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SONNE: Solar-Based Man-Made Carbon Cycle and the Carbon Dioxide Economy

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Fig. 1
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Notes

  1. For illustration, some scientists dream of artificial leaves to transform CO2 into (solar) fuels. Our approach consists of “secondary” use of solar energy in terms of electricity and heat in large industrial operational units, which are already known in principle.

  2. In a certain sense hydrogen (H2) can also play the same role as energy carrier when we adopt the natural water splitting process, which was proposed as “hydrogen technology” in the early 1980s. However, there are several problems: (a) safety of storage and transport; (b) leakage and atmospheric implications; and (c) missing material supply. Water electrolysis will play an important role in SONNE for oxy-fuel combustion (O2 supply) and CO2 reduction (H2 supply).

  3. In (biogeochemical) cycles move all elements and their compounds, but often on a geological time scale (besides carbon only sulfur and nitrogen are in similar dynamic cycles).

  4. A critic of the American DAC Report comes also from the Climeworks Company which is doing solar-thermal CO2 capture and conversion in cooperation with the Professorship of Renewable Energy Carriers, Institute of Energy Technology at ETH Zurich (Switzerland).

  5. R stands for recycling.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Otmar Edenhofer (Potsdam Institute for Climate Research—PIK), Thomas Fischer (Brandenburg Technical University—BTU), Dirk Freese (BTU), Mathias Hofmann (PIK), Hans-Joachim Krautz (BTU), Elmar Kriegler (PIK), Axel Liebscher (Geo-Research Centre Potsdam), and George Tsatsaronis (Technical University Berlin) for transforming this idea to a joint research project just submitted.

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  1. Brandenburg Technical University, Volmerstr. 13, 12489, Berlin, Germany

    Detlev Möller

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  1. Detlev Möller
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Correspondence to Detlev Möller.

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Möller, D. SONNE: Solar-Based Man-Made Carbon Cycle and the Carbon Dioxide Economy. AMBIO 41, 413–419 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-011-0197-6

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