Researchers turn CO2 into fuel for aircraft -

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Transportation is one of the most polluting sectors in the world.

However, the majority of current means of transport still use fossil fuels to travel, this is particularly the case of airplanes.

For several years now, researchers have been trying to find solutions to make aviation less polluting and reduce its emission of greenhouse gases.

This is how prototypes of electric planes or reciprocating engines are born.

A team of researchers from the University of Oxford has just developed a system that transforms the carbon dioxide emitted by airplanes into jet fuel.

This transformation can be carried out in flight, which makes it possible both to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases from airplanes and to supply fuel to the machines.

The scientists behind the concept explained in the journal Nature Communications that “this carbon dioxide is extracted from the air and re-emitted in jet fuels when it is burned in flight, the overall effect is carbon neutral fuel. .

This is in contrast to jet fuels produced from fossil hydrocarbon sources where the combustion process releases fossil carbon into the atmosphere in the form of air carbon - carbon dioxide ”.

Precedents

This is not the first time that such a solution has been considered.

A Canadian company had already had a similar idea in 2018 and had developed a machine capable of converting CO2 into synthetic fuel.

MIT researchers had also invented a system to capture CO2 from the air.

If there is no shortage of ideas, the solutions to fight against greenhouse gases hardly leave scientific laboratories.

Moreover, the system developed by researchers at the University of Oxford has only been tested in the laboratory.

It is difficult to know if the concept could be effective in real conditions.

One of the researchers nevertheless indicated that he was in discussion with several industrial partners to integrate this method of converting carbon dioxide into jet fuel in airplanes.

“There are no big challenges, but we have to optimize the process and make it more efficient,” he said.

The project is therefore promising, but should require several years of additional development to be truly effective.

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  • Fuel

  • Science

  • Global warming

  • Greenhouse gas

  • CO2

  • Plane

  • Aviation

  • energy

  • High Tech