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Biology, 08.11.2019 18:31 anzeller6363

Can someone summarize this article in two paragraphs for i am horrible at summarizing

“we humans emitted 35.9 metric gigatons — around 39.5 billion tons — of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2014. mostly, it came from burning coal and natural gas in power plants, making fertilizer and cement, and other industrial processes. all that carbon dioxide is causing enormous problems. the biggest problem of all is the steady rise in average global temperatures known as global warming.
so far, policymakers have mostly focused on ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. however, there could be another approach. what if chemists could capture carbon dioxide and turn it into chemical building blocks for other products, the way plants do? then, says cornell university chemical engineer lynden archer, “carbon dioxide would not be a nuisance anymore, but a gift.”
traditional carbon sequestration process is expensive
for years, scientists have been trying to store carbon dioxide captured from exhaust flues at power plants and other emitters. mostly, they have been doing this by injecting it deep underground. so far, however, this expensive carbon sequestration process has not

proven to be economically viable. injecting carbon dioxide into old oil wells to drive out more oil is one application, but it is not enough, and it is not clear it even pays, given current low oil prices.
proponents of utilizing carbon rather than storing it hope they will profit by creating something of value from this waste. the most likely approach is to use the gas as a raw material for making chemical products. potentially, this could also pay off by providing a less polluting substitute for the coal and gas now used to produce many chemicals.
these proponents face a difficult problem, however. to use carbon dioxide, chemists have to heat it up, which usually requires electricity. much of that electricity comes from power plants that burn coal or natural gas — emitting more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, even more than was captured.
new technologies may offer solutions
researchers say new technologies are changing that picture. paul bunje, a senior scientist at the xprize foundation, hopes that offering a big prize will encourage scientists to seek a solution. next tuesday, the foundation will announce that more than 40 teams are competing to win a $20-million prize. the winner of the carbon xprize, to be announced in spring 2020, will be the team that sequestered the most carbon dioxide into the product of the greatest value. teams aim to make plastics or other polymers, new fuels to replace gasoline, or industrial chemicals.
in the longer term, all the different companies producing one chemical or another could end up using enough carbon dioxide to make a difference. a problem on the scale of climate change needs multiple solutions, bunje says.
“the question now is how can people in chemistry create new reactions, new mechanisms to use carbon dioxide as a feedstock? ” says archer, who is also a carbon xprize advisory board member. archer himself has offered one fuel cells — cells that produce an electric current as a result of a chemical reaction. archer envisions a process using fuel cells that produce electricity while converting carbon dioxide into a chemical with commercial uses.
to test his idea, archer and his student wadji al sadat built a reactor that combines carbon dioxide with aluminum and oxygen to produce oxalates. oxalates are used to make acids, rust removers, fabric dyes and other industrial chemicals.
process can generate more energy than it consumes
archer is well aware of the pitfalls of trying to do environmentally friendly chemistry with carbon dioxide. “usually, you consume so much energy that it’s cost prohibitive — but we get energy back,” he says. “that surprised us.”
the fuel cell archer uses runs on aluminum and air. inside his reactor, oxygen reacts with an electrode made of aluminum to form a highly reactive aluminum superoxide capable of reacting with otherwise reluctant carbon dioxide. the two react to generate aluminum

oxalate. the fuel cell captures some energy from these chemical reactions, and although it requires a voltage to drive the reaction, the process appears to generate more electricity than it consumes, archer says.
because the metal is consumed, choosing the right one is key. he settled on aluminum because it is abundant and inexpensive. while aluminum production emits carbon dioxide, archer hopes his system will capture enough carbon within oxalates to offset that problem.
currently, a number of companies are working on different approaches to carbon utilization. for example, skyonic captures emissions from a cement plant and turns them into limestone and acid. solidia technologies sequesters carbon dioxide in concrete itself, and still other companies are working on making plastics, alternative fuels and various chemicals.”

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