[HN Gopher] UC reactor converts carbon dioxide to fuel
___________________________________________________________________
UC reactor converts carbon dioxide to fuel
Author : gmays
Score : 218 points
Date : 2021-09-24 16:31 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.uc.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.uc.edu)
| eganist wrote:
| I'm less interested in this as a climate change remedy (it's not)
| and more interested in this for its terraforming potential.
|
| What are the benefits and risks from just bleeding spare methane
| into the atmosphere after any refueling reservoirs are topped
| off? I'd think it'd be useful in raising temperatures on the
| planet, though that's only one terraforming component.
|
| (I'm very dangerously not an expert on this)
| rale00 wrote:
| Methane is fairly short-lived in the atmosphere, at only 12
| years, so it probably wouldn't be particularly effective at
| terraforming mars. Perfluorocarbons or sulfur hexafluoride can
| stick around for thousands of years, so they would probably be
| a better place to start.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Current SF6 level (four orders of magnitude more heat-
| trapping than CO2, by weight) accounts for 10% of heat
| forcing. How the heck do we get that stuff out of the
| atmosphere?
|
| There is a replacement, now, for SF6, for use in power
| stations and wind turbines. Now the SF6 in use needs to be
| pumped out and disposed of safely, and SF6 actually banned.
| And, we have to persuade China to replace theirs too.
| bialpio wrote:
| I wish they addressed the fact that methane that they will be
| producing is said to be an even more potent greenhouse gas than
| carbon dioxide. Are there any worries about the leakage for
| example?
| hannob wrote:
| This is an important point. Not for the "we'll build a gas
| station on mars"-scenario, but for the "we'll propose this as a
| climate solution".
|
| Every way of replacing natural gas with some other source of
| methane - be it the sabatier process or biogas/biomethane - has
| this problem. It can only be a climate solution if you can
| bring leaks down close to zero, which is very challenging.
|
| It also makes one wonder whether e-methane is really such a
| good idea or whether you'd rather look at other chemicals like
| ammonia or methanol.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Methane is produced naturally in vast quantities by decaying
| organic matter, cow farts, released from volcanoes, natural
| reservoirs, etc. I doubt that some small leaks in an
| industrial process would make a real difference. It would
| probably be undetectable in comparison to the leaks in our
| current natural gas infrastructure that we use for heating
| homes, cooking, and electrical generation.
| bialpio wrote:
| This may very well be the case that it's a non-issue, but
| an article that only mentions the good parts without even
| acknowledging potential problems with the solution makes me
| think "what else did they not mention that a lay-person
| like me wouldn't know about?".
| dylan604 wrote:
| Sure. If you're using the methane as rocket fuel that is
| leaking, then nobody likes a rocket leaking fuel. That tends to
| not end well.
| jandrese wrote:
| Starting a greenhouse effect on Mars would help it become more
| livable by humans.
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Do you realize the amount of effort we would have to put in
| to make it habitable? And the time scales involved?
| bialpio wrote:
| Part of the article speaks about the uses that are a bit
| closer to home. I'm not that worried about Mars, that part is
| still SciFi to me and I probably won't live long enough to
| see it become reality. :-(
| [deleted]
| lizknope wrote:
| The article claims they are already converting CO2 to fuel on the
| ISS. This process has been TESTED but we aren't using it right
| now.
|
| Article claims:
|
| > Known as the "Sabatier reaction" from the late French chemist
| Paul Sabatier, it's a process the International Space Station
| uses to scrub the carbon dioxide from air the astronauts breathe
| and generate rocket fuel to keep the station in high orbit.
|
| Reality:
|
| We just shipped a new CO2 scrubber a few months ago
|
| https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/releases/2021/mar...
|
| For LONG space missions or colonies
|
| https://www.eni.com/en-IT/scientific-research/space-free-co2...
|
| The ISS is constantly falling back to earth. It maintains its
| orbit with thrusters on the Zvezda module or a visiting
| spacecraft boosts it higher
| 5faulker wrote:
| Space junk piling up as we speak.
| dotancohen wrote:
| The Sabatier reaction is very energy intensive. It is pretty
| much the basis of Musk's demonstrations of cities on Mars,
| powered by lots of solar power. It has other advantages for
| human colonization as well, such as producing oxygen as a
| byproduct.
| gpm wrote:
| The ISS uses rechargeable zeolite beds for CO2 scrubbing, they
| don't need a new one frequently, and the fact that we shipped a
| new one is coincidence.
|
| Zeolite is a mineral, you get a bunch of small pellets of it in
| a bed, and run air over it while cooling it. The CO2 (and H2O)
| stick to it while everything else goes over it. Once you're at
| capacity you vent it to space and heat it, the CO2 (and H2O)
| leave the bed (into space) and recharge it for the next cycle.
| Repeat forever.
|
| The consumables here are the small amount of gasses sent
| overboard, and energy, nothing else.
|
| (And you use multiple of these beds because capturing CO2 is
| exothermic, and venting CO2 is endothermic, so you want to run
| a heat exchanger between the two beds in opposite cycles to
| minimize energy usage)
| dexwiz wrote:
| If both operations are exothermic, why the heat exchanger? I
| would assume one process would need to be endothermic.
