‘Diamonds from the sky’ approach turns CO2 into valuable products

[NNadir]

4. I've attended lots of ACS meetings with presentations like this. At the meeting in Indianapolis...

...a few years back we had Princeton Professor Andy Bocarsley give us an "update" on his electrochemical cell for converting carbon dioxide to methanol.

He founded a company, "Liquid Light" with one of his former graduate students. They were, if I have this right, power the whole world with solar energy and methanol.

When that didn't work out, they decided to go into the business of making isotopically labeled compounds, from what I hear anyway.

Does anyone with a breathless reaction to this understand the thermodynamics of heating molten carbonates to 1380C with dilute energy sources?

The grotesque failure of the solar industry for the much simpler task of making electricity (as opposed to heating molten carbonate baths) is a function of how dilute it is.

For the record, there are very few ACS meetings where one does hear of "breakthroughs" of this type. The only problem with the overwhelming majority of them is that they don't scale past the benchtop, although many times they fulfill their real function, which is getting DOE or other grants.