The EcoStack: From Waste to Fuel
Design Process
Our final product is the EcoStack. It builds on all of our previous ideas in a renewable, efficient way that will convert CO2 from factories and water drawn from the air into fuel and oxygen! Learn more on the EcoStack page!
Final Design: The EcoStack
Idea #1: Splitting CO2 into Oxygen and Carbon
Our original design was to excite the atoms in CO2 molecules and split them into carbon and oxygen.
Some problems with this are that we would need huge amounts of power to split the CO2. Scientists have split CO2 before, but to do it they used an extremely high-power laser that would be very expensive and would release much more CO2 into the atmosphere. There would also be a high chance of releasing carbon monoxide, which could be lethal and dangerous.
Our next idea was to replicate photosynthesis, a process used by plants to use carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight to create glucose.
Some problems with this are that plants use extremely small 'parts' that are made up of cells. Because of this, it would be nearly impossible to replicate this within the next few years. Also, in order to put it into a smokestack all of the parts would need to be resistant to the other flue gases flowing up the smokestack. This would be hard to do, since the other chemicals could break the parts and break the EcoStack.
Idea #2: Replicating photosynthesis
This process is being tested by many companies and essentially separates CO2 from other flue gases and stores it. However, an enormous problem with this is storing the carbon dioxide. Many companies have suggested storing it underground, but eventually we will run out of storage and it is very expensive to continuosly store the CO2. Also, if a company wants to sell or use the carbon dioxide it will be very hard to store it.
The last idea we considered was capturing pure carbon dioxide and storing it for use in industry or for consumer products.