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Re:Can CO2 be given value by using it to make plastics? by nojvek on Thursday December 08, 2016 @10:41AM (#13130935)
Here's a crazy idea I've been thinking for a long time. Is tthere a way to artificially create a way to trap sunlight and turn it into gasoline in an artificial process. Basically what earth does in thousands of years but with human ingenuity we make it a lot faster and free reproducible in other countries.

I see the core problem as. We already have great gasoline infrastructure. It's very energy dense. We just need to learn how to make green gasoline.

Re:Can CO2 be given value by using it to make plastics? by slightleep on Thursday December 08, 2016 @10:57AM (#13131102)
The US navy is planning on introducing the ability to generate jet fuel from seawater on its nuclear aircraft carriers in the 2020s. The process works, it just takes a tremendous amount of energy (hence the nuclear carrier part) and it requires a lot of water to create a gallon of jet fuel (20,000 gallons I believe for a singe gallon of jet fuel).

The toughest part, however, is that the process would release methane gas into the air. So it's unclear if it's really greenhouse-gas neutral.

In theory, though, if you could trap the methane and then sequester the hydrocarbons you made, you'd have a way to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Re:Can CO2 be given value by using it to make plastics? by abpavel on Thursday December 08, 2016 @10:53AM (#13131050)
We make a lot of green gasoline already. It's called biofuel. The problem is that it takes farmland away from producing food for people into producing food for cars. And cars are much hungrier, filling landscapes with rapeseed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed
Re:Can CO2 be given value by using it to make plastics? by ZeroGravitas on Thursday December 08, 2016 @02:53PM (#13133629)
EVs are simply better than gasoline for pretty much anything with wheels. And we have a great infrastructure for that too. There's no point in producing synthetic fuels for 99% of wheeled vehicles. Planes on the other hand are a different story.