how can seperate carbon and oxygen in hot environment before reacting with each other?

Question

is it possible to seperate carbon and oxygen in hot environment before production of CO or CO2 by charging oxygen and carbon ( by electric charge) and then seperate them by electric field? or by using of a another (cheap) matter(S) to react with one of them ( more desirably with carbon) to prevent of production of CO and CO2?

Answer 1

When we burn any kind of fuel; Coal, oil or gas, we get the energy from two sources: turning the carbon into CO2, and a little CO, and converting the hydrogen to H2O (water). [Note: In the case of coal, it is mostly the first reaction].

These 2 reactions are the source of the energy we get from burning the fuel. If we prevent the carbon and oxygen from combining, we would lose a large fraction of the energy!

Unfortunately, if we try to capture the CO2 and CO and turn it back into the elements, using current technology, the energy required to carry this out, would use up most, if not all, of the energy we get from the fuel. Hence the studies on trying to trap or store the CO2 somewhere, or planting trees etc. instead.

Maybe in the future, if we get really efficient solar cells, we can replace a large fraction of our combustion-based energy generation.