 Vishal Bhavsar Apr 17, 2016 12:55  | This is excellent and innovative proposal and enables buildings which is amongst the contributor to global climate change to provide long term solution. Regards, Vishal |
 Raj Panchal May 12, 2016 09:54  | see this The article in this link was written on January 27, 2016 http://phys.org/news/2016-01-carbon-dioxide-captured-air-methanol.html "Direct CO2 capture and conversion to methanol using molecular hydrogen in the same pot was never achieved before. We have now done it!" Prakash told Phys.org. As a next step, the researchers plan to lower the catalyst operating temperature and improve its efficiency. "We will continue the studies to develop more robust catalysts that work around 100 to 120 °C," Prakash said. "We would like to perform the chemistry in a preparatively useful way, wherein there are no solvent or reagent losses."
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Raj Panchal May 12, 2016 10:59 | |
Raj Panchal May 12, 2016 10:54 | whereas molecular hydrogen can be directly used as fuel; for example see http://www.toyota-global.com/innovation/environmental_technology/fuelcell_vehicle/ which being a direct process will cause less pollution and emissions
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Jessica Karch May 17, 2016 04:05 | Proposal contributor Hi rajpanchal, thanks for your comment! So, our planned conversion is an enzymatic conversion and goes through a different mechanism, so our catalyst and dH values are a little different. There's a wealth of literature on this mechanism, for example see here: https://web.anl.gov/PCS/acsfuel/preprint%20archive/Files/49_1_Anaheim_03-04_0945.pdf However, even in our mechanism there are some energy problems-- if you read through the literature, you'll see that one of the problems of realizing CO2 to MeOH on high scale is exactly that equilibrium problem. Part of what our project does is try to solve and optimize that. Re: hydrogen, you are right that H2 can also be used as a fuel. However, we are mostly targeting the residential sector and looking to produce fuel / energy storage in the home itself. Because of its flammability, H2 isn't the right fuel for our purposes. Our process also has net zero emissions, because we produce methanol from captured CO2. |
Raj Panchal May 24, 2016 12:01 | I agree its not even flammability but it is explosive. But to tell you more detail- even if you lower the activation energy to zero with your catalyst you will use the energy of one molecule of hydrogen in the reaction itself. That is what I am trying to say. Instead of this make hydrogen fuel cells as the ones used in the car MIRAI (see link) http://www.toyota-global.com/innovation/environmental_technology/fuelcell_vehicle/ this will give electricity and mind well this method is much much more energy efficient and make smaller fuel cells to make it compact and portable. You already have huge loads of finance spend it more efficiently. |
 Tiziano Cattaneo Jun 13, 2016 12:45  | Hello Gensoric, Good luck for your project proposal. Just review and make it completed before meet deadline after tomorrow. Thank you. |
Jessica Karch Jun 14, 2016 12:47 | Proposal contributor Rajpanchal, thanks for your comments! I tried to address why we decided to go with methanol over hydrogen in the revised proposal. Methanol versus hydrogen economies is a super interesting question, but we're not just oriented at fuel cells and transportation fuels, but towards residential heating. In this sector methanol is actually better suited, at least for our application. And thank you for the reminder tlzlanocattaneo! We've been working on it on a word document, but the proposal is updated now online. |
the value of delta H is negative because of H2 (molecular hydrogen). Even if very highly efficient catalyst is used and the temperature pressure requirement is very low molecular hydrogen or some other material that allows the delta H to be negative is a necessity. We can't get energy from nothing.