G'Day ; Is there a reason why we can't separate C from O in CO2, release the O and collect the C??
Blessings Miykle

Not really, but why would you want to do that?

Please excuse me for anticipating your answer, but I won't be able to get on much for the next few days to reply.

If your idea is to take CO2 and convert it into oxygen to solve global warming, you have a big problem.

The whole reason we have too much CO2 is because we're hungry for energy. CO2 is one of the by products of burning carbon rich compounds for this energy. And guess what? If you want to reverse the reaction, you have to put as much energy back in as you took out in the first place (plus extra for process losses).

It's just not a feasible solution to the global warming problem (also caused by H2O which is also released in combustion), at least while the majority of our energy still comes from oil. You'd just be burning more oil and making more CO2 in order to get rid of a smaller amount of CO2.

Perhaps, when we are able to make clean fuel on a much bigger scale than there is demand for, we can put some of that energy back into trying to get these chemicals out of our atmosphere. For that we would hope for a breakthrough in something like fusion power development, for example.

I hope I anticipated the impetus of your question sufficiently and that this answer helped.