| _Microft wrote:
| There is a typo. The answer is in the second paragraph:
|
| "Once you're at capacity you vent it to space _and heat it_
| , [...]"
| gpm wrote:
| Fixed the typo
| rtkwe wrote:
| The new scrubber sounds like it's not using the old zeolite
| bed system but one based on molecular sieves. But you're
| otherwise right that they're not really turning that CO2 into
| anything on the regular beyond the limited ISRU
| experiment(s).
| gpm wrote:
| Zeolite is a molecular sieve. That's just a fancy word for
| "material that selectively holds on to some types of
| gasses" (CO2 and H2O in the case of zeolite).
|
| I haven't followed the new bed system though, I'd be very
| interested to know if it was using a different molecular
| sieve (and somewhat surprised if they are).
| rtkwe wrote:
| Ah yeah reading a bit closer further down they mention
| it's a 4 bed system and this is largely an iterative
| improvement instead of a new system entirely.
| rolleiflex wrote:
| If they're not recycling CO2 into O2 and instead venting CO2
| to space, does that mean ISS is constantly losing gas and it
| needs an ongoing resupply of oxygen all the time?
|
| I thought oxygen was used fast enough to make resupply
| impractical, but perhaps there are in fact gigantic tanks of
| O2 under immense pressure somewhere aboard the ISS.
| mzs wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISS_ECLSS#Oxygen_generating_s
| y...
| gpm wrote:
| Yes, and sort of.
|
| The ISS is constantly losing gas, I believe that the
| primary source of new O2 is actually electrolysis of water,
| not pressurized tanks, but that they do also have
| pressurized tanks as a backup.
|
| A person breathes out roughly 1kg of CO2/day, and it
| follows you breathe in about the same amount of O2, not an
| impossible amount of mass to resupply.
| azernik wrote:
| And, to complete the equation: that carbon comes up in
| the form of food.
| Zababa wrote:
| > A person breathes out roughly 1kg of CO2/day
|
| I've heard that you mostly love weight by breath, and
| wondered what was the actual limit. Thanks for that info.
| nielsole wrote:
| Just remember that only the C part makes you lighter as
| the O2 comes from the air. So based on that number it's
| 375g/day (edit: it's 273g)
| gpm wrote:
| I get 273g/day? C is lighter than O.
|
| Also... this is a typical number for a typical lifestyle,
| I believe it can vary substantially if you exercise a
| lot.
|
| Also... I know nothing about wait loss, but surely a lot
| of the mass is in water?
| nielsole wrote:
| Thanks for pointing out that mistake. I think people also
| breath out quite a bit of water. So total weight loss
| from breathing will be bigger than the 273g
| fho wrote:
| > 1kg of CO2/day
|
| which is crazy low if you put it in perspective and see
| that (gas powered) cars release about 0.2 kg of CO2 ...
| per kilometer.
| makeitrain wrote:
| That's insane, I didn't realize it was that much. If we
| could see cars drop carbon turds on the road instead of
| venting it invisibly in the air we'd all be freaking out
| right now.
| NickNameNick wrote:
| Well, we used to have horses...
|
| There's a reason all the old buildings in big cities are
| elevated a few steps above street level...
| fho wrote:
| Yep ... that's about two chocolate bars every kilometer
| ... and that has not really changed too much with newer
| motor generations as it is mostly a function of how much
| gas is used.
| Animats wrote:
| It's a clickbait title, like the "fuel from water" people and the
| "hydrogen economy" people. Yes, with enough energy you can crack
| hydrocarbons out of combustion products. This is only useful if
| you have plenty of energy but it's not in a portable form
| suitable for rockets. As a means of removing CO2 from Earth's
| atmosphere, it's hugely inefficient. If you have that much
| electricity around, use the electricity, don't make hydrocarbons
| so you can burn them again.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| We just need long pipe from Earth to Mars to pump out CO2 there.
| It has to be long in case it gets entangled with the Sun. The
| best is to fund it from crypto tokens. Winning Elon's XPrize
| should buy few km of McDonald's straws to kick it off.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Hey, it could happen.
| xondono wrote:
| Don't give Musk more ridiculous ideas, he might just get them
| funded!
| jerf wrote:
| For giggles: A 3 square-foot pipe from here to Mars at Mars'
| closest point of approach would hold about 31.7 million metric
| tons of CO2 at atmospheric pressure [1], which looks to be
| about 2 day's worth of US emissions.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=38.6+million+miles+*+3+feet%...
| canadaduane wrote:
| I wish this article spent more time on the science.
| mlindner wrote:
| Converting CO2 into fuell isn't the hard part. The hard part is
| getting the CO2 out of the atmosphere in the first place.
|
| We've known how to convert CO2 into fuel since the end of the
| 19th century.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| This I do not understand... why do we not build a nuclear
| reactor out in the middle of no-where - easily accessible via
| shipping - that has the job of taking CO2 out of the
| atmosphere, and converting into liquid methane?
|
| It can run 24/7.
|
| Little running costs?
|
| No one complaining about NIMBYISM.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| I am not exactly knowledgeable on the topic, but I believe
| you might be underestimating the running costs. It's not like
| you can just leave a nuclear reactor unattended and hope for
| the best...
