[HN Gopher] MIT engineers develop a new way to remove carbon dio...
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MIT engineers develop a new way to remove carbon dioxide from air
(2019)
Author : gozzoo
Score : 80 points
Date : 2023-02-04 12:05 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.mit.edu)
| netfl0 wrote:
| [flagged]
| weissbier wrote:
| Just noting, this article is from 2019
| jpm_sd wrote:
| The spin-out is off and running. They won a carbon removal
| X-Prize last year.
|
| https://verdox.com/
|
| https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220422005027/en/Ver...
| scaredginger wrote:
| Is there a need for software engineers in developing direct air
| capture tech? I'd be interested in working in the field
| capableweb wrote:
| Of course, people writing the software for the control systems
| and monitoring is always needed :) I think the area is hard to
| get into unless you have education and some sort of
| certification in it though, can't just jump into it like when
| building web apps (as an example, don't know your background
| obviously).
| kolinko wrote:
| There is a very limited need. There's a ton of co2 calculators
| and energy markets out there, but supply of those outstrips
| demand.
|
| The only other part that would really require software devs is
| heavy duty physics simulations perhaps.
|
| Some things you just can't fix with software :)
|
| (Having said that - of course every hardware project needs some
| sort of software - be it microcontroller programming, or a
| website. But it's such a small part that it can be outsourced
| to a generic software house really)
| osigurdson wrote:
| Software is needed to accurately simulate CO2 injection into
| saline aquifers and depleted gas reservoirs. It is complex
| stuff - simulations typically run for 100s/1000s of years into
| the future, modelling chemical reactions, cap rock integrity,
| etc. Measurements are regularly obtained from the site which
| are fed back into the simulation. There are definitely jobs in
| this space.
| throw_away1525 wrote:
| The developers working on these types of simulations
| typically have a background in a more traditional engineering
| field like petroleum engineering or chemical engineering. Not
| saying that it isn't possible to break into the field with a
| different background, just sharing my experience.
| osigurdson wrote:
| It is necessary to run thousands of simulations, collect
| and analyze data, etc. The scale can be enormous. There are
| definitely software engineering roles.
| xwdv wrote:
| Very limited, better to buy simulators off the shelf if
| building simulations isn't your core focus.
| the_mar wrote:
| Not DAC but CO2 capture nonetheless, Thalo Labs is a startup in
| NYC and they are hiring.
|
| https://jobs.lever.co/thalolabs/73ca7b6c-50ff-4902-9d32-8c86...
| dexterdog wrote:
| I thought NY passed a law that you had to list the salary
| range on all job postings.
| the_mar wrote:
| For companies over a certain number of full-time employees
| in the state.
| joxel wrote:
| I wonder what the extra energy required to take this "pure stream
| of ejected CO2" into the ground is compared to using a different
| style of removing CO2 that just requires extra energy during
| capture.
|
| I'm definitely not an engineer but I feel like injecting CO2
| directly into the earth has to use a ton more energy.
| noduerme wrote:
| I like that the shorter term goal seems to be injecting it into
| carbonated beverages. I'd love one of these to drop in behind
| my soda stream.
| kolinko wrote:
| You are comparing to something that doesn't really exist. Most
| - if not all - existing solutions have two separate parts -
| capture and storage.
| D13Fd wrote:
| Isn't that true of this system as well?
| joxel wrote:
| The only solution I've been somewhat familiar with is
| basically putting porous clay pellets into smoke stacks that
| capture some of the CO2.
| epistemer wrote:
| I would think it all depends on the initial energy source.
|
| This is just one of the myriad of ways our malinvestment in
| cheap nuclear energy condemns us to try to build a type of
| perceptual motion machine.
| heywhatupboys wrote:
| When I see "MIT engineer" in some pop sci news article, I know 99
| % of the time it is bullshit.
| tacocataco wrote:
| Isn't pushing boundaries wading through 99% of bullshit to get
| to that 1%?
| heywhatupboys wrote:
| sure, doesn't mean that popular news sites write "MIT" akin
| to bad money ads writing "Harvard Business School teaches you
| THIS trick to get money!!"
| romusha wrote:
| Wow its been 3 years, where did all these great tech go? I
| thought they were supposed to solve the climate problems
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Wow its been 3 years, where did all these great tech go?
|
| The fundamental problem with carbon capture is that 1) carbon
| comprises a tiny fraction of Air, and 2) requires energy input
| in some form. This means whatever methodology you use, will
| require you to expand energy to move huge volumes of air to
| remove a small number of particles (i.e. ~400 particles of
| Carbon, for 1 million Air particles).
| hedora wrote:
| Although this is a big problem, air tends to mix itself. Most
| solutions that are being commercialized are targeting
| $100/ton at scale. Due to convenient unit conversions, this
| translates to $1.00/gallon of gasoline burned.
|
| This tells us a few things about the energy efficiency of
| those processes, but, as importantly, they would be
| economically viable in that price range. (A $1/gallon gas tax
| would have much less economic impact than the war in Ukraine,
| or prior wars in the Middle East.)
| [deleted]
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| IIRC they won a portion of that prize than Elon Musk funded
| last year.
