Science Daily has an article on a paper my Mark Jacobson pointing out that (contrary to rumour), carbon dioxide isn't good for you - Urban CO2 Domes Increase Deaths, Poke Hole in Cap-and-Trade Proposal.

Everyone knows that carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas driving climate change, is a global problem. Now a Stanford study has shown it is also a local problem, hurting city dwellers' health much more than rural residents', because of the carbon dioxide "domes" that develop over urban areas.

That finding, said researcher Mark Z. Jacobson, exposes a serious oversight in current cap-and-trade proposals for reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases, which make no distinction based on a pollutant's point of origin. The finding also provides the first scientific basis for controlling local carbon dioxide emissions based on their local health impacts.

"Not all carbon dioxide emissions are equal," said Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering. "As in real estate, location matters."

His results also support the case that California presented to the Environmental Protection Agency in March, 2009, asking that the state be allowed to establish its own CO2 emission standards for vehicles.

Jacobson, director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford, testified on behalf of California's waiver application in March, 2009. The waiver had previously been denied, but was reconsidered and granted subsequently. The waiver is currently being challenged in court by industry interests seeking to overturn it.

Jacobson found that domes of increased carbon dioxide concentrations -- discovered to form above cities more than a decade ago -- cause local temperature increases that in turn increase the amounts of local air pollutants, raising concentrations of health-damaging ground-level ozone, as well as particles in urban air.

Tyler Hamilton has an article at Technology Review on a company that claims to have a new process that stores carbon dioxide in precast concrete - A Concrete Fix to Global Warming.

A Canadian company says that it has developed a way for makers of precast concrete products to take all the carbon-dioxide emissions from their factories, as well as neighboring industrial facilities, and store them in the products that they produce by exposing concrete slurry to carbon-dioxide-rich flue gases during the curing process. Industry experts say that the technology is unproven but holds great potential if it works.

Concrete accounts for more than 5 percent of human-caused carbon-dioxide emissions annually, mostly because cement, the active ingredient in concrete, is made by baking limestone and clay powders under intense heat that is generally produced by the burning of fossil fuels. Making finished concrete products--by mixing cement with water, sand, and gravel--creates additional emissions because heat and steam are often used to accelerate the curing process.

But Robert Niven, founder of Halifax-based Carbon Sense Solutions, says that his company's process would actually allow precast concrete to store carbon dioxide. The company takes advantage of a natural process; carbon dioxide is already reabsorbed in concrete products over hundreds of years from natural chemical reactions. Freshly mixed concrete is exposed to a stream of carbon-dioxide-rich flue gas, rapidly speeding up the reactions between the gas and the calcium-containing minerals in cement (which represents about 10 to 15 percent of the concrete's volume). The technology also virtually eliminates the need for heat or steam, saving energy and emissions.

Work is expected to begin on a pilot plant in the province of Nova Scotia this summer, with preliminary results expected by the end of the year. If it works and is widely adopted, it has the potential to sequester or avoid 20 percent of all cement-industry carbon-dioxide emissions, says Niven. "If the technology is commercialized as planned, it will revolutionize concrete manufacturing and mitigate hundreds of megatons of carbon dioxide each year, while providing manufacturers with a cheaper, greener, and superior product." He adds that 60 tons of carbon dioxide could be stored as solid limestone--or calcium carbonate--within every 1,000 tons of concrete produced. Further, he claims that the end product is more durable, more resistant to shrinking and cracking, and less permeable to water.

The award for most bizarre piece of nuclear power advocacy I've seen in a while goes to this proposal from some scientists at the Los Alamos Laboratory reported on by the New York Times - constructing nuclear power plants to power the conversion of CO2 into petrol. Of course, you could use the nuclear power for electric vehciles instead, and use less than 20% of the energy this process requires. Or you could just skip the nuclear option entirely and plug your electirc vehicles into a clean energy grid instead (hat tip Engineer Poet).

If two scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are correct, people will still be driving gasoline-powered cars 50 years from now, churning out heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere — and yet that carbon dioxide will not contribute to global warming. In a proposal by two scientists, vehicle emissions would no longer contribute to global warming.

The scientists, F. Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kubic Jr., are proposing a concept, which they have patriotically named Green Freedom, for removing carbon dioxide from the air and turning it back into gasoline.

The idea is simple. Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel: methanol, gasoline or jet fuel.