| Manuel_D wrote:
| It'd be much, much, more effective to hook up a nuclear
| reactor to the grid to take fossil fuel plants offline, and
| avoid releasing CO2 in the first place.
|
| Though in the long term, it might be useful to do what you
| propose to produce carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuel for things
| that need exceptional energy density. Like air travel or
| space launch vehicles.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| > Though in the long term, it might be useful to do what
| you propose to produce carbon neutral hydrocarbon fuel for
| things that need exceptional energy density. Like air
| travel or space launch vehicles.
|
| Yes that's what I had in mind - thanks.
|
| I do remain sceptical that electric cars will save us. If
| everyone buys an electric car, and then plugs them in the
| evening to charge - I'm not sure the grid will cope very
| well. IMHO there is still a valid case for running cars,
| trucks and trains on hydrocarbons.
| kf6nux wrote:
| One could say we've know how to convert CO2 into fuel from the
| time we first learned agriculture.
| amelius wrote:
| > The hard part is getting the CO2 out of the atmosphere in the
| first place.
|
| From the article: The Martian atmosphere is composed almost
| entirely of carbon dioxide.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Title on HN should probably read "University of Cincinnati"
| rather than UC. Even I, a graduate of University of Cincinnati
| now first thought "University of California." (Admittedly I live
| in California now)
| [deleted]
| FirstLvR wrote:
| Can you imagine us non Americans trying to remember this
| things...
| myself248 wrote:
| I just refer to everything by its domain name minus the
| suffix. There is no "U of M", there is "UMich" and "Memphis"
| and "UMT".
| fnord77 wrote:
| I'm impressed that University of Cincinnati snagged uc.edu
| makeitrain wrote:
| When you invent the internet but forget to register your own
| domain... oops.
| anamax wrote:
| The University of California schools think of themselves as
| independent entities, independent entities that just
| happened to all pick the same school colors.
|
| berkeley.edu (where "University of CA" is a subtitle),
| ucla.edu, ucdavis.edu, etc.
| fnord77 wrote:
| sometime later:
|
| https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/
| generalizations wrote:
| The problem, in general, is obtaining the CO2. Ironically, in
| industries where massive amounts of CO2 is needed (including
| biodiesel production from algae), one of the cheapest ways to get
| it is to just make it. Pulling it out of the air isn't feasible.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Pulling it out of the air isn't feasible.
|
| What about pulling it right where it's mostly produced (heavy
| polluting factories or electricity generators).
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Capturing it is difficult. It's coming out the end of a
| turbine or smelter at very high temperatures. You need to
| cool it and compress it down.
|
| Then you need to secure a source of hydrogen. Over 90% of
| industrial hydrogen comes from steam reforming which emits
| CO2. So you'd need to build out massive electrolysis plants,
| and power these plants with carbon-free energy.
|
| Finally you'd need to run the Sabatier process, which also
| needs energy.
|
| It's much, much easier to drive down emissions by just
| reducing the CO2 released in the first place.
| burnte wrote:
| https://singularityhub.com/2021/09/09/the-worlds-largest-dir...
|
| The more we do it the cheaper it'll get.
| yholio wrote:
| No, enough with this nonsense. Capturing, liquefying and
| transforming CO2 into fuel requires energy - due to thermodynamic
| limits, much more energy than what the fuel can give back. You
| then take that fuel, and... burn it into 25% efficient engines
| that spew the very same CO2 back into the air, along with some
| new carcinogenic fumes and acid-rain inducing nitrogen oxides?
|
| No, just no, full stop. They way forward is electrification of
| everything, using only carbon-neutral energy, renewables
| &nuclear. No hydrogen, no methane, no electric to fuel, let's not
| do these physical stupidities to keep dying industries alive.
| eightysixfour wrote:
| I was with you until no hydrogen. While it is inefficient in
| compared to batteries, as long as it is being produced with
| carbon-neutral energy then there are areas where its kWh/kg
| ratio and comparatively rapid refilling are extremely
| beneficial.
| yholio wrote:
| You should take that kWh/kg figure with a kg of salt. You
| need a heavy COPV tank to store hydrogen under pressure, a
| 100 kg tank might store only a few kg of fuel, take 400 liter
| to do so, and be comparable with a 30l conventional fuel
| tank: https://www.fsec.ucf.edu/en/consumer/hydrogen/basics/do
| cumen...
| eightysixfour wrote:
| Sure, and using it for small vehicles seems like the worst
| place to use them. I'm thinking more about vehicles that
| need significantly more fuel - diesel electric trains,
| container ships, airplanes, etc.
|
| It won't work in all of those situations since hydrogen is
| so hard to manage, but there are a number of applications
| where batteries are not the right answer yet. Battery
| weight is going to scale close to linearly with capacity,
| hydrogen tank weight should not.
| ncmncm wrote:
| LH2 tanks on aircraft, insulated with aerogel, can be
| very light. But the extra volume will mean a need for new
| airframes.
|
| Trains and ships, and maybe trucks, will do better with
| ammonia. The tanks are bigger, but those have room, and
| existing engines can burn ammonia with just changes to
| plumbing.
