CO2 Mitigation on Earth and Magnesium Civilization on Mars – Just Add Water

[Meredith Poor + 894]

https://scitechdaily.com/co2-mitigation-on-earth-and-magnesium-civilization-on-mars-just-add-water/

Making methane and methanol from elemental magnesium, CO2, and water at room temperature and atmospheric pressure.

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

3 hours ago, Meredith Poor said:

https://scitechdaily.com/co2-mitigation-on-earth-and-magnesium-civilization-on-mars-just-add-water/

Making methane and methanol from elemental magnesium, CO2, and water at room temperature and atmospheric pressure.

I don't know about you, but when I add magnesium to water it explodes. So does lithium. 

[-trance + 114]

1 hour ago, Ward Smith said:

I don't know about you, but when I add magnesium to water it explodes. So does lithium. 

Try adding magnesium metal to water sometime and report your results; you get a few bubbles, nothing exciting.

Mg is not in the same group as Li, Na, K etc. which do light on fire when exposed to water.

 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

23 minutes ago, -trance said:

Try adding magnesium metal to water sometime and report your results; you get a few bubbles, nothing exciting.

Mg is not in the same group as Li, Na, K etc. which do light on fire when exposed to water.

If I'm being honest, I was purposely trying to make it go boom.  😎

I used to have fun in the country. Lots of fun. If you want to make it go boom, light it first. 🤣

[Meredith Poor + 894]

8 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

I don't know about you, but when I add magnesium to water it explodes. So does lithium. 

More specifically, the magnesium binds to the oxygen, releasing the hydrogen. Once the hydrogen mixes with oxygen and a spark - boom!

Hydrogen is one of the outputs of the combined Mg CO2 H2O reaction. If this occurs in a sealed container, the hydrogen can be run through a fuel cell to generate electricity.

[ronwagn + 6,290]

10 hours ago, Meredith Poor said:

More specifically, the magnesium binds to the oxygen, releasing the hydrogen. Once the hydrogen mixes with oxygen and a spark - boom!

Hydrogen is one of the outputs of the combined Mg CO2 H2O reaction. If this occurs in a sealed container, the hydrogen can be run through a fuel cell to generate electricity.

If this process is scalable it would seem like the best way to produce hydrogen since it would help solve the greenies fear of CO2 while producing methane as well. A potential win win answer.

Do you see this as a scalable and realistic project?

[-trance + 114]

21 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

If this process is scalable it would seem like the best way to produce hydrogen since it would help solve the greenies fear of CO2 while producing methane as well. A potential win win answer.

Do you see this as a scalable and realistic project?

Metallic magnesium is energetically expensive to make (very high temperatures or electrolysis).  This is just a fancy way to "burn" magnesium to get useful chemicals - not a energy source, everything produced is measured in the amount of Mg metal consumed. 

This is not economical at all, but could be useful in extremely expensive applications like colonizing Mars...

If you could get endless, free, clean, electricity it could be used to scrub CO2 on Earth, but better technologies for that already exist if we had magical energy available.

 

 

"Using this protocol, 1 kg of magnesium via simple reaction with water and CO₂ produces 2.43 liters of methane, 940 liters of hydrogen and 3.85 kg of basic magnesium carbonate (used in green cement, pharma industry etc.), and also small amounts of methanol, and formic acid.

In the absence of CO₂, Mg does not react efficiently with water and hydrogen yield was extremely low, 100 μmol g^-1 as compared to 42000 μmol g^-1 in the presence of CO₂. This was due to the poor solubility of magnesium hydroxide formed by the reaction of Mg with water, restricting the internal Mg surface from reacting further with water. However, in the presence of CO₂, magnesium hydroxide gets converted to carbonates and basic carbonates, which are more soluble in water than magnesium hydroxide and get peeled off from Mg, exposing fresh Mg surface to react with water. Thus, this protocol can even be used for hydrogen production (940 liter per kg of Mg), which is nearly 420 times more than hydrogen produced by the reaction of Mg with water alone (2.24 liter per kg of Mg)."

Edited April 12, 2021 by -trance

[ronwagn + 6,290]

14 minutes ago, -trance said:

Metallic magnesium is energetically expensive to make (very high temperatures or electrolysis).  This is just a fancy way to "burn" magnesium to get useful chemicals - not a energy source, everything produced is measured in the amount of Mg metal consumed. 

