Interesting new discovery by DoE converts CO2 into ethanol

[begreen]

"A process like this would allow you to consume extra electricity when it’s available to make and store as ethanol," Rondinone said. "This could help to balance a grid supplied by intermittent renewable sources."
http://www.sciencealert.com/scienti...-process-that-turns-co2-directly-into-ethanol

 

[woodgeek]

Very cool.

 

[jebatty]

Also looks like an easy way to turn that glass of carbonated water into a cocktail. Can we drink to that?

 

[TradEddie]

Since the law of conservation of energy hasn't been rescinded, even if this process was as simple and inexpensive as they suggest, at best it could only be useful if it was powered by excess renewable electricity. How then do you extract ethanol from a water solution? Distillation, even under vacuum uses additional energy. We'll have cold fusion before this becomes mainstream.

TE

 

[iamlucky13]

Ethanol water separation can be done pretty efficiently with heat recovery. There is also an osmotic method that I think is pretty efficient on its own.

I'm more curious about the efficiency of the conversion and the level of CO2 dissolved in the water they need for the process to work.

The big picture to me looks more like vehicle fuel production than direct grid balancing. Effectively, over-sizing your generation capacity and creating alternate demand to achieve good value from it is a form a grid balancing, but not in the normal sense of the term.

I'm assuming they don't mean balancing by burning the ethanol in power plants when demand is high. That right there sets an upper limit on the efficiency of balancing the grid this way of 40-50%, but most likely significantly lower. The efficiency consideration is less significant if the use is as a transportation fuel.