Actually, there is no misinformation in these posts – at least, not in the posts that talk about the first law of Thermodynamics and the conservation of energy. Any system that turns CO2 into fuel, whether algae, or ethanol from corn, or the purported Carbon Sciences process, uses carbon as a kind of rechargeable battery. You put energy in at one end, and take it out (minus some overhead) at the other end. The energy has to come from somewhere – solar, wind (which is ultimately another kind of solar), nuclear (as your post pointed out – thanks!). Presumably the only reason for using energy powerplant effluent is because the percentage of CO2 is higher. That may help the efficiency of the process, but that’s only a guess. As Tundrayeti points out, this is basically a varient on the algae companies.

http://www.mantraenergy.com/

The site is pushing for a process which converts CO2 into formic acid.

Opinions?

The cheapest biomass obtained from microalgae costs US$3/kg only if cultured in heterotrophic conditions (so, that is without considering the cost of the carbon source). In photobioreactors, the best cost known to man at industrial scale is US$7/kg. WIth an oil content of 30%, I’ll let you do the math to see if oil from algae is economic feasible. I have not any doubt that is technically feasible, but we are still stuck with our market system that defines what gets done and what is not.

Therefore I officialy pronounce the claims of this company, as the moment of this writing, and in sight of no further evidence from their part, to be utter marketing nonsensical gibberish.

I was expecting to see a technical description involving photosyntetic organisms, as from the beginning I suspected yet another fuel from algae shoddy claim, and I was even more dissapointed to find an utter nonsensical babble that, if I were charged with the task of translating into something understandable, should read that they have found a way to mimic metabolic pathways to produce highly reduced forms of carbon. As other comments have stated, where is the energy source for that? Even chemosinthetic extremophiles that survive by reducing Sulfur, need a thermal rich environment as source of energy.

You’ll have to excuse us, but this company is trying to sell a pure and huge load of BS.

Regards.

I get the general impression that you think someone legitimately pointing out that an idea literally defies the laws of physics just makes them a nay-sayer and anti-environment loser.

Let me clarify. I think it is pretty damn important to get our carbon emissions under control. In fact, judging by your displayed lack of thought clarity, I probably understand the importance far more than you.

Here’s the deal. Jokers like Carbon Science are positively hurting the envirnment and the ‘green movement’. The do this by:
1) Scamming dollars for worthless, bogus, ideas that could otherwise be spent on useful ideas and technologies.
2) Making the ‘green movement’ look like a bunch mindless morons and hurting its credibility.

Get this….. I don’t want theives draining off money that could be used to do some real good. Now, go take a science class.

I’ve done a little more research and actually read the much overhyped article that caused interest in this company to start with…

After all is said and done, I think they are just another algae company… with the “intermediate carbon compounds” being algae oil and sludge…

Algae does work – using the energy from sunlight. It hasn’t yet been shown to be feasible for under a thousand dollars PER GALLON… but hey! It’s a popular gimmick these days, so they’ll probably get more funding.

Anyhow, I just thought I’d fill everyone in… The missing energy SEEMS to be sunlight. But since algae-derived-fuel is currently costing thousands per gallon and doesn’t look possible to ever cost less than ~25-50/gallon, they probably just didn’t want to call themselves algae.

Seriously though, why would someone suggest burning fossil fuels in a conventional plant,
producing energy and CO2, then use twice the energy to convert CO2 back to fuel?

Maybe the green and fossil fuel power plant part is misleading. Perhaps the real objective
is to use nuclear power to produce fuel from other CO2 sources?

You ask me if I read the about page, but i don’t think you actually read my post. Let me highlight what I said:
“I went through the about page of inhabitat.com“. If you read it in context you would have realized that i was referring to what they post on their page for initiatives to promote green living, which has NOTHING to do with the about page of carbon sciences.

In the event of any sort of scam, the scammers are going to produce a list of credentials to secure funds.
Interestingly enough, I decided to do a little research on one of the ‘listed’ Ph.D.s, Michael Wrysta. Using Google only produces hits similar to this post. I then hit up SciFinder Scholar to look for any academic, scientific, or technical publications which he might have been a part of.

0 hits. Go ahead and invest in them. As many posters noted here, there are certain thermodynamic laws that cannot be broken, and the(carbon sciences) website is so scarce on information, any serious investor should really think twice before getting involved. And again I would like to re-emphasize that inhabitat.com should pick up a writer with some background in chemistry or physics.

For those of you that are interested in ACTUAL work that is not a fraud, we\\\’ve been working on a viable means of USING RENEWABLE ENERGY to convert CO2 and H2O into fuels.
http://www.WindFuels.com

You\\\’ll find that all of the numbers are included, cost estimates are provided, and the chemical processes, reactions, and catalysts are detailed so that those who have the background can actually check up on us (hundreds of scientists and chemical engineers have done so and found no errors.)

So, you can get excited about what is clearly fraud concerning Carbon Sciences… or you can look at some real work that is being done to solve the energy and environmental crisis.

Inhabitat should do a little more research before jumping on something that is clearly hype.

To turn a low energy molecule (CO2 or H2O or whatever) into a high energy molecule (fuel any sort) REQUIRES a net input of energy AT LEAST equal to the energy that would be released when burning the fuel.

To do otherwise is to create a perpetual motion machine (of the first kind).

Plants do what is claimed as efficiently as we can imagine doing it at the moment. But, without sunshine (energy input) they can\’t do a thing.

Repeating…. this a FRAUD FRAUD FRAUD. and anyone with a degree in chemistry or any branch of physics would absolutely know it.

“Dr. Gadewar’s international accolades include receiving the American Institute of Chemical Engineer’s Ted Peterson Award, and Computers and Chemical Engineering’s Best Paper of the Year Award.”

“Dr. Wyrsta holds a PhD in Materials from the University of California at Santa Barbara.”

“Dr. Aslam received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Punjab University, Lahore, Pakistan and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida.”

Sounds like they’re people that know what they’re doing when it comes to reactor design.

\”Dr. Aslam received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Punjab University, Lahore, Pakistan and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida.\”

\”Dr. Wyrsta holds a PhD in Materials from the University of California at Santa Barbara.\”

\”Dr. Gadewar\’s international accolades include receiving the American Institute of Chemical Engineer\’s Ted Peterson Award, and Computers and Chemical Engineering\’s Best Paper of the Year Award.\”

WTF dude? It sounds like these people actually have quite a bit of experience in reactor design. Now what\’s your excuse?