Scientists plan to recycle CO2 using carbon dioxide-burning fuel

Carbon dioxide and water are the main products after the combustion of gasoline. Can the use of solar energy reverse the combustion process? This sounds like a fantasy, but American scientists are turning it into a reality.
Building a "Liquid-Solar Fuel" Plant Scientists at the Sandia National Laboratories, part of the US Nuclear Safety Administration, are building a model that attempts to convert carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide using focused solar energy to chemically "charge" carbon dioxide. Carbon monoxide can be used to produce hydrogen. It can also be used as a basic raw material for the synthesis of liquid fuels such as methanol, gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel. Researchers will refer to the liquid fuel obtained in this way as "liquid solar fuel."
The model device under construction consists of a reversed ring receiver, a reactor, and a recuperator (CR5), which can break one CO bond of carbon dioxide and generate carbon monoxide and oxygen through two distinct steps. This is the most important part of the entire exploration program that uses sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into fuel.
Scientists who recycle carbon dioxide have long known that recycling carbon dioxide is theoretically possible, but most people think that it is impossible to be technically and economically practical and feasible. Sandia Labs' research team has designed a corresponding model and successfully decomposed carbon dioxide through a clever and feasible two-step process.
The invention will allow fossil fuels to be used at least twice, which means that the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere will be reduced, and the rate of oil extraction from the ground will also be slowed down. For example, after coal is burned in a clean coal-fired power plant, the released carbon dioxide will be captured and then reduced to carbon monoxide in CR5. As a raw material, carbon monoxide can be used to make gasoline, jet fuel, methanol, and other types of liquid fuels. The U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency is also extremely concerned about this technology and has indicated that it is willing to pay for funding.
"Extracting fuel from the air"
The prospects for the application of liquid fuels are significant because they are perfectly suited to the existing gasoline and oil infrastructure. Synthetic fuels made from carbon monoxide can be delivered to petrol stations via oil pipelines or transport trucks, just as petrol is now produced from petroleum. In addition, vehicles equipped with ordinary gasoline or diesel engines can work normally with liquid fuels.
Jim Miller, co-author of the invention, said that their first step was to capture carbon dioxide from relatively concentrated sources such as power plants, chimneys, and wineries, but the ultimate goal of the invention was to extract carbon dioxide from the air. In the future, a system containing carbon dioxide capture devices from the atmosphere will eventually produce carbon-neutral liquid fuels. The overall goal of this study is to use this model to demonstrate the feasibility of the concept of CR5, and to determine how to extend the results obtained from small-scale experiments to actual installations. The model will be completed early next year. The research team plans to conduct tests to decompose water into hydrogen and oxygen first, and then test to decompose carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide and oxygen.
The research team at Sandia Laboratories has proven that the above chemical process can be repeated, without any performance loss after multiple cycles, and the cycle time is short enough. The next step is to let everything be done in a continuous working installation.