Jet fuel production was successful from carbon dioxide

A research team at Oxford University in the UK devised an experimental process for converting carbon dioxide into jet fuel by studying how to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. If a facility could be built to take advantage of this process reaction on a large scale, it could not only create fuel, but could also contribute to solving climate change problems.

Fossil fuels such as petroleum and natural gas, which are usually used, extract energy from the hydrocarbons in them by combustion and release water and carbon dioxide. The research team said that by heating citric acid and hydrogen using a method called OCM (Organic Combustion Method) and adding carbon dioxide to it, iron, manganese, and potassium reacted as catalysts to produce a component that becomes a jet fuel.

Of course, this is an experiment conducted in a laboratory. It is only a few grams of liquid fuel produced. However, the research team explains that this reaction can be realized with less power and lower cost than a reaction that uses hydrogen to make fuel using water. If a facility using this reaction is installed in a steel or cement manufacturing plant that emits large amounts of carbon dioxide, or a thermal power plant, jet fuel can be recovered from carbon dioxide among the exhaust gases.

However, this does not mean that factories or power plants themselves reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore, the research team is also contemplating a method of recovering carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and turning it into fuel, not by exhaust gas such as factories. Even in this case, it is said that fuels can be obtained more easily than conventional methods of synthesizing expensive chemicals and purifying fuels because the catalyst materials required for the reaction are abundantly present on the earth.

Experts say the technology could be promising in the future if high-volume jet fuel can be produced at a high-efficiency in pilot production facilities. If the energy generating the heat required for the reaction can be supplied by wind power and solar power generation, the effect of reducing carbon dioxide will be greater.

Of course, even if it works well in the lab, there are many cases where unexpected problems block in the stage of scaling up. However, converting the engines currently used by jets to engines for other fuels with low environmental loads to reduce carbon dioxide emissions would require enormous development costs. It is worth looking forward to future developments as these costs can be eliminated. Related information can be found here .