Current evaluation of the world oil production predicts the production to peak around the year 2010 and the expectations are that we will have diminishing production capacity within a few decades from now. Demand on the other hand rises rapidly and it has become foreseeable that in fairly short time, gasoline production will not meet demand. The global carbon dioxide emission has grown enormously in the past 50 years. In 1950 the global emission was about 1000 million tons carbon equivalent, but has now reached close to 10,000 million tons carbon equivalent. About one fourth of this is industrial emission. Due to the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide, this enormous emission and increased levels cause increasing concern about the consequences of global warming. It is therefore an important challenge to develop processes that allow utilization of alternative energy sources to recycle carbon dioxide to a valuable product such as liquid fuel. It is even more beneficial to develop a process to recycle carbon dioxide to a liquid fuel that can immediately substitute the currently used gasoline and diesel distilled from petroleum oil. Such fuel which is compatible with combustion engines as they are today will render the need for major, time consuming, technical developments and infrastructural changes unnecessary in our quest for new energy carriers.
Carbon Recycling International is an Iceland based company that focuses on the conversion of carbon dioxide to liquid fuels. In this talk I will argue the need for such initiative, outline the background and the vision of the companies R&D and briefly introduced our first industrial scale production unit which is under design.