Find utility to carbon dioxide is an old dream of humanity.

Or, at least, of our age.
Because in the middle of climate change, few molecules there are so hostile as the millions of tons of CO2 released every year from our factories and our exhaust pipes that once in the atmosphere, they melt our ice caps care.
A group of US scientists has made a discovery that, if not solve all our problems related to CO2, will at least mitigate sigificativamente.
The nanochimico Adam Rondinone and his colleagues at the Oak Ridge laboratory-American energy ministry, have discovered a process that allows you to convert CO2 into ethanol fuel-and all for the event.
"We were studying the first step of the reaction when we noticed that the catalyst realized alone all" process explains Rondinone.
The researcher describes the ingredients of his experience: take a bit 'of sprayed copper nanoparticles on a surface of coal particles enriched with nitrogen.
The coal particles form of "nanospuntoni", ie tiny wide lightning rods few atoms only on the tip, capable of creating a strong electrical voltage field (where a nanometer is one billionth of a meter).
That's more or less what it looks like the meeting between the copper particles and nano-carbon stalagmites.
Image: Oak Ridge National Laboratorium.
This very reactive combination, produced in a small space, it becomes a catalyst which, under the effect of an electric current, directly transforms the carbon dioxide in ethanol.
According to researchers, the efficiency of the process should be 63-70 per cent, and produces very little waste.
Moreover, it is energy-efficient, since a difference of only 1.2 volts is sufficient to trigger the reaction.
In fact the researchers had not pevisto to generate fuel.
As written by Colin Jeffrey of New Atlas, this electrochemical reaction typically does not produce ethanol, but a set of other chemical compounds such as methanol or carbon monoxide.
"We thought of getting methanol," says Rondinone in a video in which he explains the experiment.
"But in reality we have produced ethanol, which is very interesting from a scientific point of view."
The decisive component of this surprising result would be the nanostructure of the catalyst, as explained on the website of the researchers.
Thanks to nanotechnology catalyst could produce unexpected results.
"By combining the materials known by nanotechnology, we have learned how to control the secondary reactions do not yield the result hoped for," explains Rondinone.
Another advantage: as indicated by the researchers, the ethanol obtained can be used as fuel without additional chemical treatment.
So far, researchers have not tested their discovery to scale surprise, in the laboratory; to have a real impact on the climate, it might have to move to a far greater scale.
Thanks to the relative simplicity of the device (inexpensive materials, low energy consumption, production of ethanol at room temperature), Rondinone and his colleagues believe in an industrial application of their process.
For example, it allows you to set aside the surplus energy produced by solar panels or wind turbines turning it into ethanol, which "could help bridge the gaps in the production of renewable energy."

From Vice