[HN Gopher] Direct air capture: our technology to capture CO2
___________________________________________________________________
Direct air capture: our technology to capture CO2
Author : fagnerbrack
Score : 94 points
Date : 2023-05-27 11:17 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (climeworks.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (climeworks.com)
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Lots of information about land usage, not so much about power
| usage beyond "it'll run on renewables". I imagine their cost
| benefit analysis boils down to "governments will pay for it to
| not die", which sounds rather optimistic.
| michaelt wrote:
| They can also get cash from big oil and car companies, who will
| offer this to regulators as an argument to let them keep
| polluting.
|
| For this application it doesn't matter if it works or not.
| somedude895 wrote:
| And then wouldn't all that renewable energy production better
| be used to replace fossil fuel production? Maybe once we've
| replaced all possible CO2 emitting power generation it would
| make sense to start building out more to power these things?
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| This is the scheduling problem, you can't schedule all
| renewables, so using them inefficiently is better than not at
| all.
| doikor wrote:
| I think a part of it is waiting for the point of time when
| overproduction from renewables is to the point that we
| regularly hit 0 (or negative) prices for some parts of the day.
| Then you basically only run it during those times when
| electricity is almost free.
|
| This is already happening on windy days in the summer in
| northern Europe (Finland and northern parts of Sweden/Norway).
| tourgen wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| unwind wrote:
| So there are filters that simply collect CO2 by trapping the
| molecules directly? Wow, TIL.
| flakeoil wrote:
| I'm curious what happens with all the bugs that get stuck in the
| filters. I imagine a huge amount of air has to pass through
| everyday and bugs have no chance to escape these giant fans and
| they will get stuck and die in the different levels of filters.
|
| It's great if this technology works, but side effects have to be
| studied as well before they are put in use at scale.
| i2cmaster wrote:
| I don't see how these are improvements over algae bioreactors.
| Capturing the CO2 without reducing it will lead to less oxygen in
| the atmosphere as well. Also at least with bioreactors you get
| useful products/energy. This just generates more waste products
| and _consumes_ energy.
| mchannon wrote:
| Removing _ALL_ the CO2 in the atmosphere would be 1-2% the
| partial pressure of O2 in the atmosphere (barometric pressure
| where you live swings more than that). Of all the concerns,
| this one's low on the list.
| i2cmaster wrote:
| The justification for these things is that the oxygen is
| being converted to CO2 faster than CO2 is being reduced back
| to oxygen. So if you capture CO2 at a high rate eventually
| this would lead to you capturing all of the oxygen.
| mchannon wrote:
| We'll run out of CO2 through the natural version of this
| process (weathering) long before the O2 encounters this
| problem. At that point all the plants die, still with
| plenty of O2 in the air.
|
| In other words, it's the carbon content that's more
| endangered over the next billion years than the oxygen.
|
| The problem with this technology isn't side effects like
| this, it's prohibitive power requirements.
| Etrnl_President wrote:
| [dead]
| fwlr wrote:
| Their subscription page is currently offering a rate of about
| $1.35 USD per kg of CO2 removed, and they promise to complete
| your order within 6 years. It's nice to have some hard numbers on
| end-stage or "gold standard" CO2 offset (no doubt there are
| cheaper carbon credit options but this directly solves the
| hardest problem, CO2 that's diffused into the atmosphere.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| That's an order of magnitude more expensive than capturing from
| a point source.
| clnq wrote:
| It would take around PS12k a year to offset my carbon footprint
| in the UK, where it is below average. That's a significant part
| of my take-home salary.
|
| I could spend maybe PS1-2k a year, especially given the
| futility of this (I would be one of the 0.00...01% of people
| doing this, large industries will continue to increase
| pollution, there is no political will for meaningful measures
| to reduce emissions). There really isn't a lot of value in
| this. I'd rather invest in a green energy company, or even just
| pay the bills of a large energy producer decarbonising
| (replacing a pollution-heavy power plant with something near
| carbon zero).
