Scientists Have Figured Out How to Recycle Waste CO2 Back Into... Plastic

DAVID NIELD
21 JAN 2018

It's been clear for a while now that there's too much carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, heavily contributing to a warming planet, and now scientists have come up with a new plan for dealing with all this excess CO2 – converting it into plastic.

Plastic itself isn't the most environmentally friendly of materials, but not only would it mean that CO2 gets converted into something useful, it could also reduce the need to produce plastics out of fossil fuels, giving us a better chance of hitting targets for limiting climate change.

The new approach is the most efficient method yet that scientists have devised for converting carbon dioxide into ethylene, the raw material used to make the most commonly used plastic, polyethylene.

And it brings the possibility of a practical CO2-to-plastic conversion system a whole lot closer.

"I think the future will be filled with technologies that make value out of waste," says lead researcher Phil De Luna, from the University of Toronto in Canada.
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more: https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-plan-to-recycle-waste-carbon-dioxide-co2-into-plastic?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1




Umm. We're talking about a process that consumes a lot of energy -- at least as much as was obtained burning coal to make that CO2, and nearly as much as burning natural gas. This may sound neat in principal, but it doesn't address the question of where all that energy is going to come from.