can we reclaim used fuels?

Question

Since it is a law of science that matter can not be destroyed or created, just converted, and 'fossil fuel" (a complete misnomer, if ever there was one!) is spewing out its remains into the air, Can't we develope a system to recapture these elements with some sort of air sweep or filter and recombine them so the gasoline can be used again and again?
I guess the process would be sort of anti-oxidation. I know that some chemicals 'naturally' combne, but under certain conditions, they won't. I just thought we should get opinions and I wondered if this is even being tried somewhere.

Any info anyone?

Actually I was thinking of free (after construction) energies (solar, wind farms, geothermal and hydroelectric)
for the electricity to run and process reclaimed gases

Answer 1

too expensive to do this but it is a good way of thinking though.i remeber i said something like that once and i heard that we dont have the technology available at this moment and it would be too expensive to create it or use it.

Answer 2

Yes, it is theoretically possible. But what you are describing is turning gasoline into an energy carrier system. The energy needed to turn the byproducts back into a fuel would need to come from somewhere, like solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, nuclear or more fossil fuels like coal. The same thing can and is being done with Hydrogen. These energy carriers release their byproducts into the environment and they eventually may be recycled as they enter the biosphere and hydrosphere.

Another idea is to use Boron/Boria as an energy carrier. Unlike gasoline or hydrogen, the boron is burned but the byproduct (diboron trioxide, or boria) turns into a thick liquid and hardens into a solid so that it can be removed, taken or mailed to a facility and directly recycled, all without the nasty pollution and global warming effects. Below is a link to a paper on the subject.

Answer 3

This is possible to do this via a synthetic route but not very practical nor very energy efficient.

The energy contained in fossil fuels comes originally from the sun. Plants growing millions of years ago captured sunlight and converted it to sugars, starch, and cellulose via photosynthesis.

The plants died and formed deep layers of organic matter and eventually was buried and over millions of years was converted to oil, coal and natural gas. Since fossil fuels are basically fossil plants it makes perfect sense to call them "fossil".

We mine these fuels. When they are burned the energy captured from sunlight millions of years ago is released.

The combustion products are gases including primarily water and CO2.

Converting these gasses back into fuel requires first capturing them from the atmosphere, which is a very energy intensive step, and then rebuilding some kind of fuel molecule, which is also very energy intensive. Synthetic methods for doing these steps are also very inefficient producing much less energy in the form of fuel than the energy the process would consume. The important question is where would that energy come from? A second important question is if you have such an energy source, why not just use it rather than converting a small part of it into a fuel?

There is another way to do this using natural processes that is quite efficient and simple.

1) grow a plant - the plant takes water and CO2 from the atmosphere and using sunlight converts it to sugars and cellulose.

2) harvest the plant and then ferment the sugars and cellulose to ethanol.

3) Use the ethanol for fuel.

This process uses the energy of sunlight to reform fuel.

Answer 4

There are a few things developed that can reuse waste, including an interesting fabrication that can change most hydrocarbons into oil, including sewage and waste meat. However, the caveat is that even if all the garbage and sewage in the US were put though this process (Not including the gas burned from vehicles hauling it to the converter facilities) it would only produce around 10% of the nation's energy consumption.

The energy released from the fossil fuel is expended when it's burned, you cannot reclaim the energy because it was already used in the burning.

Answer 5

Yeah DUDE make a Giant AIR Filter for the earth, or lots of city size ones LOL, ... that would be interesting to see and see if it works... I think it's an idea worth tryin' out!

If an air filter can clean your house, why not the Earth?
Haha!
COOL!

Clean off the goop and use it some how... not sure how... but then again should we even reuse that bad nasty stuff at all??? Maybe we should put it back DEEP into the Earth where we found it in the first place LOL
;-)

Answer 6

What you are asking would violate conservation of energy. Unburned fuel has a higher chemical energy than burned fuel. To chemically change the combustion products back into the fuel that the came from would use up as much energy as the fuel produced when it burned. More actually, since we could not do it with 100% efficiency.

Answer 7

solving global warming hm? i don't think there's a possible way to recapture CO2 emissions that have already been released already. if you plan on doing so, it will take you years and years because of how long we've had cars and how much CO2 we already emitted to hurt our ozone layer as well as the sea. and obviously, air filters would be hard to make especially if you're wanting to make a machine that would filter all the air, then where would the CO2 go? other occurrences can happen with the filter. an overflow of CO2 in the filter causing people in the industry to die due to the high amount of CO2. We inhale oxygen, we exhale CO2.

Answer 8

they can reclaim used oil to make gas and other items, but if anything could be invented to reclaim to make more fuel, it wouldn't be allowed as the giants of oil and government wouldn't make their billions in profit. we have enough natural gas in the mountain regions of west virginia, tennessee and kentucky that would last us 2,000 years. they won't touch it as it would drop fuel to 1900 prices. everything is made of atoms. there was a device that was made in the 1970's that could destroy matter and the atoms as they wanted. it was designed by w.r. grace. mostly for the purpose of using it on huge structures that if it had concrete damage, the laser would be set to destroy the area needed and fix it. my father was top exec. with the company and i got to see this baby tested. one second a block of cement was there and when fired, it was gone. no rumble or anything to show it was there. the government and military stopped its use in research as a private company as it was considered to dangerous to use as enemy countries could get it and use it as a weapon. the government took it and who knowd where it went to, but you can bet the military is using it.

Answer 9

like burning hydrogen for fuel turns it into water, then separate water back into hydrogen, and oxygen. nice system, but it takes much more energy to do it.

Answer 10

Yes, but to do that, we would probably require more fuel. Maybe, sometime in the future, it will be possible economically.