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A comment on Argonne National Lab Breakthrough Turns Carbon Dioxide into Ethanol.

Re:Argonne National Lab Breakthrough Turns Carbon Dioxide in... by Animats on Monday August 10, 2020 @03:20AM (#24106496)
This has to be energetically uphill, of course. How many units of energy do you have to put into get one unit of energy in ethanol form? Need numbers on this. Would it be a win to use wind energy during low price periods to make ethanol this way?
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Re:Argonne National Lab Breakthrough Turns Carbon Dioxide in... by lukehutch on Monday August 10, 2020 @04:28AM (#24106872)
They say in the article that the conversion efficiency is 90%, which I assume means that if the reagent supply is infinite, 90% of the electrical energy you put into the catalyst is turned into chemical bond energy.
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Re:Argonne National Lab Breakthrough Turns Carbon Dioxide in... by jlokier on Monday August 10, 2020 @04:45AM (#24106969)
It says the Faradaic efficiency is 90%, which unfortunately is not the total energy efficiency. Total energy efficiency also includes thermodynamic and practical constraints.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_efficiency#Faradaic_lo...

However that's still a great figure.

I'm in awe that a carbon-substrate catalyst converts CO2 so well without degrading itself.

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