How Close Are We to Recycling Carbon Dioxide Emissions?

Carbon dioxide is a waste product of gasoline- and coal-burning engines, and it's a serious pollutant. But what if we could capture that carbon and recycle it into usable fuel? Learn why researchers say we're getting close in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff.
Lauren Vogue obamb Here's Fonte Arenas was a Swedish electrochemist
who in eight predicted that man made carbon dioxide emissions
would dramatically transform Earth's climate. You and I live in
the future he saw coming. So far, the twenty one

(00:23):
century has witnessed seventeen of the eighteen hottest years on record,
and just as Arenas suspected, the main cause of this
warming trend is all the CEO two we keep pumping
into the atmosphere. The scale of the problem is jaw dropping.
In the year seventeen alone, human beings unleashed forty point
five billion tons about thirty six point eight billion metric

(00:44):
tons of this world altering greenhouse gas. Much of the
blame Faulds on our transportation infrastructure. Around twenty of global
CEO two emissions are made by cars, trucks, airplanes, and
other vehicles, though just out of saying when cows and
other farm animals up or fart, they're contributing to climate
change too. The methane and livestocks belches and flatulence makes

(01:05):
up of all agriculture related greenhouse gas emissions, but back
to carbon dioxide. Wouldn't it be nice if we could
pull CEO two out of thin air and incorporate it
into a new kind of vehicular fuel that's better for
the environment. We may be ready to start doing just that.
In June, the energy research journal Jewel published a study

(01:27):
led by Harvard professor David Keith, an experimental physicist and
public policy expert. Keith founded the company Carbon Engineering in
two thousand nine. The organization's mission is to quote develop
and commercialized technology that captures industrial scale quantities of c
O two directly from the air. With the help of
Bill Gates and other investors, Carbon Engineering was able to

(01:49):
open a nine million dollar direct air capture plant in
tw Located in Squamish, British Columbia. The facility uses large
fans to pull outside air through filters coated with the
liquid solution that traps carbon dioxide. Then the captured gas
is converted into small pellets of calcium carbonate. Using these pellets,
Carbon Engineering has made synthetic gasoline, diesel, and even jet fuel.

(02:13):
The advantages of this air to fuel process are considerable,
whereas naturally occurring fossil fuels are notoriously finite. These man
made liquids are renewable, and since they're produced with recycled
c O two, they don't contribute to mankind's carbon footprint. Plus,
our existing vehicles wouldn't need to be modified in any
way to start running on these synthetic fuels. Over in

(02:35):
Switzerland there's another carbon capture plant run by climb Works,
a separate company which now sells recycled c O two.
But if this technology is going to make a significant
dent in our carbon emissions problem, will need a lot
of new plants. So how cost effective is that going
to be? Last year, m I T engineer Howard Herzog
estimated that it would cost an air capture facility a

(02:57):
thousand dollars to generate a single US that's about point
nine metric tons of usable carbon dioxide. Keith's new paper
begs to differ. According to his calculations, the process costs
a more reasonable nine dollars to two dollars per U
s ton. Keith said in a press statement, we can
confidently say that while air capture is not some magical,

(03:20):
cheap solution, it is a viable and buildable technology for
producing carbon neutral fuels in the immediate future and for
removing carbon in the long run. Today's episode was written
by Mark Mancini and produced by Tyler Clang. For more
on this and lots of other topics that will capture

(03:40):
your attention, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.