| missedthecue wrote:
| You are correct that they can't break the laws of
| thermodynamics, but they don't need to in order to have a
| workable business model. The reason is because you don't need
| it to result in more energy than you put in. You just need it
| to result in more revenue than input costs. This is practically
| possible because different energy forms have different costs
| and they're not all substitutable for each other. For instance,
| electricity may become a lot cheaper than liquid fuel, but you
| can't electrify a long range airliner, or most military
| equipment. So in a world where a watt of electricity can be
| bought for 1/3 the price of a watt of kerosene, using 2 units
| of electricity energy to make 1 unit of liquid fuel energy
| would be economical. (made up numbers, you get the point)
| [deleted]
| realusername wrote:
| Thermodynamics is about energy not CO2, you can design negative
| CO2 devices and we even have proof in nature of that since
| that's what trees are doing.
| wyager wrote:
| There are several conceptual issues here, but one of them is
| that trees require energy from sunlight to turn CO2 into
| other things.
| realusername wrote:
| Yes but we don't have an energy problem, we have a CO2
| problem and there's no law of physics preventing to absorb
| more CO2 than you emit.
| diarrhea wrote:
| That's true but assumes the captured CO2 remains that,
| captured. The article revolves around the idea of turning
| CO2 into _fuel_. Fuel which is burned, releasing that
| same CO2 again while having wasted a lot of intermediate
| energy. At best, that energy was renewable and would 've
| been curtailed otherwise (hence wasted). Then you didn't
| "use energy" but it was still an utterly useless
| exercise.
|
| Now, if the carbon remains captured and the energy for
| capturing is renewable, we are in business. I'm not aware
| that is done on a meaningful scale yet though.
| peteradio wrote:
| But thats not what this is. Fuel is intended to be consumed,
| seems like this is at best carbon neutral assuming totally
| neutral power source. Are our current power sources on
| average neutral or are they much more carbon positive?
| realusername wrote:
| > But thats not what this is. Fuel is intended to be
| consumed, seems like this is at best carbon neutral
| assuming totally neutral power source
|
| Indeed, that's their goal, the issue is that currently we
| emit a lot so even making the fuel close to neutral (minus
| production inefficiencies) is already a huge progress.
| Going negative isn't for tomorrow unfortunately.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| The problem is that this requires reversing entropy. Turning
| CO2 into something that can burn into CO2 requires more
| energy than you get back while burning it, even in an optimal
| engine. This is true if humans reverse entropy or if trees do
| it.
| realusername wrote:
| Economics are a different story yeah, there's no way to
| make carbone absorption economically possible without some
| carbon scheme designed by the country. They won't happen on
| their own that's for sure, that's where legislation should
| come in place.
| DennisP wrote:
| It's not an energy source, it's a battery.
| colordrops wrote:
| Agreed that the future is electrification, but it will take
| trillions of dollars and a lot of time to replace all internal
| combustion engines. What should we do in the meantime? It seems
| that using renewable energy to make carbon neutral fuels for
| these vehicles makes a lot of sense. What is "nonsense" about
| this?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It would take more time, energy, money, and resources to
| build out enough solar and wind (etc) to turn enough CO2 into
| enough fuel for all our cars than it takes to just replace
| the cars with electric ones and use that massive solar and
| wind grid to just power them straight
| colordrops wrote:
| It's not all or nothing, and further more the electricity
| from solar and wind is fungible and can be used for either
| fuel generation or direct usage by electric cars, so it
| would serve us either way, no matter how long it took.
|
| These things are not contradictory. We can build out more
| renewable electricity supply, replace with electric cars,
| and generate carbon neutral fuel all at the same time. You
| are underestimating how long and difficult the ICE
| replacement is going to take. It's not like a single
| organization can just wave a wand and all gas cars would be
| replaced over night.
| yholio wrote:
| In Europe, fosil fuel engines are already 2-4 times more
| expensive to run than electrics. In 11 years, which is
| the average age of a car in Europe, the majority of
| private vehicles will switch naturally for purely
| economic reasons. In 20 years, the same will be true for
| busses, trucks & tractors.
|
| And it will be driven solely by better economics.
| diarrhea wrote:
| And what do you get by replacing one ICE vehicle in
| Europe with an electric one?
|
| You get _two_ cars. A shiny new electric one running in
| (Central) Europe, and that same old stinky ICE one
| running in Eastern Europe, Asia or Africa.
|
| The poorer countries will enjoy an influx and thus price
| decrease of valuable cars and happily drive them for
| decades to come.
|
| The problem of course is that the planet doesn't care.
| Europe got cleaner but the planet got worse. Whereas
| Europe can outsource its dirty issues (waste, emissions,
| ...), the planet cannot. It stops there and we all lose.
|
| I think the vast introduction of and blind focus on
| e-mobility is a mistake. Other areas are much more
| significant sources for GHG (industry, heating, A/C).
| it_citizen wrote:
| I get that blue hydrogen might be a controversial topic but
| isn't there at least a case to make for green hydrogen in some
| sectors that might be hard to electrify such as aviation? Or
| even as an alternative storage solution since the effort to
| scale up nuclear seems pretty much dead in the water.
