HN Reader

I guess mass extinction (via microplastics) works for some planet-saving outcome.

title should read "makes plastic from CO², H²O,electrons,and half of the expensive end of the periodic table" catalitic reactions are well know, and I think that in a lot of related processes are actualy things that are problematic and engineers work hard to avoid, IE: large scale industrial processes useing CO², plus other gasses will be plagued with "byproducts" or "deposits"that gum stuff up and are tedious to remove, and those will be solids and liquids that are oils and polymers. Peversly, "clean" CO² can sometimes get wildly expensive, CO² is used in food, and medical, and other refining, and for those purposes, regular industrial CO² wont do, and we are back to square one, and the nitty gritty of chemical engineering. One interesting use for CO² is as a solvent, as it causes no chemical changes itself, that it must be in a supper critical state adds a bit of challenge, but the end products are ultra pure.

All plastic is made from carbon dioxide, water, and electricity (it's just that usually this was done millions of years ago).

Thanks. We needed more plastic.

I mean yeah it’s great that it’s system that can make plastic without oil. But really, do we need more plastic?

Trouble is always the economics of production. We've been able to turn CO2 into useful materials for a long time.

Sabatier's reaction has been known for about a century, and that turns CO2 into methane. Also Fischer Tropsch will convert CO (which you can get from poor combustion) into larger hydrocarbons.

Many of the advancements nowadays are in making the catalysts more energy efficient or cheaper.

But I suspect eventually what needs to happen is a combination of regulation (to reduce the amount of fossil derived CO2) and government subsidy (to harm the economics of extracting oil, as the free market doesn't intrinsically penaltize long term harm)

It’s remarkable how many problems can be solved with energy.

Turning co2 into a building material at a rate faster than trees is what we need. Co2 bricks anyone?

Can it go the other way?

This, some random organism digests CO2 into petroleum, and gargle with this liquid and have no more cavities are the "tomorrow, all beer is free" of my life

POC||GTFO