| DennisP wrote:
| Also they started a company in 2019, and got $80 million
| invested in 2022, including from Bill Gates' Breakthrough
| Energy Ventures. They're improving the tech and are working
| with their first commercial client.
|
| https://news.mit.edu/2022/cracking-carbon-removal-
| challenge-...
| OliverJones wrote:
| Good. Invent things. Try things.
|
| But keep this in mind: plants evolved lignin to make their
| structures (trunks, branches, all that) hundreds of millions of
| years before bacteria and other microorganisms evolved the
| ability to break down that lignin. So, for hundreds of millions
| of years, plants captured carbon dioxide by photosynthesis and
| sequestered it. That's what changed earth's atmosphere from
| reducing to oxidizing. Fossil carbon is the geological remains of
| that carbon capture.
|
| It's hard to imagine carbon-capture tech that has the longevity
| of those planet-wide lignin forests.
| smeyer wrote:
| I think focusing on longevity in terms of geological timescales
| isn't necessary. Finding short term solutions will give us more
| time to come up with longer term solutions before our planet
| goes completely to hell.
| SilasX wrote:
| Right, just like how you can't expect to build something that
| flies better than a bird. They've just been evolving at it far
| longer.
| est31 wrote:
| FTR the evolutionary delay hypothesis used to be popular, but
| for the carboniferous, the most carbon-deposing period on
| earth, that theory has been dismissed. See this paper:
| https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1517943113
|
| TLDR:
|
| * there is evidence for partial lignin breakdown in existing
| deposits, so we know it was a thing back then
|
| * if it were just lignin breakdown, then we'd see orders of
| magnitude more deposits. that is, if you look at the per year
| deposit rate, you'll see only a small fraction of lignin being
| deposited.
|
| * a large fraction of deposits doesn't even contain lignin,
| often below or above deposits with lignin, but without there
| being a different rate of depositions between them.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| That has to make sense. Were there huge piles of dead plants
| just piling up everywhere? Was it vines all the way to the
| stratosphere?
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Was about to google this up. Thanks
| liquid_bluing wrote:
| Was just going to post this. What a great community!
| thangalin wrote:
| Wasn't it cyanobacteria photosynthesis, rather than plants,
| that significantly changed Earth's early atmospheric
| composition?
|
| My book: https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf
|
| The Great Oxygenation Event occurred about 2.3 billion years
| ago, around the same time as complex cells emerged. We didn't
| see multicellular eukaryotic life until 1.6 billion years ago,
| give or take. Plants certainly played and still play a hugely
| important role, but they probably weren't responsible for the
| initial change to an oxidizing atmosphere.
|
| My sources: https://impacts.to/bibliography.pdf
| scns wrote:
| Don't phytoplankton still produce the most O2?
| glial wrote:
| Billion, not million. Interesting book though, thanks for
| sharing.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Adding to this CO2 is just one symptom of climate change.
| Treating a symptom rarely has long lasting benefits whereas
| curing the root causes may be preferred. Tinkering with just
| one feedback loop can lead to unintended consequences, a nasty
| lesson I learned from prescription drugs.
| blululu wrote:
| Huh? We are clearly tinkering with the atmospheric CO2 levels
| on a massive scale. But also CO2 is a cause not a symptom. It
| only becomes a symptom when the solubility of the ocean
| changes and carbon is released.
| rustybelt wrote:
| Isn't excess CO2 the literal cause of climate change? What is
| the actual cause if not that?
| sokoloff wrote:
| CO2 is the gas everyone talks about. Other gases also
| contribute (CH4, H2O, N2O, SO2, and others).
| specialist wrote:
| Yes and:
|
| And it's very likely any fixes will not simply be a
| matter of reducing atmospheric carbon.
|
| Here's a first principles explanation for why carbon net
| zero and sequestration are not the direct, most expedient
| path towards reducing temps.
|
| "Dr. Ye Tao on a grand scheme to cool the Earth"
| https://www.volts.wtf/p/volts-podcast-dr-ye-tao-on-a-
| grand#d...
|
| TLDR: Given the time and resources we have, focus on
| strategies for cooling the atmosphere the fastest way
| possible.
| DennisP wrote:
| Maybe most sensible approach: use SRM to reduce
| temperature directly and head off nasty positive
| feedbacks like melting permafrost, but treat that as
| buying time to get CO2 down to a safe level.
| blululu wrote:
| Yeah because it's the biggest new contributor.
| Technically water is the biggest green house gas but
| there are good reasons for focusing on CO2.
| DennisP wrote:
| People talk most about CO2 because it has the most total
| effect as a driver of climate change. CH4 for example has
| a greater effect per kilogram, but we emit a lot less of
| it and it doesn't last nearly as long.
|
| H2O technically affects the temperature even more than
| CO2 but it's not a driver, because the total H2O in the
| atmosphere depends on overall temperature. Emitting more
| H2O, from hydrogen cars or something, would just mean you
| get more rain somewhere.