This process could transform carbon dioxide from an unwanted, climate-changing pollutant into a vast resource for renewable fuels. The closed cycle — equal amounts of carbon dioxide emitted and removed — would mean that cars, trucks and airplanes using the synthetic fuels would no longer be contributing to global warming.

Although they have not yet built a synthetic fuel factory, or even a small prototype, the scientists say it is all based on existing technology. “Everything in the concept has been built, is operating or has a close cousin that is operating,” Dr. Martin said.

The Los Alamos proposal does not violate any laws of physics, and other scientists, like George A. Olah, a Nobel Prize-winning chemist at the University of Southern California, and Klaus Lackner, a professor of geophysics at Columbia University, have independently suggested similar ideas. Dr. Martin said he and Dr. Kubic had worked out their concept in more detail than previous proposals.

There is, however, a major caveat that explains why no one has built a carbon-dioxide-to-gasoline factory: it requires a great deal of energy.

To deal with that problem, the Los Alamos scientists say they have developed a number of innovations, including a new electrochemical process for detaching the carbon dioxide after it has been absorbed into the potassium carbonate solution. The process has been tested in Dr. Kubic’s garage, in a simple apparatus that looks like mutant Tupperware.

Even with those improvements, providing the energy to produce gasoline on a commercial scale — say, 750,000 gallons a day — would require a dedicated power plant, preferably a nuclear one, the scientists say.

Formerly Xerox's R&D center, Silicon Valley-based PARC is using its new status as an independent business to leverage its almost 40-year history in IT, mass production, microfluidics and other scientific expertise for a variety of mostly corporate clients—unlike the government focus of other research institutes. And now, there are a number of interesting cleantech-specific initiatives underway at the sprawling hillside complex, a stone's throw from Stanford University and the VCs of famed Sand Hill Road. ...

The center's most visible cleantech-related initiative in recent years has been helping incubate solar concentrating startup SolFocus, which resided in and operated from PARC's labs until August of 2007. PARC scientists helped the company develop a second generation of its solar concentrator, which is now smaller, lighter and less expensive to make (see photos below.) PARC drew directly on its expertise in laser printing. The success of the partnership inspired PARC to institute a formal incubation program, which it calls Startup@PARC. Fledgling cleantech and other companies can leverage PARC staff and facilities in exchange for cash, royalties, equity compensation, or a combination.

We received a tour of the facility, and learned about the center's current cleantech-related projects, including:

Printing for solar PV - Gridlines on the front of most manufacturers' silicon cells for collecting current tend to be relatively wide, hiding much of the substrate beneath from the sun. PARC developed a new extrusion method for printing narrower yet taller gridlines on silicon with the same conductivity, but less "shadow".

The new technique apparently boosts the power output of a solar cell by 6 percent. "We invented the print head; we're looking at commercializing in a reasonably short timeframe," said Elrod.

LED lighting - Could PARC's optics and thermal management experience translate into differentiated designs? Researchers pursued phosphor-based solid state lighting that has proven to be 10-20 percent more efficient than LEDs, PARC claims. The technology has been developed, and the center is now interested in engaging commercial partners.

Membrane-less water filtration - A novel design inspired by years of toner manipulation through apertures has lead to what appears to be a high volume water filtration process not requiring a membrane. PARC scientists leveraged the centrifugal force of contaminants in water to direct them through an alternative path in a spiral flow. The technique requires little power, and appears to hold promise for wastewater treatment, according to PARC's Elrod.

Liquid fuels from the air - Perhaps the most ambitious project underway at PARC is an investigation into the practicality of generating liquid fuels from simply water and carbon present in the air.

PARC scientists are looking into using renewable energy to power large scale electrolysis, combining hydrogen from water with large volumes of carbon extracted from the atmosphere to produce hydrocarbon-based fuel.

Admittedly, carbon would be released back into the atmosphere when the fuels combusted, Elrod acknowledged. But using the atmosphere for carbon "transport," as described on a PARC briefing slide, would guarantee fuel could be made anywhere, even on small islands.

"This is speculative, high risk and potentially high reward," said Elrod. "We're not putting a lot of people on this; this still has to pass the sanity test. But we don't know of anyone else doing this."

Other cleantech projects underway at PARC include demand response-like adaptive control technologies for data centers and power grids, new manufacturing techniques for small form-factor fuel cells that take advantage of PARC's print head expertise, biofuel from algae and reusable paper.