[Bosnian_hero]

I am trying to somehow "destroy" CO₂ to create either carbon and oxygen or carbon-monoxide and oxygen. I don't have much knowledge about chemistry, so my best chance (using personal equipment) was to try electrolysis. I bought a 1kg CO₂ "bottle" (a barrel you could say). I lowered the pressure, so I guess I had around 200g of carbon-dioxide. I used platinum for cathode and anode. The result was a 45 minute use of electricity without any signs of electrolysis.
I tried with higher compression, even though I was freaking scared that it would increase temperature are become a homemade rocket instead. NOTHING HAPPENED!
Does anyone have a clue how to get oxygen from CO₂

[constant thinker]

CO probably wouldn't be the best thing to have around. It would also revert into CO₂, so you wouldn't be making any progress with CO.

It would probably be easiest to break down CO₂ with a good old green plant.

[xiankai]

CO is also highly dangerous, as it can cause serious respiratory problems, have you heard of CO poisoning while sitting in an enclosed car?

i agree with constant thinker, just use what Nature has made for us

why are you trying to recycle CO₂? you didn't mention any practical applications for the recycling process (the end-products are presumably discarded into the environment from i see, correct me if im wrong)

[Donaldson Tan]

LOL.


If CO₂ can be recycled, then we would have solved the problems associated with the Kyoto and Montreal Protocols. I like the idea of capturing CO₂ from the environment and use an external energy input to convert the captured CO₂ into a fuel. When the fuel is consumed, the CO₂ in it releases into the environment. If we peg our fuel usage to the rate of fuel production, we might just maintain the current CO₂ level in the atmosphere.

[Bosnian_hero]

Or we might simply crush the CO2 into CO and O2 using extreme pressure and temperature and that way solve our problems. CO can be used to produce methane and O2 can be released.

[billnotgatez]

It is not that we produce too much carbon dioxide,
it is that we do not utilize enough carbon dioxide.

[wereworm73]

You could just direct the CO₂ to a solution containing magnesium & calcium and make dolomite.  

Like billnotgatez said, why destroy CO₂ when you can find uses for it?  Dry ice is pretty useful, and we recently found out that carbon dioxide can even be made into a glass, which might be stable at room temperature if it's mixed with regular silica glass.  There's an article on this at http://physicsweb.org/articles/news/10/6/7

[constant thinker]

Someone proposed useing CO₂ to aid in pumping oil out of the ground. The idea was to take an air liquefier. Distill out the CO₂, and then pump it into a really deep hole. The idea was to pump it below oil wells so the oil would simply be pushed out by pressure.

I personally don't know how feasible that is, but it was interesting when I read it.

[Donaldson Tan]

Pumping CO₂ underground to extract oil seems good.

However, this means the CO₂ stored underground would be at so high a pressure that they become corrosive to the surrounding sediment layers. This may weaken the overall ground structure in the long run, and eventually the CO₂ will be released into the atmosphere again.

[bryanh]

Iron and nickel catalysts can convert CO2 into organic chemicals. This is done industrially (haber process) and has been researched with regards to the origin of life (Huber and Wachtershauer).

[billnotgatez]

The Haber Process (also Haber-Bosch process) is the reaction of nitrogen and hydrogen to produce ammonia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process

I assume you mean Huber and Wachtershauser not Huber and Wachtershauer

-----------

bryanh –
In any case the items mention involve nitrogen in the resultant compounds. If the resultant compounds are used as fuel, I do not think that you would get just carbon dioxide and water as emissions.
The most promising cycle would be
Water and carbon dioxide converter to fuels
Fuels and oxygen converted to water and carbon dioxide
There is a natural cycle that does this already involving plants and animals.

[Donaldson Tan]

Iron and nickel catalysts can convert CO2 into organic chemicals.

Actually RuBisCO directly captures atmospheric carbon dioxide. This is known as the dark reaction of photosynthesis. RuBisCO is nature's most abundant enzyme. It is possible to extract RuBisCO at a large scale.

If only we can convert RuBisCO-CO₂ into a fuel industrially..

[constant thinker]

Is RuBisCO toxic or something. If not then I'm surprised there hasn't been any applications of it, at least none that I've heard of. You could use it in big cities to try and soak up some of the CO₂ produced from the higher concentration of cars and people.

To bad it probably wouldn't survive the combustion of gasoline, otherwise it would be a great additive possibly.

[wereworm73]

Maybe it would be better to just grow xanthophytic algae on sheets or narrow cylinders, to get a high surface area for capturing carbon dioxide.  Also, whenever there's an excess of this algae, you could harvest some of it for the oils.  Xanthophytes store energy as oils (as well as starches), and some species will even grow in relatively dry places. 

[Yggdrasil]

Rubisco stands for ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase and is an enzyme in the dark reactions (Calvin-Benson cycle) of photosynthesis.  Like most enzymes it is unstable in industrial conditions (organic solvents, high temperature, high pressure, etc).  Furthermore, rubisco requires a more than one molecule of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate per molecule of carbon dioxide fixed (rubisco exhibits cross-reactivity with oxygen and sometimes reacts oxygen with RuBP).