|
| I know it is a long shot: it is not yet competitive, there are
| still very few electrolyzers but some part of the world such as
| Europe seems pretty committed to try to make it work.
| btilly wrote:
| The title needs to be changed. Because this isn't about climate
| change, and the research, contents of the article, and current
| article title are clear on that.
|
| This is about space exploration. Literally it is about how to
| make fuel on Mars so that we can make the round trip without
| having to deliver fuel so we can make it back.
|
| And, sorry, but there is no way with current technology to
| launch significant payloads into space using electric.
| _Microft wrote:
| It can make sort of sense for applications for which the energy
| density of the fuel (like for airplanes or rockets) matters a
| lot. The energy density of current generation lithium ion
| batteries is insufficient to allow for long-range flights.
| Synthetic fuels could allow planes to still travel around the
| world while being effectively net zero emitters because the
| CO_2 was harvested from the atmosphere (or another, unavoidable
| CO_2 source). The production of the fuel might be inefficient
| but at least it would work.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Liquid hydrogen LH2 electrically synthesized on-site at
| airports from excess peak production will be important in
| aviation after maybe 2035 (provided civilization doesn't
| collapse first). Aside from LH2's usefully extreme energy
| density, pumping less CO2 directly into the stratosphere
| would be good.
|
| We may reasonably expect production of the needed aerogel-
| insulated LH2 tankage to be mature by then.
| MauranKilom wrote:
| Asking as someone only remotely familiar with hydrogen as a
| fuel: Don't you have the problem of tanks and pipes
| becoming brittle from hydrogen diffusing into the material?
| Are there existing/upcoming solutions for this? I was under
| the impression that this is a pretty fundamental problem
| with hydrogen being just a proton essentially..
| _Microft wrote:
| You need to consider the volumetric energy density, not the
| specific energy (which is energy per mass). LH2 has a high
| specific energy but pretty low volumetric energy density
| which means that much larger tanks are needed to store the
| same amount of energy than for other fuels.
|
| The conditions for storage of LH2 and demands on materials
| in contact with LH2 are much harder than for e.g. methane.
| yholio wrote:
| There is already a good solution for planes: ammonia,
| manufactured efficiently from green hydrogen. You will never
| be able to use gaseous or liquid hydrogen on planes due to
| the high volume, weight and risk associated with known
| storage methods.
|
| Ammonia seems to strike the right balance:
| https://www.ammoniaenergy.org/articles/zero-emission-
| aircraf...
| _Microft wrote:
| How are they planning to work around ammonia's toxicity
| problem? It's fatal if breathed in at concentrations like
| we currently have CO_2 in the atmosphere (> ~400ppm). If a
| tank with conventional jetfuel or methane springs a leak or
| has to be dumped, you've got a huge problem. If that
| happens with an ammonia tank, you are most likely toast
| either way.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| We'll just use that fuel to make plastic, and scatter it all
| over the surface of the planet. So it's really just a
| continuation of the ad hoc sequestration program already under
| way.
| qw3rty01 wrote:
| In the article, the idea was to store excess green electricity
| (from solar/wind farms for example) by capturing CO2 that is
| generated from fossil fuels. I do agree that claiming it will
| address climate change is a bit of a stretch, since that CO2 is
| still going back into the environment when the methane is used,
| but it does mean getting more energy per unit of CO2.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't fulminate. That's in the site guidelines
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), because it
| tends to produce low-quality discussion which we're hoping to
| avoid here. I'm sure you can make your substantive points
| thoughtfully, so please do that instead.
| ridaj wrote:
| For Mars? What would carbon-based fuel on Mars be burned with?
| There's not much O2 there!
| adamtheclayman wrote:
| There's a company in Israel that's recently patented and is
| commercializing this process described of using transiently cheap
| or free renewable energy surplus to methylate captured/scrubbed
| CO2 with the Sabatier reaction, then burning it at the time and
| place of their choosing as "renewable" natural gas.
|
| Standard Carbon: https://www.standardcarbon.com/
|
| Standard Carbon Patent:
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US11091408B2/en?oq=11%2c09...
| asasidh wrote:
| convert Co2 to methane which is a more potent agent for global
| warming. what could go wrong
| rtkwe wrote:
| For Mars that's not so much of an issue. Even if we did release
| a lot of methane warming up Mars isn't a bad thing in fact it's
| something we may try eventually intentionally to make it less
| inhospitable.
| invisible wrote:
| It's been seemingly impossible to motivate the world to switch to
| alternatives to fuel. We're between a rock and a hard place with
| society and the environment.
|
| It seems like there isn't even a conspiracy, it's just a
| combination of poor choices, greed, and new technology. Solar is
| great, but often it's more expensive than just consuming grid
| power or has unpredictable payoffs. Wind has a lot of upfront
| costs. Massive batteries are just starting to roll out. Energy
| companies are trying to keep prices low in the short-term and
| keep things reliable, so they mostly use cheap and plentiful
| fuel. Consumers without a lot of money can't put the capital down
| for a new car, so they buy used or cheap. It happens that most
| used/cheap cars use petrol-based fuel. Additionally, car
| companies have a product that sells, why risk that or their
| reputation?
|
| Finally, you have the government deciding policy based on much
| more than just the environment.
