Could this be done?

Question

Is it possible to use Carbon Dioxide as a fuel in a car?
As if it were possible we could work out a way to use the enormous amount of Carbon Dioxide as a fuel and if we found a way to make it produce a harmless product or none we could help on the way to maybe saving the plantet we live on.

Answer 1

Probably not...carbon dioxide is stable, and very difficult and expensive to split into carbon and oxygen.
Besides, according to the law of conservation of energy, once energy is used, it cannot be reused because it is in an unusable form.

Answer 2

Not realistically. The whole concept of a fuel is to combine chemicals together to produce a reaction that changes the chemical into other chemicals and release heat at the same time.

In normal carbon based burning int involves CnHn +O2 into H2O + CO2. The CnHn is the various differnt possible molecules that are composed of hydrogen and carbon. (some fuels such as ethanol contain some oxygen as well).

To use CO2 as a fuel one would have to combine another chemical with it that creates an end product and at the same time releases heat.

Several such other chemicals exist that could be combined with CO2 as a fuel, but they are mostly rare, toxic or both. None of them would be a practical solution (On earth at least). Such chemicals might not be rare on other planets.

Answer 3

No.