|
| Can some company do this carbon filtering at the source more
| cost-effectively (potentially at no cost to the
| source/industry/plant producing CO2 now)? I'd rather buy carbon
| offset from them and pay for that operation. I think they could
| sequester 10T a year for far below PS10k.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Can some company do this carbon filtering at the source
| more cost-effectively?
|
| If you have some centralized source like that, you should
| invest on replacing it with something that doesn't emit CO2.
| It's always a better deal.
|
| Carbon capture is for sources where you just can't plug
| something like this.
| clnq wrote:
| The source might have other incentives.
|
| But I agree with the sentiment. I think CO2 offsets could
| be more effective if done through a fund that funds
| specific de-carbonisation projects for our industries. For
| example, they could fund a transition from coal power
| plants to renewable power plants for power companies, so
| long as the power companies agree to not increase their
| carbon emissions and decommission their coal power plants
| in the process.
|
| Or even a fund that simply subsidizes carbon filters for
| sources of pollution. Or a lobbying fund that's actually
| for the good of humanity, not for greed.
|
| There are many creative solutions that could offset a ton
| of CO2 emissions cheaper. But not the carbon-offset grift
| we have now. Instead, actual programs with actual reports,
| auditing, and accountability. If such a fund claims they've
| recaptured one tonne of CO2, I would expect that there is
| at least 273kg-heavy pile of carbon or, more realistically,
| some kilograms of some carbonated substance somewhere.
| masklinn wrote:
| For reference we're producing about 60Gte/year globally.
|
| For pure CO2, developed countries produce about 5t/year/person
| on the low end (Switzerland, Sweden, Italy) and >15 on the high
| end (Luxembourg, Australia).
|
| To the surprise of no one, the US is on the high end (15.5), so
| are petrostates (Saudi Arabia 16, Brunei 18, UAE 23, and Qatar
| takes the top at 37).
| marvin wrote:
| For reference, Charm Industrial offers $0.6/kg.
|
| https://charmindustrial.com/plans?planName=consumer&budget=6...
|
| Charm's pricing is actually approaching _reasonable_ to offset
| a single person 's net CO2 emissions if you're comfortably
| middle class; in the low 4 digits per month. Add a tax benefit
| and get the costs a bit lower, and it starts to look doable.
| gus_massa wrote:
| For comparison, 1 gallon of gasoline release 9kg of CO2, so
| it's $0.15 USD more per gallon to be carbon neutral. I think
| that number is too low to be real.
| jlund-molfese wrote:
| Wouldn't you multiply rather than divide, to get
| +$12.15/gallon?
| gus_massa wrote:
| Yes, obviously! My bad. I must don't make math in the
| morning. Thanks for the correction.
| lom wrote:
| The article says that the plant can remove 4000 tons of co2 per
| year. If you look up what's the equivalent of that, just under
| 900 average vehicles less on the road per year.
|
| Or the equivalent co2 savings of building one wind turbine to
| replace polluting forms of energy production.
|
| What a joke.
| mabbo wrote:
| Both techs are important. We need to reduce our production of
| greenhouse gasses, but that only gets us to break even. We then
| need to quickly undo the damage we caused, which needs tech
| like this.
|
| But you're right: first we need to prioritize reducing our
| carbon output.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| After we quickly undo the damage, I wonder what these
| companies will lobby for so they don't go out of business.
|
| Who decides when we should stop sucking CO2 out of the
| atmosphere?
| rtpg wrote:
| If the vehicle numbers were a _bit_ better, there might be an
| idea behind forcing car companies to build one for each couple
| thousand vehicles it puts out into the world. But 900... yeesh.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| if the process is linear scalable (hint: it is not), I don't
| see any problem.
| throw0101b wrote:
| Somewhat related, see Tom Scott's video "Why Australia bottles up
| its air":
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu5-VERN3XY
| the_third_wave wrote:
| If you insist on capturing CO2 then capture it somewhere it is
| available in abundance instead of ~400 parts per _million_ : at
| the source. Capture it at gas turbine exhausts, at coal-burning
| power station smoke stacks, maybe on board ships if the power is
| available to do so. Use some other process for capturing
| atmospheric CO2, e.g. lime stone capture. Trying to actively
| capture airborne CO2 is like creating needle-in-haystack-finding
| factories, it is possible but a waste of resources.
