Time Odyssey

So I was mentioning earlier this week about the idea of the reduction and recombination of CO₂ to carbon fibre ribbons which could potentially then be used for buiding materials using advanced composites.  There are however very few processes that can be used to reduce CO₂ which are not in some way based on organic reduction. Photosynthesis, for all its simplicity in the classroom, is really a far more complicated process that scientists do not understand in detail. Bacteria will convert CO₂ to methane (CH₄). So what we find is that most of the literature on CO₂ reduction is focused on obtaining the maximum exchange rates from a given unit quantity of biomass acting as a catalyst.

These simple types of reductions however don’t get us the more complicated polymers we need for the production of more useful products. Carbon Fibre is based on a base polymer called Polyacrylonitrile (C₃H₃N). The process involves repeated heating and cooling which expells the hydrogen and nitrogen gasses and leaves us a product which is almost pure carbon. Now the nice thing about the potential to use CO₂ reduction in the process of carbon fibre creation is that the fullout process suggests that the only real consumable beyond CO₂ is nitrogen. I’ll explain why that is of benefit tomorrow but in the meantime here is the general gist of the flow (granted with lots of intermediate steps not worked out).

2CO₂ + 2H₂O ==> CO + CH₄ + O₂

3CH₄ + NH₃ + O₂ ==> C₃H₃N + 2H₂O

10C₃H₃N + Heat ==> 3C₁₀N₂ (Carbon Fibre) + 15H₂ + 2N₂ (approx.)

So – from an environmental standpoint, we now have CO₂ and nitrate reductions with byproducts being carbon monoxide (to be converted to syngas for commercial uses), hydrogen gas (fuel cells for residential purposes) and residual nitrogen gas along with building materials stronger than steel without the need for cutting down a lot of trees. -K