Well I just figured there is little point of trying to assess the merits of step two process (conversion of CO2 into CO), if step one, obtaining the CO2, isn’t feasible. So maybe step two could make sense if the CO2 is obtained by some means other than extracting it from a mixture of gases. The difficulties of extracting CO2 from a mixture of gases seem to make that approach uneconomical; hence the conversion to fuel would also be uneconomical. Maybe a fair question would be whether Carbon Engineering could make a free market profit with its copper catalyst process even if it were given infinite amounts of pure CO2 absolutely free?

Hi Al, Thank you for you input. The Stanford technology is using copper with water and electricity to take CO and convert it to ethanol. The source of the CO is CO2 which obviously has to be stripped of one oxygen atom by some industrial or chemical process. I would assume that there are inexpensive ways to do this. I know researchers at University of Delaware invented a process using electricity, water and bismuth. You can read about that discovery at: http://www.udel.edu/udaily/2013/jun/solar-synthetic-fuel-062013.html. So it would seem that what Stanford is developing may be an interesting solution. As for the carbon capture, extracting CO2 out of the air I thank you for your input.

A similar chemical system was used in the Apollo lunar missions, which employed lithium hydroxide in canisters as the CO2 scrubbing agent. Nuclear subs, the space shuttle, and international space station, with much more power available, use regenerative systems. But the fundamental concept remains the same: some chemical reaction lightly binds the CO2. Heating the resulting compound releases the CO2, which can then be vented. A lot more energy is consumed in the processes than would ever be released by converting the recovered CO2 into CO to use in a liquid fuel synthesis process.

From Wiki: “The dominant application for CO2 scrubbing is for removal of CO2 from the exhaust of coal- and gas-fired power plants. Virtually the only technology being seriously evaluated involves the use of various amines, e.g. monoethanolamine. Cold solutions of these organic compounds bind CO2, but the binding is reversed at higher temperatures:
CO2 + 2HOCH2CH2NH2 HOCH2CH2NH3+HOCH2CH2NH(CO2-)
As of 2009, this technology has only been lightly implemented because of capital costs of installing the facility and the operating costs of utilizing it.” The basic chemistry hasn’t changed, and it probably never will.
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/business/pilot-plant-in-the-works-for-carbon-dioxide-cleansing.html?_r=0

and: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_scrubber

Carbon Engineering’s program sounds like another uneconomic greenhead technical assault on public funds. But even Carbon Engineering is not seriously contemplating extracting CO2 from the air. If they are going to harvest any CO2 from a mixture of gases, it will be from the exhaust of coal-fired power plants (about 150,000 ppm CO2). Only if public funds subsidize it would the harvested CO2 project be profitable to Carbon Engineering. Black Light Power and Rossi’s E-cat look like bad bets, Carbon Engineering’s scheme, while at least technically possible, looks even worse.