This is not economical at all, but could be useful in extremely expensive applications like colonizing Mars...

If you could get endless, free, clean, electricity it could be used to scrub CO2 on Earth, but better technologies for that already exist if we had magical energy available.

 

 

"Using this protocol, 1 kg of magnesium via simple reaction with water and CO₂ produces 2.43 liters of methane, 940 liters of hydrogen and 3.85 kg of basic magnesium carbonate (used in green cement, pharma industry etc.), and also small amounts of methanol, and formic acid.

In the absence of CO₂, Mg does not react efficiently with water and hydrogen yield was extremely low, 100 μmol g^-1 as compared to 42000 μmol g^-1 in the presence of CO₂. This was due to the poor solubility of magnesium hydroxide formed by the reaction of Mg with water, restricting the internal Mg surface from reacting further with water. However, in the presence of CO₂, magnesium hydroxide gets converted to carbonates and basic carbonates, which are more soluble in water than magnesium hydroxide and get peeled off from Mg, exposing fresh Mg surface to react with water. Thus, this protocol can even be used for hydrogen production (940 liter per kg of Mg), which is nearly 420 times more than hydrogen produced by the reaction of Mg with water alone (2.24 liter per kg of Mg)."

Magnesium is a metal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium

[-trance + 114]

8 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

Magnesium is a metal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium

Metal yes, but rarely in metallic form; most often it is in the salt form, like epsom salts.  To convert it to the metallic form (shinny silvery stuff) it takes a lot of energy.   They capture that energy by converting the metallic form back to a salt.

"3.85 kg of basic magnesium carbonate"

 

Edited April 12, 2021 by -trance

[ronwagn + 6,290]

2 minutes ago, -trance said:

Metal yes, but rarely in metallic form; most often it is in the salt form, like epsom salts.  To convert it to the metallic form (shinny silvery stuff) it take a lot of energy.

They capture that energy by converting the metallic form back to an oxide.

"3.85 kg of basic magnesium carbonate"

 

The conversion of CO₂ (pure, as well as directly from the air) took place within a few minutes at 300 K and 1 bar. A unique cooperative action of Mg, basic magnesium carbonate, CO₂, and water enabled this CO₂ transformation. If any of the four components were missing, no CO₂ conversion took place. The reaction intermediates and the reaction pathway were identified by ¹³CO₂ isotopic labeling, powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD), nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and in-situ attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform Infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR), and rationalized by density-functional theory (DFT) calculations. During CO₂ conversion, Mg was converted to magnesium hydroxide and carbonate, which may be regenerated.

[-trance + 114]

5 minutes ago, ronwagn said:

During CO₂ conversion, Mg was converted to magnesium hydroxide and carbonate, which may be regenerated.

Exactly, elemental, metallic magnesium is consumed and converted to the hydroxide and carbonate salts.   They talk of selling the waste salts to the concrete industry etc.

" 3.85 kg of basic magnesium carbonate (used in green cement, pharma industry etc.)"

Edited April 13, 2021 by -trance

[ronwagn + 6,290]

3 minutes ago, -trance said:

Exactly, elemental, metallic magnesium is consumed and converted to the hydroxide and carbonate salts.   They talk of selling the waste salts to the concrete industry.

I knew it was too good to be scaleable. I am no chemist though.  I was thinking of it more like a catalyst. 

 

Edited April 13, 2021 by ronwagn
add

[Meredith Poor + 894]

2 hours ago, ronwagn said:

If this process is scalable it would seem like the best way to produce hydrogen since it would help solve the greenies fear of CO2 while producing methane as well. A potential win win answer.

Do you see this as a scalable and realistic project?

This looks to me like about the simplest 'long term, large scale' energy storage option available. It's pretty easy to convert MgCO3 (Magnesium Carbonate) back to pure Mg. Keyword search 'dolomite'. Also look up magnesium concentration in seawater.

[-trance + 114]

18 hours ago, Meredith Poor said:

This looks to me like about the simplest 'long term, large scale' energy storage option available. It's pretty easy to convert MgCO3 (Magnesium Carbonate) back to pure Mg.

