How floating solar farms could make fuel and help solve the climate crisis

NBC News MACH or ENVIRONMENT section reports:

“Solar methanol islands” will curb our reliance on fossil fuels. So forget that belch harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Clusters of “solar methanol islands” will be used to extract carbon dioxide from seawater. Thereby converting them from a gas into methanol fuel.

From Kasper Pindsle

June 24, 2019, 11:45 AM EDT, By Denise Chow.

Huge solar farms floating in the ocean could be used to convert carbon dioxide in seawater into methanol, a fuel that can power airplanes, trucks, and other long-haul vehicles. That’s the takeaway from provocative new research suggesting that such “solar methanol islands” could curb our reliance on fossil fuels that belch harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

“This is just one of the many things we should be doing to control climate change, along with having better insulation in our homes, having higher efficiency in car engines and driving electric vehicles,” said Bruce Patterson, a physicist at the University of Zurich and co-author of a paper about the research published June 3 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “This is just one piece of a mosaic.”

The floating solar farms described in the paper would consist of clusters of about 70 circular solar panel “islands” covering an area of roughly one square kilometer (0.4 square mile). Electricity produced by the panels would be used to split water molecules into hydrogen, which would then react with CO2 extracted from seawater to produce methanol.

In addition, Patterson said a single floating solar farm of the sort produces tons. Can you say more than 15,000 tons of methanol a year?!

For example and perspective, that’s enough to fuel a Boeing 737 airliner. Yet that airline can go now 300 round-trip flights between New York City and Phoenix. “We want to use the fuel in current airplanes. Then long-haul trucks, ships and non-electrified railroad systems,” he added.

In conclusion, methanol burns more cleanly than fossil fuels. Also Patterson said the carbon dioxide into the air returns to the ocean. All where the floating solar farms could reuse it.

“Over about a year or a year and a half, it’ll end up in equilibrium again,” he said. “We’ll be able to take it out of the ocean and complete the cycle.”

Source: MACH NBC NEWS