MUScoop
MUScoop => The Superbar => Topic started by: Benny B on October 19, 2016, 03:30:47 PM
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Since the other thread got shut down, here's a nice tidbit that has nothing to do with politics (though idiocy always finds a way)...
On Monday there was an announcement in Tennessee that every major science publication and organization has picked up on regarding what could be the precursor to a multi-generational technological achievement... frankly, we could be talking this century's invention of the light bulb here:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a23417/convert-co2-into-ethanol/
By accident (of course, which is how all our great inventions were discovered), a team at Oak Ridge Nat'l Lab has discovered a cheap, efficient and scalable process to reverse the combustion process. In layman's terms: an electrochemical reaction that converts carbon dioxide into ethanol. This essentially proves up (through a similar process) research at Stanford in 2014 that theorized copper-oxide could be used convert carbon monoxide into ethanol (I bet none of you heard of that, either).
Regardless of your opinions on global warming, this is a game changer not just for reduction (and perhaps sequestration) of carbon but for sustrightble* energy production completely. The consensus that there is a theoretical cap on what percentage of the grid can come from renewable energy (i.e. wind, solar, hydro) could be thrown out the window. All of the sudden, Elon Musk looks like a genius and the Saudis are scared to death at what's going to happen when we don't need their oil anymore... in other words, the potential outcomes and possibilities are something most people couldn't even fathom until now.
And yet, nobody in the mainstream media is reporting on it. Evidently, despite ethanol being highly flammable, it won't start a dumpster fire... and if you want further proof, take this into account: most of you lost interest in this as soon as I mentioned the word "electrochemical."
But if you did make it this far, here's a nice little bonus for you... energy and atmospheric carbon may not be the only major advancements here; who here likes to drink carbonated beverages that are 4-9% ethanol?
*damn you Mod-o-correct
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Time
http://time.com/4536708/carbon-dioxide-ethanol/
CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/scientists-make-potential-breakthrough-for-renewable-energy-by-accident/
Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/1019/Scientists-accidentally-turned-pollution-into-fuel
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Time
http://time.com/4536708/carbon-dioxide-ethanol/
CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/scientists-make-potential-breakthrough-for-renewable-energy-by-accident/
Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/1019/Scientists-accidentally-turned-pollution-into-fuel
So, does this still constitute "nobody"?
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Time
http://time.com/4536708/carbon-dioxide-ethanol/
CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/scientists-make-potential-breakthrough-for-renewable-energy-by-accident/
Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/1019/Scientists-accidentally-turned-pollution-into-fuel
All three of your citations were published today, i.e. two days after the announcement. Though:
The CBS News article has already been bumped from their front page.
CSM's is buried in the margin below "Indian farmers can now hail a tractor with an Uber-like app." (though just before the riveting article on "Have clouds been spotted on Pluto?")
Credit to Time, however, who has it currently billed at #4 on their homepage just below the story about Britain rejecting dental care for migrants.
So perhaps some mainstream media are reporting it, albeit late. Kudos to Enlund, however, for holding down three jobs with different media organizations.
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Since the other thread got shut down, here's a nice tidbit that has nothing to do with politics (though idiocy always finds a way)...
On Monday there was an announcement in Tennessee that every major science publication and organization has picked up on regarding what could be the precursor to a multi-generational technological achievement... frankly, we could be talking this century's invention of the light bulb here:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a23417/convert-co2-into-ethanol/
By accident (of course, which is how all our great inventions were discovered), a team at Oak Ridge Nat'l Lab has discovered a cheap, efficient and scalable process to reverse the combustion process. In layman's terms: an electrochemical reaction that converts carbon dioxide into ethanol. This essentially proves up (through a similar process) research at Stanford in 2014 that theorized copper-oxide could be used convert carbon monoxide into ethanol (I bet none of you heard of that, either).
Regardless of your opinions on global warming, this is a game changer not just for reduction (and perhaps sequestration) of carbon but for sustrightble* energy production completely. The consensus that there is a theoretical cap on what percentage of the grid can come from renewable energy (i.e. wind, solar, hydro) could be thrown out the window. All of the sudden, Elon Musk looks like a genius and the Saudis are scared to death at what's going to happen when we don't need their oil anymore... in other words, the potential outcomes and possibilities are something most people couldn't even fathom until now.
And yet, nobody in the mainstream media is reporting on it. Evidently, despite ethanol being highly flammable, it won't start a dumpster fire... and if you want further proof, take this into account: most of you lost interest in this as soon as I mentioned the word "electrochemical."
But if you did make it this far, here's a nice little bonus for you... energy and atmospheric carbon may not be the only major advancements here; who here likes to drink carbonated beverages that are 4-9% ethanol?
*damn you Mod-o-correct
Whats interesting about this (assuming I'm understanding this science stuff correctly), it should lower the demand for energy from other countries as there is now another source of energy increasing the supply.
But at the same time, wouldn't this allow some of the energy production from fossil fuels to continue without harm to the environment? In essence, they would be able to use coal to generate energy, then use the CO2 from that, to then create more energy.