That is not was presented in the article; but you may be right, just storing energy in chunks of elemental magnesium may be a viable option.  When the wind blows or the sun shines use the DC power to make Mg(s).

It is just a battery if you do not make useful chemicals. Simple half-cell reaction shown.

Edited April 13, 2021 by -trance

[ronwagn + 6,290]

3 hours ago, -trance said:

That is not was presented in the article; but you may be right, just storing energy in chunks of elemental magnesium may be a viable option.  When the wind blows or the sun shines use the DC power to make Mg(s).

It is just a battery if you do not make useful chemicals. Simple half-cell reaction shown.

The chemistry is over my head. Does this process seem to be nearly pollution free? Especially using seawater or mining that remediates the land torn up. 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

We are talking about potentially mining the sea for energy. I have advocated using methane hydrates for a natural gas source. The sea is a far greater potential source , for natural gas, than all land masses. Combining magnesium mining with methane hydrate mining might be compatible. The products are methane and hydrogen which can be used together as fuel, or separately. The same equipment and processing might be used also. Maybe not, but just a thought. 

Many people would prefer hydrogen over natural gas but cost is still a big consideration and hydrogen has still not proven itself for vehicles IMHO. I saw my first hydrogen vehicle in about 1965 at a car show in the Pan Pacific auditorium in Los Angeles. 

[-trance + 114]

2 hours ago, ronwagn said:

We are talking about potentially mining the sea for energy.

No.  The ocean has plentiful Mg2+ salts, absolutely no elemental Mg(s).  You can store energy with magnesium from the oceans but it provides zero energy.  Think of Mg2+(aq) as a dead battery, you can charge it with energy from a solar or coal power plant to use later, but it provides nothing by itself.

Edited April 14, 2021 by -trance

[ronwagn + 6,290]

36 minutes ago, -trance said:

No.  The ocean has plentiful Mg2+ salts, absolutely no elemental Mg(s).  You can store energy with magnesium from the oceans but it provides zero energy.  Think of Mg2+(aq) as a dead battery, you can charge it with energy from a solar or coal power plant to use later, but it provides nothing by itself.

So it can't be dried out and converted easily?

[-trance + 114]

1 hour ago, ronwagn said:

So it can't be dried out and converted easily?

"Easy" yes, but the conversion always costs more energy than you get back out.

"Easy" in scientific terms does not mean cost effective, it means that other people should be able to replicate your results.

I literally have a bottle of Epson salts in my bathroom that was very cheap - we waste it on hot baths. No need to mine to oceans for magnesium salts.

Edited April 14, 2021 by -trance

[specinho + 459]

there is an encouraging belief that India would be the First, ahead of China, USA, Germany, Japan, Korea and others, to produce oxygen out of martian soil........

legend is.........

[NickW + 2,714]

On 4/12/2021 at 5:27 AM, Ward Smith said:

I don't know about you, but when I add magnesium to water it explodes. So does lithium. 

Several years before I went to secondary school there was a kid allegedly who nicked a big lump of Sodium (which is normally immersed in Paraffin) from the Chemistry lab. Anyway it started smoking in his pocket as it reacted with oxygen in the air so he decided to get rid of it by flushing it down the loo and subsequently blew it to pieces

 

Story maybe an urban legend. 

[NickW + 2,714]

On 4/16/2021 at 5:50 PM, specinho said:

there is an encouraging belief that India would be the First, ahead of China, USA, Germany, Japan, Korea and others, to produce oxygen out of martian soil........

 

 

 

 

legend is.........

 

Hydrogen is more of an issue unless you go to the  Martian poles. 

Bob Zubrin (Mission to Mars author) proposed taking the H to make things easier. 

[specinho + 459]

3 hours ago, NickW said:

Hydrogen is more of an issue unless you go to the  Martian poles. 

Bob Zubrin (Mission to Mars author) proposed taking the H to make things easier. 

pardon me......... it was supposed to be a sarcastic remark.........  light moment for general chemists.......

I'm not certain about hydrogen....... elder mentioned  the aim of the article might be to sell magnesium carbonate, instead of calcium carbonate, to constructors........... and the costs to produce magnesium makes this experiment a sizzling smoke..........