectly mundane, well-understood phenomena, why can't I?

As you know, the author just does not understand stuff like chemical reactions. 1.2 volts and room temperature just means that it is an easy reaction to produce if you have enough energy input equivalent to the energy content of the ethanol. Catalysts do not change the amount of energy required. It is just a case of the discoverers finding something interesting and possibly useful and getting that "we are going to be rich" feeling and running with that. Nothing wrong with that but it can cloud ones mind when in the PR crowd.

Volts measures electrical potential. Current is measured in amperes. Current multiplied by potential--amps times volts--gives power, in watts. Power produced and consumed over a span of time is energy, measured in watt-hours or kilowatt-hours.

Mixing up those units, or any units, shows ignorance, disdain or malice. One might as well talk of a well that is 15 minutes deep, or of a temperature of 17 inches. Physics nuts (Snezzy waves hand) have little patience with writers who cannot even get the units of measurement straight. The usual confusions, also a tell-tale for bad science, are "watts of energy" and "watts per hour."

Problem is...as I understand it...ethanol as fuel is a worse polluter than straight gasoline. I don't know that making more of it does us any good, other than reducing the price of corn (which would be a good thing).

There is no energy gain in the process. In goes the energy equal to the energy content of burning ethanol plus energy needed for other stuff to support the process. The 1.2 volt reference is just to say that the process can proceed at a low power rate. All that indicates the need for energy sources a bit more than the final energy output of the usage of the ethanol. That is why the reference to wind and solar and maybe hydro and future fusion where the power to produce the ethanol would come from. Else fossil fuel would be needed producing, more CO2, which of course is not a pollutant.

Current is measured in amps. Voltage is the potential difference between 2 legs of a circuit. Power is then volts* amps = watts. Look at it like a water hose. The pressure is voltage, the flow is current, raise either one to increase power.

The objective is to turn CO2 into ethanol, not ethanol into CO2.

I am not a scientist, but I have a functioning brain. Could you explain why the 1.2 volts destroys the writer's understanding of physics. (I had physics in school -- barely pulled a B).