Yashen Xia, Ph.D. sent a message to Bob Dudley that said:
We, HyChar Energy Technology, Inc. currently have developed a novel technology to utilize mixture of methanol-CO2-H2O for electric-field-assisted reforming to produce ethanol. This is a non-catalytic method, only with electric-field assistance, generally running in 110 C, 1 atm with low electricity consumption at ~1.0kWh/kg product. It has shown that over 99% conversion of methanol could be reached in just a section of reactor, producing the organic product with ethanol above 65w% or product with ethyl acetate, by using a large amount of CO2 as major feed. It is with no catalyst at all and easy to scale up. For production of 1 ton ethanol (~$500/ton), 0.7 tons of methanol (~$200/ton) and ~3.0 tons of CO2 are needed. Since the average electricity price in the US is ~$0.07/kWh, the costs for making ethanol per ton is about ~$210/ton, amounting to a potential profit of ~$290/ton.