Or is there something else I'm missing here? (which is highly likely the case)
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Benny, ole buddy, to fully appreciate the story you discussed, the media would:
1) Have to know where Oak Ridge is (hint, Anderson County, about 30 miles NW of Knoxville).
2) Have to be willing to try to understand science.
3) Have to be willing to spend some money to actually go to Oak Ridge and spend time exploring what is going on there. Hint: TYS is not a global destination with cheap airfare.
The fact is that most news now comes from media mouthpieces on K Street in Washington or from a PR firm in New York City. Good ole enterprise reporting is so -- so passe to be ridiculous.
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Benny, ole buddy, to fully appreciate the story you discussed, the media would:
1) Have to know where Oak Ridge is (hint, Anderson County, about 30 miles NW of Knoxville).
2) Have to be willing to try to understand science.
3) Have to be willing to spend some money to actually go to Oak Ridge and spend time exploring what is going on there. Hint: TYS is not a global destination with cheap airfare.
The fact is that most news now comes from media mouthpieces on K Street in Washington or from a PR firm in New York City. Good ole enterprise reporting is so -- so passe to be ridiculous.
I think you are on to something - except I blame the American people rather than the media.
Unless the media can condense this to a 6 second sound bite, Americans will never have a clue about what is being accomplished.
I am not disagreeing with you about what news gets published and who it is influenced by. I just disagree on the reason.
You blame K Street and PR firms. I blame people who only want the latest gossip on the Kardashians. That is where the money is and that is why the networks and newspapers don't cover important stories. Even journalistic enterprises still have to look at their bottom line. And money comes from "culture crap"; not from a potentially important news story that isn't even gonna affect us in the next 24 hours..
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I read about it today and had to go back and check to see if I had fallen for clickbait. Yes, if this technology is proven effective, it could be a game changer.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-just-accidentally-figured-turn-150000672.html
Front page of Yahoo this PM, so.......
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All three of your citations were published today, i.e. two days after the announcement. Though:
The CBS News article has already been bumped from their front page.
CSM's is buried in the margin below "Indian farmers can now hail a tractor with an Uber-like app." (though just before the riveting article on "Have clouds been spotted on Pluto?")
Credit to Time, however, who has it currently billed at #4 on their homepage just below the story about Britain rejecting dental care for migrants.
So perhaps some mainstream media are reporting it, albeit late. Kudos to Enlund, however, for holding down three jobs with different media organizations.
Story placement on websites is typically driven by clicks. Story gets clicks, it gets moved up. Story doesn't get clicks, it moves down or vanishes.
Once again, people are blaming the media for giving the consumers exactly what they want.
It's no fluke that People and Cosmo have three times the circulation of Popular Science.
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Isn't Keefe working on something like this?
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I read about it today and had to go back and check to see if I had fallen for clickbait. Yes, if this technology is proven effective, it could be a game changer.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-just-accidentally-figured-turn-150000672.html
Front page of Yahoo this PM, so.......
If this pans out on a large scale I wonder what copper futures will look like.
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I like to watch good threads burn.
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BAN GUNS, SOCIAL JUSTICE FOR ALL
GO TRUMP NEVER HILLARY
unnatural carnal knowledge TRUMP That racist pig.
etc. etc. etc....
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Science reporting is deplorable ought to be one of Newton's laws.
I'd sure love to know how much energy they have to put into the reaction compared to how much energy the ethanol contains. Said another way, if we have to burn lots of fuel to turn CO2 into ethanol, how far ahead are we getting?
That, for any chemical engineers lurking out there, is a serious question.
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There are reasons why this isn't picking up steam. A key element is:
"the overpotential probably precludes economic viability for this catalyst".
Bottom line, this type of approach uses substantially more energy than it can ever produce. As a method of generating energy commodities it is a terrible approach. Also, frankly, the Chemistry is not particularly that interesting or surprising.
There research is based off a similar finding early this year by the Kanan lab at Stanford.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.6b00022
(http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.6b00022)
To accomplish similar goals this more recent paper provides a better approach and is mechanistically and chemically more interesting.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7593/full/nature17185.html
(http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7593/full/nature17185.html)
The latter paper allows a method to generate more interesting commodities that can be used as substrates to generate biofuels or to replace oil/coal as a source of carbon compounds for commodity feedstocks.
Now, to your point, neither of these more interesting breakthroughs got any press either. Why? People don't trust science, people are afraid of science and people don't understand science.
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:D SOME people don't trust, are afraid of science. ;)
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:D SOME people don't trust, are afraid of science. ;)
Yes, I know, I'm overly fond of hyperbole. My apologies. Thank you for not killing me for it though.
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Science reporting is deplorable ought to be one of Newton's laws.
I'd sure love to know how much energy they have to put into the reaction compared to how much energy the ethanol contains. Said another way, if we have to burn lots of fuel to turn CO2 into ethanol, how far ahead are we getting?