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Human civilization cycles technologies on timescale of
| centuries or even decades. No long lasting benefits are
| needed, just a little while to tide us over to the next
| better thing. Like burning coal was a giant environmental
| breakthrough that saved planet's forests from being chopped
| for firewood and now we have decent nuclear and renewable
| energy sources that are even cleaner.
| moffkalast wrote:
| That's all well and good, but natural selection has the
| tendency to only find a good enough solution that happens to
| work in a niche, not an optimal one for all cases. There may
| very well be a technique that doesn't work as well in small
| individual plant-sized systems but can become far more
| efficient when scaled up. I suppose it is somewhat unlikely
| though.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| Scaled up at the continental level, like say, the Amazonian
| basin?
| moffkalast wrote:
| Scaled beyond a single tree-sized entity I mean. Sure you
| can put a lot of trees together to do more, but each tree
| has to do its own small scale sourcing of water, sun, air,
| etc.
|
| You can take each part of that and make a sizable facility
| that's dedicated to only handling a specific part very
| efficiently. As an example, if the process needs
| electricity you could set up small self contained solar
| panel units, or you can produce a few magnitudes more with
| one nuclear powerplant. No point in digging a hole with a
| thousand spoons when an excavator can do it in one swoop.
| dopidopHN wrote:
| I see, thanks for expanding on your point.
|
| Just a detail: forest are not tree next to each other's.
| The relationship between organisms change the energy
| efficiency and life outcome of most of the participants.
| JoshuaRogers wrote:
| As I was reading your comment, I couldn't help but laugh as
| it reminded me of the quote "Any idiot can build a bridge
| that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that
| barely stands."
| prvt wrote:
| MIT engineers invent something -> it becomes talk of the town ->
| every one forgets about it the next day/week.
| DennisP wrote:
| Not quite everyone. Last year they got $1M from the Musk
| Foundation and $80M from investors including Breakthrough
| Energy Ventures, and they're working with their first
| commercial client.
|
| https://news.mit.edu/2022/cracking-carbon-removal-
| challenge-....
| oh_my_goodness wrote:
| MIT's press office is on the case! We're saved!
| xiphias2 wrote:
| https://news.mit.edu/2022/cracking-carbon-removal-challenge-...
| cat_plus_plus wrote:
| Cool, but isn't it better to use naturally occurring alkaline
| minerals so that energy doesn't have to be expanded to re-release
| CO2? I suppose that energy to mine and pulverize minerals could
| exceed energy to cycle this battery. But minerals can potentially
| be put to dual use during or after capture, for example for
| construction or erosion control.
| hacker934 wrote:
| Burying old trees underground seems like the simplest solution to
| this issue. An old tree represents hundreds of years of removing
| carbon dioxide out of the air and converting it into a form that
| is convenient for storage. We only need to do the last step of
| making sure that invested carbon sequestration is not put back
| into the atmosphere through decomposition or fire.
|
| Here's a link to a relevant publication (from a university that
| unfortunately doesn't have the prestige or marketing team of
| MIT): doi.org/10.1186/1750-0680-3-1
| DennisP wrote:
| It _sounds_ simpler but would involve a lot more logistics. You
| 'd be moving lots of heavy stuff around, building new roads for
| it, monitoring to make sure the logging companies really are
| gently removing sustainable bits here and there instead of just
| clearcutting valuable ecosystems, etc.
|
| Where with MIT's method, you put a machine next to a good spot
| for geological storage and turn it on. According to articles
| I've seen on similar methods (Climeworks etc), it would be
| about a thousand times more efficient in terms of land area.
| stevespang wrote:
| [dead]
| jeejay wrote:
| I have an impression that in recent years MIT produces much ado
| about nothing. In that particular case, capture method requires
| energy input from, let me guess, coal burning? Moreover, you
| can't trick chemistry: more efficient capture implies higher
| affinity of CO2 towards this "CO2 battery". Higher affinity means
| that more energy would be required for regeneration of the
| "battery".
|
| From chemistry point suggested process is indistinguishable from
| the following process: pass air over CaO or Ca(OH)2 solution to
| turn it into CaCO3. Heating of CaCO3 will release CO2 thus
| regenerating CaO, which could be reused again. This process would
| require energy input -- like MIT tech.
|
| Excess of CO2 in atmosphere is not necessarily bad thing. More
| CO2 in atmosphere means more carbon will be available for capture
| by plants, which means more crops and trees.
| DennisP wrote:
| It only means more crops and trees if you magically don't get
| other effects like drought, heat stress, erosion from drought
| followed by torrential rainfall, loss of icecap melt for
| irrigation, invasive insects and disease, and forest fires, all
| of which we're seeing quite a bit.
|
| And of course we have ways to produce energy now without
| burning fossil fuels.
| jeejay wrote:
| I should admit that my specialty is chemistry and not
| environmental science so it is hard to make arguments here.
| Just a few comments: - it should be proven that these other
| effects are the causes not correlations. - what invasive
| diseases you are talking about? smallpox or syphilis? -
| drought was always a thing, e.g. great famine of 1921 in USSR
| was caused by it. That was way before modern levels of global
| warming. - There were at least 5 ice ages. Are the humans
| responsible for their endings?
|
| I am convinced that climate is changing -- just not fully
| convinced what is the human role in it.
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