MIT Scientists Propose Perpetual Motion Machine

Hybrid copper-gold nanoparticles convert CO2 to methane; May reduce greenhouse gas emissions

Various researchers around the world have studied copper’s potential as an energy-efficient means of recycling carbon dioxide emissions in powerplants: Instead of being released into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide would be circulated through a copper catalyst and turned into methane — which could then power the rest of the plant. Such a self-energizing system could vastly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired and natural-gas-powered plants.

There's so much wrong with this it's hard to imagine it's not an elaborate April Fool's prank paper on April 11...

First of all, one cannot take CO2 from a powerplant, reduce it to methane with electricity, and burn the methane to generate power and run the cycle over and over and gain anything.  It's the First and Second Law of Thermodynamics, (You can't win and you can't even break even), and if MIT has found a way past them, it's much bigger news than a good catalytic electrode for making methane out of electricity and CO2. 

Second, burning the methane so produced create said unicorn power would release the CO2, resulting in no net change in CO2 output.  Very simple arithmetic.  Unless they trapped it and used it again.  In which case, why use a coal fire power plant to start with?

Third, methane is considered to be a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2; up to 300 times stronger, so unless the process of making methane is totally sealed (and they rarely are), it's much more likely to create more greenhouse gases equivalents than you started with; just burn the coal!

Where a process like this could be useful would be the conversion of captured electricity into a burnable transportable fuel:

Say you have bird killing blenders wind generators to make electricity, but you need to power a car.  We know plug-in battery powered cars have a short range because batteries are a lousy way to store energy when weight is an issue.  So now, you use the electricity from the bird blenders to make methane, which you condense to a liquid and use to power a car.  Methane is a least a decent automotive fuel.  If you want, you can even extract the CO2 from the atmosphere (rather than from burning fossil fuels; it won't be quite as efficient, but what the hell, build more blenders), and make the whole cycle carbon neutral.

Seen at Watts Up With That.