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This new factory will turn CO2 into sustainable jet fuel. Startup Twelve broke ground on a commercial-scale facility in Washington state, which it says will be the first in the country to make sust...

This new factory will turn CO2 into sustainable jet fuel. Startup Twelve broke ground on a commercial-scale facility in Washington state, which it says will be the first in the country to make sust...::undefined

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  • To start, the company procures ​“waste” CO2 from industrial facilities. Twelve has developed its own electrochemical reactor to split carbon dioxide molecules into carbon monoxide using electricity. Engineers then use a separate electrolyzer to split water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. The resulting mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen is known as ​“syngas.”

    Finally, the team deploys a multistep reaction called the Fischer-Tropsch process to convert the gas into a liquid — one that’s chemically identical to jet fuel made from petroleum.

  • I read somewhere that this is worse than just collecting carbon, since jet fuel will be burnt in the upper atmosphere, where it's even harder to retrieve the CO2.