Is it possible to use energy from renewable energy sources to break down CO2 and when needed, turn that back into another molecule? Or am I dumb?
And is it efficient?
In: 1
You’re thinking of carbon fuel cells.
The problem is that realistically speaking, it would have to be a carbon monoxide fuel cell, so the fuel would be in a gaseous format. The reason for this is that the triple bond between carbon and oxygen in carbon monoxide is the single strongest bond in all of chemistry, and breaking that bond is hard to do. As far as I understand, you can’t just electrolyze CO2 to oxygen and carbon. That’s not how it works.
But once you go to a gaseous fuel cell, you may as well use hydrogen. The hydrogen and oxygen to water reaction is much easier to manage, and electrolyzing water is way easier than splitting oxygen off of CO2. The oxygen atoms on CO2 are both double bonded to the carbon. But in water two hydrogen atoms each have a single bond to the oxygen, making it easier to reverse by electrolysis.
But even then, electrolytic hydrogen derived from water gives back less energy than it takes to produce it by electrolysis.
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