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Mimic the dance between carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and you can tap
into clean solar energy and ease climate change
by Peter Forbes
Weekly
The term reduce has a special meaning in chemistry, and is central both to
the chemistry of life and to the quest for renewable solar fuels. Look around
the countryside on a nice, sunny day and you can see the central chemical
principle of life on Earth. The dense mass of greenery and the blue sky
represents the twin poles of life: oxidation and reduction, or redox. Air in
the sky contains oxygen that liberates energy when it combines with
organic compounds; oxidation is the process that creates fire, and also that
powers your metabolism. The mass of green, on the other hand, is matter
in a chemically reduced state, which is the opposite of what happens in
respiration and combustion. In the presence of oxygen, reduced
compounds can be thought of as having stored energy. Just as oxygen is the
element of oxidation, hydrogen is the element of reduction.
These two elements have been linked in a close dance ever since Earth was
formed, but to complicate matters there is a third partner: carbon. Carbon
can exist in an oxidised state (thats carbon dioxide CO2) or in a reduced
state with hydrogen atoms attached, as in biomass and fuel. All living things
consist of reduced carbon, great long chains and helixes and complicated
clumps of carbon and hydrogen with other key elements attached in
strategic places. Redox reactions the molecular dance between carbon,
hydrogen and oxygen underlie three great mysteries: the origin of life,
how to mitigate global warming, and how to tap the Suns energy without
plants.
The laboratory for Olahs CO2-reducing process is located in Iceland because
of its abundant renewable electricity, generated from that countrys natural
thermal springs. Since 2011, the George Olah Renewable Methanol Plant,
operated near Reykjavik by Carbon Recycling International, has been using
electricity from a thermal power station to split water into water and
hydrogen. A nearby cement works provides a source of waste CO2. The
hydrogen produced by the plant reduces the CO2to methanol. The
methanol (sold by Carbon Recycling International as Vulcanol) can be used
as fuel for vehicles, either straight or mixed with petrol. In July 2015, Carbon
Recycling linked with the UK division of the engineering firm Engie Fabricom
to develop large, standardised CO2-to-methanol plants. Although Icelands
energy situation is unique, George Olah notes that many parts of the world
have access to other forms of cheap renewable electricity (hydropower or
solar-thermal power, for instance) that could drive the plants.
drawbacks of using off-natures shelf biomass from corn, soya, or algae, but
could there be a useful halfway point between natural photosynthesis and
a full-blown artificial version? It turn out there is.
There is a group of primitive bacteria the acetogens that can reduce
oxides of carbon without photosynthesis. These microbes perform the
special trick of being able to live off the very gases we are concerned with:
oxides of carbon (carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide), along with
hydrogen. They can generate alcohols from these raw materials and, even
better, can do so using a variety of ratios of hydrogen and carbon
monoxide. This flexibility makes them well-suited for industrial use,
because just such mixtures of gases are produced as the polluting waste
products of electricity generation, as well as steel and cement
manufacture.
LanzaTech, a US energy company devoted to producing liquid fuels from
industrial waste gases, is one of the leading proponents of acetogens. These
ancient bacteria are found naturally today around hydrothermal vents in
the deep ocean, where they live on the hot gases that well up from the
ocean floor. LanzaTech is focusing on one specific bacterium,Clostridium
autoethanogenum, to generate ethanol from waste gases, mostly carbon
monoxide and dioxide from steel mills.
Jennifer Holmgren, LanzaTechs CEO, recognises that having a clever idea is
not enough if you are trying to shift the enormous fossil-fuel industry.
Scaling up is the most important thing for any new technology, she says.
If it doesnt scale, it doesnt matter. To that end, the company has created
a demonstration plant at the Baosteel mill in Shanghai, China, and last year
they signed an agreement with the worlds biggest steelmakers,ArcelorMittal, to build a 87 million fuel-generating plant at their
Ghent steelworks in Belgium. LanzaTech has also signed a deal to supply
Virgin Atlantic with bio-aviation fuel.
This last venture touches on one of Holmgrens key concerns, bringing
carbon reductions to the parts of the energy economy that green electricity
cannot easily reach. If we go to electric vehicles on a large scale, how do
we balance the system? she asks. The system requires production of
fuels ground and aviation and chemical coproducts. If the ground fuels
portion goes off to electric, lets say 30 per cent of ground transport, what
happens to the economics of aviation fuel and chemicals production?