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From bruces@yami.57thstreet.com  Mon Aug 12 11:02:36 2002

Key concepts:  Nakamichi Yamasaki, hydrocarbon
generation, carbon dioxide, industrial chemistry
Attention Conservation Notice: Yet another
weird Nipponese scheme, about some miracle
Tornados in Britain?  Maybe it really is the 51st State.
Newfangled suntan pill alleged to have peculiar side-
See all those really bright places? Well, that's
The West Nile plague has reached Austin.
"I'm no graphic artist == the feature list is the
This contest expires in four days:   August 15, 2002.
"Carbon dioxide turned into hydrocarbon fuel
(((Please, no immediate lectures on the second law of
thermodynamics. I have plenty of those.)))
"A way to turn carbon dioxide into hydrocarbons has caused
a big stir at an industrial chemistry conference in New
Brunwick, New Jersey. Nakamichi Yamasaki of the Tokushima
Industrial Technology Center in Japan says he has a
process that makes propane and butane at relatively low
"While his work still needs independent verification,
(((okay, go fetch us some, then))) if he can make even
heavier hydrocarbons, it might be possible to make petrol.
It has carbon chains that are between five and 12 atoms
long == butane is four atoms long.  ((("That's right,
Professor: I just hook it up to the sky and I make
"The work suggests the tantalising prospect that CO2,
the main greenhouse gas, could be recycled instead of
"Many people have tried before to make hydrocarbons by
mixing carbon with hydrogen gas in a reaction chamber at
very high temperatures, but yields have always been
pitiful. Yamasaki has used hydrochloric acid as his source
of hydrogen ions. ((("But where are we s'posed to get all
that hydrochloric acid?" Yes, I know, I know.)))
"He bubbles the CO2 into a reaction vessel where it is
heated to about 300 C at 100 times atmospheric pressure.
The heat and pressure are low enough, says Yamasaki, to
make it feasible to scale up the reaction so it can run on
a power station's waste heat. (((Imagine the fun when a
giant tank of pressurized acid blows up.)))
"Using iron powder as a catalyst, Yamasaki says he has
made substantial amounts of methane, ethane, propane and
butane, which he was able to vent off as gases when the
mixture cooled. If he can improve the catalyst's
performance he is hopeful of making heavier hydrocarbons
"William Siegfried, who has lead similar experiments
at the University of Minnesota in the twin cities of
Minneapolis and St Paul, says his group was only able to
make methane at far higher temperatures. But his process
also used a nickel-based alloy as a catalyst, rather than
"Siegfried's group was investigating whether natural
methane deposits might have formed chemically with the
metal in rocks acting as a catalyst rather than forming
from the decay of rotting biological material over aeons.
(((Paging Thomas Gold! "Deep Hot Biosphere" calling on
"Unless Yamasaki's technology can make the more
valuable heavier hydrocarbons such as petroleum, which are
liquid at room temperature, it will not be much more use
than present-day bioreactors, in which bacteria that like
to feed on CO2 are induced to produce methane. 'Organisms
have a special talent for that kind of reaction,' says