It almost sounds too good to be true – researchers at the Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have reported that they have found a way to use sunlight to recycle carbon dioxide and produce fuel. The Sunlight to Petrol (S2P) project basically reverses the process of combustion and recovers hydrocarbons. These hydrocarbons can then be used to make liquid fuels such as methanol or gasoline. Scientists claim that they have already gotten the process to work.

Should their research prove to be true, it could signal a solution to the global warming and potential fuel shortage problems – the process would help reduce greenhouse emissions whilst also producing fuels. However, researchers have warned that it could be 10 years or more before a large-scale implementation can be tested.

Recycling carbon dioxide is not a new idea however all previous processes have proved to be too difficult or too expensive to be worthwhile. However with oil prices soaring and worldwide concern over the amount of carbon dioxide being released into the atmosphere, the new process could be the answer to the problems.

Lab experiments have shown that their process works however researchers are currently building a prototype. The process essentially is a heat engine which does chemical work rather than mechanical work. It is anticipated that the prototype will be completed by April of this year – it will be around the shape and size of a beer keg. Inside, there will be 14 cobalt ferrite rings with a diameter of approximately 1 metre and turning once a minute. A solar furnace will introduce sunlight into the unit, and this in turn will heat the rings up to around 2,600 F. At this temperature, oxygen will be released from the cobalt ferrite rings.

The rings are then cooled to around 2,000 F and exposed to carbon dioxide. As the rings are now missing oxygen, they take it from some of the carbon dioxide. This turns some of the carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and it is this carbon monoxide that is the building block for hydrocarbons. The cobalt ferrite rings are now in the state that they started in, with the require amount of oxygen, so the whole process can now start again.

Fuels such as methanol will be the easiest fuels to synthesize, however it is also possible to synthesize gasoline with a little more effort.

One of the major stumbling blocks of the process is creating a solar power system that can give enough energy to the cobalt ferrite to heat it up to the required temperatures and this is the reason why the technology may not be feasible on a larger scale for the next few years.

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