Plasma and electricity convert CO₂ into methanol, butane and other useful chemicals
https://phys.org/news/2026-09-plasma-electricity-methanol-butane-chemicals.html
log in to comment.
https://phys.org/news/2026-09-plasma-electricity-methanol-butane-chemicals.html
log in to comment.
Is there nothing KDE cant do.
If you wiggle your plasma torch, the flame gets bigger and bigger which makes it easier to spot.
This means if we get fusion working, we could have enough energy to scrub the atmosphere of carbon and turn it back into gasoline.
Could literally have our cake and eat it too but that would mean that oil execs would be too poor to molest kids without repercussions
In theory, but I think gasoline is probably the least useful product you could make with it. It would just be a wasteful process to keep outdated engines alive.
Hydrocarbons are one of the best energy stores available. We also have large networks already set up to distribute and use them. Being able to dump large amounts of excess energy into hydrocarbons as energy storage and feedstock would be a big gain for saving the planet.
Isn’t it necessary in the production of plastic? Presumably with still need it for that.
Hopium.
Its pretty simple.
Hydrocarbons + oxygen + ignition releases energy, H20, and CO2.
Energy + CO2 + H20 can synthesize hydrocarbons.
There is plenty of interesting research how to do the latter - but it doesnt change the fact it just reverses a process we currently do by the tanker ship full. Why would anyone do that at scale?
It cant have a large scale application until we basically have free energy from some other source - and at that point, synthetic fuel is probably still a terrible way to store and use energy for pretty much everything except jet airplanes.
My terminally online brain initially saw the first image in the thumbnail as a 3d version of the mental gymnastics meme for some reason
I need to go and walk in a park or something
Gymnastics might not be a bad alagory for catalysis. It’s all about getting the molecules lined up to make the reactions easier than relying on heat and random collisions to get you there.
see we could solve this problem if we wanted
Cool, although I’m assuming it requires pure CO₂ and would need to be combined with some other carbon capture mechanism.