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Surur t1_j8576eb wrote

Reply to comment by wersywerxy in Solar-powered system converts plastic and greenhouse gases into sustainable fuels by landlord2213

> This allows us to de-carbonize every sector still using fossil fuels without them needing to spend years we don't have developing and implementing greener versions of their own.

The big issue is the above last paragraph - it allows existing fossil fuel using industries to continue as before, and likely use a mix of a small amount of synth gas and a large amount of fossil fuel, and pretend they are solving the problem, instead of doing the hard work of moving to a new process which does not use fossil fuel at all

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-Ch4s3- t1_j86yh9q wrote

Isn’t the goal to mitigate climate change by reducing atmospheric CO2?

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Surur t1_j881sol wrote

Which would be best achieved by leaving that CO2 locked up in plastic in the landfill, not to convert the plastic back into fuel to be burnt.

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pickingnamesishard69 t1_j88fva8 wrote

Agree with your first assesment - e-fuels are pushed by big oil to keep the status quo up as long as possible.

Disagreeing on the last technicality though: leaving stuff on landfills tends to leak methane into the athmosphere, which sucks.

For food waste we should replace compost and landfills with biodigesters, so that the methane gets captured, burned for energy and thus gets double use and lower impact (if done enough it can replace a big part of nat gas consumption)

If they manage to digest plastic into something useful too, why not. But Unfortunately good things like these will be used to keep producing plastic, which is an entire problem in itself.

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Surur t1_j88ga3a wrote

Plastic will not decompose to methane. And the reason not to convert it to something else is that that process will release its embedded co2 into the atmosphere.

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pickingnamesishard69 t1_j88goko wrote

Yes, the methane comed mostly from bio stuff. But plastic will degrade into smaller plastic, eventually getting into our drinking water. Already they found microplastics in the human bloodstream. We really need to get away from single use platics, plastic clothing and plastic fishing nets.

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