Why can't we turn all this alleged excess carbon dioxide into useful things?

Question

Carbon dioxide is just carbon (building blocks of life) and two bits of oxygen (dioxide). So why can't we just remove the carbon so we have loads of building blocks of life if we ever need them, and loads more oxygen (don't know about the "di" bit though)? We know how to split atoms to make things (and whole cities) blow up, so why not split atoms to turn them into useful things?

Answer 1

Unfortunatley, it is more complicated than it should be. Splitting atoms to make things blow up won't work for carbon or oxygen because this splitting relies on chain reactions that require either extremley heavy or extremley light (Hydrogen) elements. However, no splitting machine (that would use very much energy, probably creating more carbon dioxide than it seperates) is necessary- we already have lots of them! Plants..

Answer 2

Splitting atoms in a nuclear reaction is not needed. Only splitting molecules in a chemical reaction is needed. The problem is that we make most of our energy by using chemical reactions (fire) that combine carbon and oxygen, so where would we get the energy to split the CO2 molecule? Combining C and O releases energy but splitting it uses up energy. If we knew how to get energy without combining carbon and oxygen, we wouldn't have made all that waste CO2 in the first place!

Answer 3

Ethanol is carbon dioxide that is turned into fuel. Corn plants turn carbon dioxide into sugar molecules/energy. They use corn to produce ethanol fuel that powers engine. Plants have been doing this for gazillion years. It's photosynthesis. Looks like some are looking to do similar things without plants. Using some synthetic methods that can be useful to make fuel in large quantities using CO2 present in our atmosphere. The study looks interesting since it can take CO2 in atmosphere and turn it into fuel. Like what all plants do. Instead we'll be doing in factories in industrial scale if it works. Since the method recycles CO2 in our atmosphere this will not cause additional accumulation of CO2 in our atmosphere. So we can drive normal cars without increasing CO2 in our atmosphere.

Answer 4

separating carbon dioxide is not that easy
because it is one of the most stable form carbon and oxygen
and so separating carbon dioxide
it is an endothermic reaction
it requires energy
where you will get this energy from
our main source is by burning coal

Answer 5

you need a lot of energy to do it since carbon likes to react with oxygen very much and the co2 is very stable. most efective is convert co2 into biomass - sugars, cellulose. next step would be converting these into synthetic fossil fuels

Answer 6

CO2 is the building block of life and the very best nutrient for all plant life.

Answer 7

People are working on it.

But it's a huge amount of CO2, many billions of tons. It's not easy. It looks like it would be better to try to reduce it at the source.

Answer 8

Mother nature already does that with plants and photosynthesis .

Answer 9

I think all the manufacturers of fizzy drinks should be made to buy it back from us whenever we open a bottle ! ! !