I am fascinated by new innovations around the world on environmental issues and very recently one news article has attracted me a lot ?I wish to share this development to the friends in this wonderful forum..

Technologies for capturing CO₂ from gas streams have been used for many years to produce a pure stream of CO₂ from natural gas or industrial processing for use in food processing and chemical industries. But, converting the CO2 into a green output is something different. An industrial CO2 recycling plant is under development in Canada that could one day suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and convert it into a zero-carbon e-diesel fuel. Developed by tech start-up Carbon Engineering and partly funded by Bill Gates, the system will essentially do the job of trees, but more useful in the places where it is unable to host them, such as terrain filled with snow and deserts. 

The CO2 recycling plant will combine carbon dioxide with hydrogen split from water to form hydrocarbon fuel. The plan is to provide the technology that could one day produce environmentally friendly fuel to complement the renewable energy systems we have now.

There?s also the New York City-based start-up Global Thermostat, and Swiss-based Climeworks, which demonstrated earlier this year with Audi how its technology can capture carbon dioxide, and deliver it to German company Sunfire, where it was recycled into a zero-carbon diesel fuel.

While initial experiments are successful as on date, the biggest challenge now is : how to make their atmospheric carbon dioxide to fuel systems economically viable. And this won?t be easy. One problem they?re going to have to overcome is the high cost of heating their carbon dioxide to around 400 degrees Celsius so they can process it properly. Another problem is attract the investors and convince them that it is actually feasible. 

I am sure that you also will be looking for the future developments in this regard alongwith me very anxiously.

Source :

1) http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-are-building-a-system-that-could-turn-atmospheric-co2-into-fuel

2) http://www.aiche.org/ccusnetwork/co2-capture-conversion

3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkEAA7VnyhE