|
| Perhaps this will create a better storage mechanism, but
| addressing getting to carbon neutrality feels very dreary.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| > It's been seemingly impossible to motivate the world to
| switch to alternatives to fuel.
|
| The impossible part is we have yet to discover a density/cost
| comparison to hydrocarbons.
|
| No one is going to "switch" to something that isn't as good as
| the existing option. Couple this with "but electric cars!" that
| often are still just coal powered.
|
| Plastics, military, actual logistics, China, we're going to
| burn every drop of oil. We all better hope someone is working
| on sequestering options!
| invisible wrote:
| If you're taking what I said to mean "of course individuals
| should just do better," I definitely didn't mean to imply
| that. Exactly the opposite, actually.
|
| It's a bunch of smaller decisions that are hampered by new
| technology and lack of economies of scale, among many other
| compounding factors that result in poor
| consumer/business/utility/government choices (for the
| environment). I think sequestering may be an important part
| of that, but it's still new technology.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >Finally, you have the government deciding policy based on much
| more than just the environment.
|
| I feel like this is the crux of your problem. People and
| governments have multiple priorities to balance
| president wrote:
| If it was really an issue, wouldn't free market forces have
| paved the way to widespread fuel alternative consumption a long
| time ago? Sure you can force everyone to stop using gasoline
| and buy an electric car but there are costs to that. I think
| most people believe there are more dire issues that need fixing
| and funding.
| mattnewton wrote:
| I think the issue is that the costs of using fossil fuels are
| "external" to the purchaser, so a market solution doesn't
| work until the negative externality of pumping co2 into our
| shared atmosphere can be accounted for.
|
| It would be like expecting people who dump their industrial
| waste upstream in a river to be corrected by market forces -
| the market will probably choose that people don't care about
| the down river people as long as they get their goods
| slightly cheaper.
|
| Also a wrinkle in a pure market based solution is that the US
| substantially subsidizes fossil fuels because I think the
| 70's taught politicians that fuel price shocks will get them
| voted out immediately. https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-
| sheet-fossil-fuel-subs...
| invisible wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand your point. The free market is
| slowly moving toward alternative fuels, albeit slowly. That's
| part of why your local energy utility is likely using a
| combination of sources. It's why you can see solar panels
| when you drive around any non-shaded resident affluent
| communities. Many governments around the world see the issue
| and have made agreements to address it, insofar as they can
| and on a timeline of a century.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| The capitalist solution to climate change is building condos
| in Antarctica. Capitalist markets are probably the most
| short-term problem solving mechanism you could ever find for
| an economy.
|
| > I think most people believe there are more dire issues that
| need fixing and funding.
|
| No, they're stuck in a shitty system that doesn't allow them
| to price resources according to their externalities. People
| aren't going to opt to pay more for fossil fuels than they
| have to because it would require a critical mass of buy-in.
| The only solution is taxation, but that doesn't work either
| because the system offers no safety nets and gasoline
| suddenly jumping to $20/gallon (which is what it should cost
| now) would be financially devastating to citizens.
|
| Markets work great at lower populations, and now we're
| beginning to see their failure modes when population has
| skyrocketed and rampant resource consumption causes
| existential damage. Everyone _knows_ it 's a problem, but
| there's no systemic way of solving it.
|
| We're now at a point in humanity where _supply and demand_
| alone are insufficient mechanisms to organize an economy.
| [deleted]
| btilly wrote:
| This isn't the only team trying this. See
| https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/making-methane-m...
| for another team working on the same thing for the same purpose.
|
| It is worthy of note that the process that is described is
| exactly the one that Elon Musk was already planning to use on
| Mars. This is exactly why finding water on Mars is critical to
| his plans, and is also why Starship is designed to run on
| methane-oxygen. (Starship will be the second methane rocket ever.
| And the first, Starhopper, used the same raptor engine.)
|
| It is also worth pointing out that producing methane here on
| Earth for use around Earth is not particularly helpful. Methane
| is hard to store and is a better greenhouse gas than carbon
| dioxide. Then if you use it for a rocket, you put that carbon
| dioxide back in the atmosphere. We benefit a bit from the shade
| provided by the water vapor so it isn't quite net neutral, but it
| is pretty close.
| [deleted]
| trevcanhuman wrote:
| Ironically, both are UC. I even though at the beginning that
| OP's article was from the University of California. Pretty big
| coincidence.
|
| > It is also worth pointing out that producing methane here on
| Earth for use around Earth is not particularly helpful. Methane
| is hard to store and is a better greenhouse gas than carbon
| dioxide.
|
| Couldn't we run the methane through one of those electric
| generators used in farming for cows' feces ? I honestly don't
| know how efficient these processes are, not an expert by any
| means.
| spiorf wrote:
| > Couldn't we run the methane through one of those electric
| generators used in farming for cows' feces ?
|
| You get back the co2 and the energy you expended to make
| methane in the first place.
| tito wrote:
| For anyone starting a carbon removal startup, check out AirMiners
| http://airminers.org
|
| For anyone who has been scouring the web to learn about carbon
| removal and wants all the best stuff in one place, check out the
| 5-week AirMiners Boot Up http://bootup.airminers.org
| thinkling wrote:
| Super interesting, thanks! Any idea what the timeline will be
| on your fund?
