malom38

Hello, I have recently thought of a way of separating CO2 into carbon
and oxygen, which may reduce global warming and raising the precentage
of oxygen in the atmosphere, if correct.
Magnesium metal "burns" in CO2, in the reaction:

1) 2Mg + CO2 --> 2MgO + C

This is an exothermic reaction, meaning it will produce energy in the
form of heat and light in this case.
To extract the oxygen from the Magnesium Oxide formed, one can heat it
until decomposition or dissolve it in water and electrolyze, in both
cases the oxygen and magnesium will be separated, the magnesium can
now be reused in reaction one.
The Magnesium Oxide decomposition reaction:

2) 2MgO + heat --> 2Mg + O2

Electrolysis reaction:

3) 2MgO + 2H2O --> 2Mg+2 + 4OH-
2Mg+2 + 4e --> 2Mg (Magnesium restored)
4OH- -4e --> 2O2 + 2H2
2O2 + 2H2 --> O2 + H2O (Oxygen restored)

The resulting carbon in rection one can now be used as fuel in coal
power plants or any other use there is to carbon.
This is basically what plants do, by storing sunlight energy in sugar
by photosynthesis, this is also a way for energy storage, the
difference is, it can hopefully be done industrially, thus perhaps
giving answer to global warming, which results from excess of CO2,
which results from the rate of generation of CO2 by mankind is larger
than the rate of consumption by plants, but I hope this will balance
the CO2 consumption/generation one day.

Please comment on problems you have spotted,
Thanks in advance,

Tal Pritzker

steve spence

grow more plants .......

burn biofuels instead of fossil fuels.


--
Steve Spence
http://www.green-trust.org

barry hunt

<snip>

And where do you get the massive amount of energy required for
this????????????????????

Barry Hunt

joão antonio

and do not waste precioussssss carbon filling
ocean abiss

"Steve Spence" <sspence@green-trust.org> escreveu na mensagem
news:3f1dc565$1_1@newsfeed...

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old man

Clearly, Tal Pritzker is politically correct. However, the CO2
cycle though plants is nearly in balance. Peat bogs, oil deposits,
and coal deposits form relatively small reservoirs of carbon.
Mankind will have depleted these deposits in less than 200
years, which is an extremely short period of time compared to
the geological history of the Earth.

For every carbon atom in the present atmosphere, there are 100,000
carbon atoms locked up at the bottom of the oceans. This carbon
is returned to the atmosphere at plate subduction zones via volcanic
activity. Carbon is removed from the atmosphere by erosive action
of acid rain (carbonic acid) on iron bearing rocks. These is no
natural mechanism that would keep these two opposing processes in
equilibrium.

Down from 30 atmospheres 4 billion years ago, the current
atmospheric CO2 concentration is 0.0003, and like methane, this
minute quantity is more likely an indicator of other processes, rather
than a causative factor. By an overwhelming margin, the major
greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere is water vapor. The biosphere
of Earth is not in equilibrium, and never has been

We are in the midst of a glacial age, wherein the current inner glacial
warm period (10,000 years) could end at any time. As the Sun
heated up, and the surface of Earth cooled, the first glacial age
occurred 2.5 billion years ago, long before the existence of plants.
Since that time, the Earth has been precariously close to becoming a
permanent ice-ball. Ice ages have always brought mass extinctions
of species with them. A little global warming, if true, whatever the
cause, would be very good news for life on Earth. [Old Man]

brewhaha

(...)
That would require the kind of heat needed to liquify if not
vapourize concrete. I think you could do it more cheaply with
electrolysis, too. The point seems to be fixing carbon and burning it
again, with the input energy source unspecified.

fred b. mcgalliard

Surprised you had not heard that. Water is way complex. Clouds cool the land
during the day, and warm it at night. The water vapor itself is a strong
greenhouse gas, and it's contribution to storm circulation cells, cloud
layers that strongly interdict radiation, and as part of several life cycles
makes it's modeling very complicated.

old man

Look at the satellite data. It doesn't agree with ground based
(biased) observations. The European middle ages were warmer
than present. The "little ice age" that followed was devastating
to European civilization and ended only 150 years ago. So, yes,
it's warmer now than 300 years ago, but not warmer than a
thousand years ago. Ice cores from Greenland show that past
temperatures have been highly variable with abrupt changes.
During the last 100,000 years it has been much colder than now.
The last 10,000 years (inner glacial warm period) have been much
warmer, but that could, and probably will, end soon. In order
to accept the current concept of "global warming", one has to
assume that, until very recently, the Earth's biosphere was in long
term equilibrium, but this is not the case, and never has been.

We are in an ice age. We have been in it for the past 100,000 years.
We are now experiencing a 10,000 year interlude. Ice ages , even
the European "little ice age", aren't caused by a few volcanoes or
asteroid impacts. They are probably caused by variations in Earth's
orbit about the Sun, wherein one hemisphere (north/south) or the
other receives less radiation for an extended period of time. It
depends upon the location of the continents (continental drift) and
upon how much land area is above see level. It depends upon the
ocean currents. During Earth's long history, these factors have
changed, but not in a cyclic manner. While the Sun heated-up, the
Earth's atmosphere thinned and cooled. There is no long term mean.
Instead, there is a long term trend that may end in one big ice ball.
[O;d Man]

malom38

Energy isn't wasted as much as it seems, you get energy from the
magnesium/CO2 reaction and from the carbon formed, which is sold to
make it beneficial, and, you could use solar energy.
I think using solar energy would make this process possible and more
effective than plants, because we can make it in larger amounts and
faster.
Using solar power directly isn't possible sometimes, or isn't as
effective, that's why I think this process is good, it stores solar
power effectively, gets rid of atmospheric CO2 and gives oxygen.
Maybe you could put this process to work in the places in the rain
forests where they cut all the trees, then we'll see which is
better...

Thanks for your comment,

Tal Pritzker

fred b. mcgalliard

The points below are very important, but not quite all that can and should
be said. We do not really have a high confidence model for the global
weather changes over the past few tens of thousands of years. We have an
exceedingly oversimplified model that suggests increases in water vapor,
methane, CO2, and some other greenhouse gasses should produce a slight
increase in average temperature. Some much more questionable predictions
have been made for the impact this would have on local weather, which is
what we really get to measure. Given the uncertainty in the models I think
we cannot avoid the question of just what large scale effects a sudden rise
in the CO2 concentration might have, coupled with massive deforestation and
destabilization of a number of environmental factors by overgrazing, water
born contamination, etc. There are a number of positive feedback effects
which may suggest some unstable cusps, like those indicated by some data
which show a very rapid decent into ancient ice ages. It is not impossible
that we are flipping a switch in the weather patterns that we will not be
able to unswitch, and the price could be substantial. Or as others have
pointed out, we might just clumsily be slowing down the plunge into the next
ice age, to our benefit. It would be nice to know what we are really doing,
don't you think?