That, for any chemical engineers lurking out there, is a serious question.
I am sure the energy from burning coal would be sufficient enough to generate electric power and convert the CO2 that is given off to ethanol. Seems like a win/win for both the fossil fuel folks and the environmentalists.
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There are reasons why this isn't picking up steam. A key element is:
"the overpotential probably precludes economic viability for this catalyst".
Bottom line, this type of approach uses substantially more energy than it can ever produce. As a method of generating energy commodities it is a terrible approach. Also, frankly, the Chemistry is not particularly that interesting or surprising.
There research is based off a similar finding early this year by the Kanan lab at Stanford.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.6b00022
(http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acscentsci.6b00022)
To accomplish similar goals this more recent paper provides a better approach and is mechanistically and chemically more interesting.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7593/full/nature17185.html
(http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7593/full/nature17185.html)
The latter paper allows a method to generate more interesting commodities that can be used as substrates to generate biofuels or to replace oil/coal as a source of carbon compounds for commodity feedstocks.
Now, to your point, neither of these more interesting breakthroughs got any press either. Why? People don't trust science, people are afraid of science and people don't understand science.
No... it's not a net-positive equation. Even if they can get the efficiency of the conversion to 99.9%, I don't think it's possible for a reverse-combustion process to be net-positive. So sure, on the surface, it seems like a waste of energy.
But consider that we're already wasting energy - a lot of it - be it from renewable or fossil fuel sources... and sure, you could charge a battery and recapture some of that wasted energy, but it would take a few closets of Sears Die-Hards to do anything meaningful (i.e. it's not scalable). The advancement here is that the CO2 -> C2H6O process can be scaled.
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I am sure the energy from burning coal would be sufficient enough to generate electric power and convert the CO2 that is given off to ethanol. Seems like a win/win for both the fossil fuel folks and the environmentalists.
Will it? There's no such thing as a free lunch, or at least that's how I recall the laws of thermodynamics holding sway. What if burning 1 unit of coal produces 10 units of energy and 10 units of CO2, what if 9 units of that energy are necessary to turn the CO2 into ethanol? Is the 1 unit of energy worth all the other non-CO2 pollutants?
Call my crazy, but I'm concerned that this one sounds a bit too good to be true. Hope I'm wrong.
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No... it's not a net-positive equation. Even if they can get the efficiency of the conversion to 99.9%, I don't think it's possible for a reverse-combustion process to be net-positive. So sure, on the surface, it seems like a waste of energy.
But consider that we're already wasting energy - a lot of it - be it from renewable or fossil fuel sources... and sure, you could charge a battery and recapture some of that wasted energy, but it would take a few closets of Sears Die-Hards to do anything meaningful (i.e. it's not scalable). The advancement here is that the CO2 -> C2H6O process can be scaled.
I know, I strongly disagree on its scalability. The papers I referenced are better science, more likely to be advanced (the more recent one does not require metal catalysts) and by coupling to biological processes that can employ light as the energy source, may be able to provide a net benefit.
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I saw this topic on Reddit .. the first, most upvoted comment was something to the effect of: "Anyone think that in 5-10 years, we'll never hear about this amazing new tech again?"
Not a week goes by where there's some "revolutionary breakthru" on some health or science issue that'll change EVERYTHING.
Then it doesn't.
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Whether it pans out or not is somewhat besides the point... this is ORNL, not a graduate student science lab at the University of Dayton, that has made a major scientific breakthrough on something that the likes of CalTech, Stanford, MIT, etc. have been publishing related research for years, decades in some cases. It's also not coming from a corporation or industry-funded research lab where you'd immediately question the purpose/objectivity of the research. When something comes out of the same laboratory that happened to be the epicenter of the Manhattan Project (in layman's terms, "research that make two big booms in Japan"), you better give some credence or at least pay attention.
The fact that most people just brush this off clearly explains why media took 48-96 hours to jump on the story, if they even did at all... and even then, those in the mainstream who did essentially did a copy/paste job of the release. When a plane goes down in the Indian Ocean, within an hour or two we're bombarded with "experts" on CNN, FNC, NBC, etc. and their fancy graphics speculating on what (could have) happened without any data, evidence, background, etc.; however, when ORNL reports a breakthrough, not one of those media outlets bothers interviewing the true experts - believe me, there's no shortage of Nobel scientists, let alone professors who are just highly revered in their field, who could weigh in on this - who can actually read, process, analyze and opine on the actual research and findings instead of whipping together a PowerPoint and seeing what comes out their six that morning.
Even if it turns out to be nothing at all, the research is still (or should be) much more relevant to society than what particular jokes Clinton and Trump happened to tell at the Al Smith dinner.
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Isn't Keefe working on something like this?
Our technology produces two moles of H2 for every mole of CH4 in exhaust gas.
Our process improves the combustion of base fuels while this is reclaiming the C2H5OH from the CO2. I haven't had time to read about this but if it can scale then it is very compelling science.