| ruffrey wrote:
| Thank you so much for sharing this! Exactly what I've been
| looking for.
| tito wrote:
| Sure thing! For a bit of customer interview, can you describe
| your process so far to this point? Where have you been
| looking, what got you interested, etc. And when you say
| "exactly what you were looking for", what are you seeing?
| Voloskaya wrote:
| Or if you would rather do it on your own time I can recommand
| the CDR Primer: https://cdrprimer.org/read
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| The actual title is "UC reactor makes Martian fuel" and the
| subtitle is "A gas station on Mars? Engineers envision the
| possibilities." But the submission title is "UC reactor converts
| carbon dioxide to fuel to address climate change"?
|
| While it does talk about applications with respect to carbon
| capture, if we consume the fuel byproduct, presumably we just end
| up with co2 in the atmosphere?
|
| > "In the future we'll develop other catalysts that can produce
| more products," said Zhang, a doctoral student in chemical
| engineering.
|
| So I guess if we produce products which sequester carbon then
| maybe that would be useful, but this is purely speculative.
| jl6 wrote:
| > if we consume the fuel byproduct, presumably we just end up
| with co2 in the atmosphere?
|
| The process would still be great news if true, as it could be a
| carbon-neutral source of hydrocarbon fuel for applications that
| are hard to electrify, like aviation.
| wrycoder wrote:
| This is mainstream energy science.
|
| Anthropogenic Chemical Carbon Cycle for a Sustainable Future
| [0]
|
| How to Make Carbon-Neutral Gasoline Out of Thin Air [1]
|
| [0] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja202642y#
|
| [1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/how-to-make-
| carbon-n...
| wibagusto wrote:
| I just imagine the scramble to get carbon neutral allowing
| huge carbon-processing factories and then we enter some kind
| of carbon deficit, back in the same situation we are in--a
| teetering balance between overconsumption and moderation.
| chrisBob wrote:
| If, some day in the future the oil companies all start
| pushing hard for carbon capture, then we will know this is
| a real possibility.
| jl6 wrote:
| To be clear, the solution to climate change is first to
| stop burning fossil fuels, and then to start removing
| carbon from the atmosphere. This technology won't help long
| term removal of carbon if we just burn the resulting fuel,
| but it might help displace fossils as a source for some
| applications that would otherwise be at the very end of the
| fossil ramp-down.
| markkanof wrote:
| With this technology, assuming it can capture large
| amounts of carbon, couldn't some of it be converted to
| fuel for current use and some of it sequestered. It would
| certainly take longer to significantly reduce the amount
| of CO2 in the atmosphere, but should still do the job.
| Instead of introducing new CO2 into the atmosphere by
| burning newly extracted oil, we would be sequestering
| some and "recycling" some.
| dotancohen wrote:
| There still must be some input of energy. From what I
| understand, the Sabatier reaction is really only viable
| from an environmental perspective if it is powered by
| some other non-carbon energy, such as solar or wind.
| dTal wrote:
| And if you have that surplus clean energy, you should
| spend it powering things that would otherwise be powered
| with fossil fuels - _not_ trying to offset someone else
| 's emissions. Carbon removal only makes sense in a world
| where nobody is burning _any_ fossil fuels, and we 're
| trying to lower atmospheric carbon. Lower, not offset.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I accept the argument that offset schemes have difficult
| practical problems, but at least theoretically "offset"
| means "lower". It just means that your application isn't
| necessarily reducing carbon. And it kind of makes sense--
| for an airline to get carbon neutral it would require
| immense investment in electric flight and decades of
| research and then more decades of incremental rollout.
| Instead that money and effort could be spent helping
| reduce a _lot_ more carbon elsewhere _now_ (e.g.,
| replacing coal power plants with equivalent solar power).
| wrycoder wrote:
| Which would only make sense if you were trying to
| initiate the currently deferred glacial epoch.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Yes, to convert CO2 to CH4 you need to break the C-O
| bonds. This takes energy.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| From what I know, it's electricity intensive to make the
| fuels. Now, if only we had a very scalable way to make
| immense amounts of electricity that didn't depend on weather
| in a world where the climate is now in disarray. Hmm...
| admax88qqq wrote:
| You're being unnecessarily negative IMO.
|
| The biggest challenge with renewables always cited is
| storage. Cabrin neutral feul like this could potentially be
| a good storage medium.
|
| There's more than enough solar energy hitting the Earth's
| surface to supply all our power needs, the challenge is
| capturing, storing, and distributing this power.
|
| After all, fossil fuels are just captured solar energy.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| Right, the operative keyword in my comment being
| _scalable_. How many solar panels does it take to
| generate the same amount of power _in a full day_ that
| nuclear does _in a full day_? Now, are you assuming a
| sunny day? What about cloudy days? What about weeks of
| wildfire smoke blotting out the sun? Are you including
| the energy it takes to create your fuel battery? How much
| fossil fuels do we burn in manufacturing to cover the
| Earth 's surface in enough solar panels to meet our
| collective needs?
|
| Storage isn't the only problem, and I mentioned this in
| my comment: weather patterns are changing in unpredicable
| ways. Building more weather-dependent power sources is
| _stupid_ when we already have a great solution.
