How to create electricity by pumping CO2 through water?

[Tony Novelli]

I am currently working on a project for school where we need to create an alternative source of energy for a country. My country is Italy and I thought of the idea of utilizing the CO2 emissions from the fermentation in wine making processes. I know you can use CO2 emissions to create more power by pumping the CO2 through water. So I was wondering how i could create a small demonstration that actually can push the CO2 through the water to generate extra electricity and then harvest the electricity in a usable state. Here is link to the article I found on this http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/waste-co2-could-be-source-of-extra-power/ and this is a link for a schematic and more information. Environmental Science and Technology Letters

 

[berkeman]

I am currently working on a project for school where we need to create an alternative source of energy for a country. My country is Italy and I thought of the idea of utilizing the CO2 emissions from the fermentation in wine making processes. I know you can use CO2 emissions to create more power by pumping the CO2 through water. So I was wondering how i could create a small demonstration that actually can push the CO2 through the water to generate extra electricity and then harvest the electricity in a usable state. Here is link to the article I found on this http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/waste-co2-could-be-source-of-extra-power/ and this is a link for a schematic and more information. Environmental Science and Technology Letters

Welcome to the PF.

Interesting -- I hadn't seen that before. The article is from late 2013, have you seen any newer publications about it? Has anybody made prototypes? It would seem to be a pretty complicated thing to make as a project for school. What kind of lab facilities do you have available?

 

[JakeBrodskyPE]

Interesting -- I hadn't seen that before. The article is from late 2013, have you seen any newer publications about it? Has anybody made prototypes? It would seem to be a pretty complicated thing to make as a project for school. What kind of lab facilities do you have available?

The reason you haven't seen it before is that it probably isn't worth doing. Read the comments on that article.

Let's assume that compressing and bubbling this gas through water didn't cost anything. It actually is quite expensive, but humor me for a minute. They're talking about milliWatts per square meter. Someone dropped a prefix somewhere...

 

[inquisitivegeek]

I don't think it is worth doing either.

CO₂ is near the bottom of the chemical potential energy list - that's why you get so much energy from combusting C or CO.

 

[256bits]

Nernst Equation
Concentration Cell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nernst_equation

I am sure those have been heard of before.

Sample application - pH meter,
http://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-ph-meters-work.html

Is Slide Show OK here ? for the CO2 emission battery
http://www.slideshare.net/dutchpower/bert-hamelers-energyfrom-co2

Also, here is the reverse - a CO2 concentrator cell that will capture CO2 from the atmosphere or stack emissions and concentrate the %.
http://www.parc.com/content/attachments/P2009086-Electrochemical-CO2-Capture-Cleantech09.pdf

 

[inquisitivegeek]

I've got to run but the CO2 concentrator consumes energy. Just from the title + the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, one can deduce it: if you want to reduce the entropy you must invest energy into it.