| [deleted]
| fozzyfozfoz wrote:
| Yea that CO2 is not as easy to pump as sticking a drill in some
| oil plump wet dirt and pumping away.
| 300bps wrote:
| _if we consume the fuel byproduct, presumably we just end up
| with co2 in the atmosphere?_
|
| It's necessary to compare the two things:
|
| 1 - we drill out more fossil fuels and burn it
|
| 2 - we convert atmospheric CO2 to fuels and burn it
|
| #2 is theoretically infinite and CO2 levels never increase. #1
| is very finite and the longer we do it the higher CO2 levels
| increase.
| riboflavin123 wrote:
| The URL matches the submission title, at least. Perhaps the
| content changed?
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| I concur, looks like the title changed, slug remained the
| same.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| That's amusing. The change must've occurred in the ~8
| minute window between the submission and my comment, which
| seems odd considering the article is 2 days old. Not
| casting doubt, but remarking on coincidence.
| temp0826 wrote:
| A/B test caught in action possibly?
| btilly wrote:
| Most likely the fact that it appeared here caused someone
| to look at it, realize that the title didn't match the
| contents, and hurry to change it.
|
| The old title really was egregiously bad. @dang, can we
| get it fixed?
| dang wrote:
| There's more than one actual title. The submitter used the HTML
| doc title, which is a legit choice, and they probably picked it
| on the grounds that it was more substantive/less baity.
|
| Since the climate change mention has turned out to be baity in
| its own right, I took that bit out above.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Huh, makes sense. I didn't realize there could be more than
| one title. Thanks for the clarification.
| sfink wrote:
| > if we consume the fuel byproduct, presumably we just end up
| with co2 in the atmosphere?
|
| If it replaces some amount of fossil fuel, it could still be
| useful. I'm guessing the efficiency isn't great, though.
| perfunctory wrote:
| On the side note, anybody knows what happened to the prometheus
| startup [0]? Are they still alive?
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19842240
| twostorytower wrote:
| Looks like they're still alive and well:
| https://prometheusfuels.com/technology
| whatever1 wrote:
| I like how in the media publications for carbon capturing they
| always forget to mention that these things need a ton of energy
| to run.
| qw3rty01 wrote:
| They do mention it, just not directly:
|
| > Right now we have excess green energy that we just throw
| away. We can store this excess renewable energy in chemicals.
|
| The idea is that it can be used to store excess energy from
| green sources
| brokensegue wrote:
| unless we price carbon high enough this excess energy is just
| going to get burnt into bitcoin
| epistasis wrote:
| Depends on the relative value of mining and fuel
| manufacturing.
| whatshisface wrote:
| If people were willing to work through the issues with nuclear
| power, running a bunch of nuclear plants to power the scrubbers
| would be semi-reasonable.
| epistasis wrote:
| It's far more reasonable to use solar than nuclear for this,
| solar has leapfrogged nuclear now.
|
| The carbon capture startup founder of Carbon Engineering
| talks about how he got this wrong, and how they switched
| their plans from using nuclear to solar. Here's a talk from
| two years ago on this:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYopOt9siLg
|
| Note that many disagree with his optimism on the carbon
| capture side of things, but the solar is generally accepted
| by technologists.
| korantu wrote:
| This ton of energy on top what we already consume can be indeed
| obtained from nuclear [0], without spending a lot of additional
| material.
|
| [0] https://medium.com/climate-conscious/nuclear-powered-
| carbon-...
| lmilcin wrote:
| Don't get your hopes too high if you think this can be used to
| scrub significant amount of CO2 from atmosphere.
|
| Don't get me wrong, producing fuel from atmospheric CO2 is still
| wonderful news.
|
| But you know what they produce? Methane. And methane is what? It
| is _A FUEL_. And what we do with fuel? We _BURN_ it. Once you
| burn methane you get the CO2 back, for net ZERO effect on the
| atmosphere.
|
| The only way this works to help the climate is if you can use
| thus produced methane to remove need for mining actual gas.
| Unfortunately (or fortunately), we are already on the way to
| reduce a lot of mining for energy by replacing it with
| electricity. So according to Amdahal's law, the benefit is also
| going to be small.
|
| Producing and burying methane clathrate is still impractical and
| would be very risky, because they can get resurfaced and then
| methane is hundreds of times more potent as warming agent than
| CO2.
| diarrhea wrote:
| It's even worse than zero net effect, it's negative, owed to
| all the auxiliary inefficiencies. Add to that methane slip and
| it's infeasible by a long shot.
|
| The solution can never be to remedy surface-level GHG. The
| sources need to remain buried and replaced by true renewables.
| Anything else is just an afterthought, patching what's already
| too little too late. Almost all fossil-based material that made
| it to the surface will end up contributing to GHG.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| Do not forget market forces: there would be a strong
| incentive to improve upon the CO2 scrubbing technology, which
| can then be used in the tech to permanently remove CO2 from
| the atmosphere.
| ncmncm wrote:
| 24 times more.
|
| You are better off just pumping the CO2 down there, instead,
| and arranging for it to turn into rock.
| [deleted]
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