| culopatin wrote:
| Would it be simpler to attempt to capture and compress the
| total of the exhaust of turbines, co2 or not, than to attempt
| to separate the co2?
| the_third_wave wrote:
| No, that would just postpone whatever problem existed in the
| first place since you'd be left with a huge mass of
| compressed exhaust gases which do not have any use. Since
| those exhaust gases consist mostly of nitrogen (due to it
| forming ~80% of the atmosphere) this would also entail a
| massive waste of energy expended in compressing that
| nitrogen.
|
| Separating out the CO2 would make it possible to either use
| it in some form where it replaces CO2 otherwise produced by
| other means - e.g. for welding, cooling, carbonation of
| liquids etc. - or to sequester it in some way.
| idlewords wrote:
| A similar technology (bed of amines that absorbs CO2 from ambient
| air) is being tested on the International Space Station, so it's
| worth reviewing how this stuff breaks:
|
| 1. Pipes and bearings clog up or corrode.
|
| 2. Trace contaminants irreversibly react with the sorbent
| material.
|
| 3. Stuff in the beds shifts around in unexpected ways, aided by
| the heat cycling.
|
| 4. The problem gets harder the more dilute the gas is. The older
| zeolite beds on ISS struggle to keep CO2 levels below 5000 ppm,
| vs. 400 ppm ambient on Earth. Submarines (which use amine
| sorbents) have the same problem getting below 5000 ppm.
|
| I have no idea how Climeworks addresses these challenges, but
| they are kind of unavoidable when you're trying to remove a trace
| gas with a reversible process in thermodynamically unfavorable
| conditions. They will have to move vast quantities of air, and
| everything that is in it, through the system, and heat and cool
| the components thousands of times. I'm sure the problems are
| surmountable, but are they surmountable in a way that keeps total
| carbon used in the process (including manufacturing and repair)
| negative?
| aftbit wrote:
| Wow I didn't realize that submarines and the ISS had such a
| high level of CO2. I feel noticeably worse when CO2 is above
| 2000ppm in my house. I've always wanted to have an artificial
| CO2 scrubber for when the windows are closed, but energetically
| I would probably be better off opening the windows and heating
| or cooling the air to compensate. Do submariners and astronauts
| have impacts to their cognitive abilities from this elevated
| rate?
| idlewords wrote:
| Whether there are cognitive effects is not clear, but it
| definitely affects their mood and their sleep. It's a touchy
| subject since astronauts don't like to publicly complain.
| Scott Kelly talks about it pretty openly in his book; reading
| between the lines of tech papers on next-generation life
| support you get the impression that crews insist levels need
| to get below 2000 ppm for long-duration missions.
| foverzar wrote:
| Every time I see technology like this, I wonder why there so much
| effort and publicity in capturing carbon from thin air, but no
| one seems to be interested in capturing carbon directly out of
| exhaust pipe?
| dmbche wrote:
| You might be interesting in reading about catalysors - that's
| what they do. Blocking more out of exhausts would choke the
| engine - although I'm sure there could be better set ups.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| There are attempts at this, Stockholm's district heating
| operator has a pilot project[1].
|
| [1]: https://www.stockholmexergi.se/en/environment-and-
| sustainabi...
|
| Disclosure: I used to work with them, though not on that
| project, and my current employer still works with them
| jackmott42 wrote:
| If you have any practical idea for either, please let us know.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Because this fantasy allows fossil fuel companies to continue
| selling their products.
|
| Capturing CO2 in ppm quantities out of air is ridiculously
| difficult. Capturing at point of emission is easier/better. But
| it's even better if you don't produce it in the first place.
|
| See: https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/12/chevrons-fig-leaf-
| part-...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Because what you should do with a large static exhaust pipe is
| to turn it off.
|
| And after you do that, you will still need capture from air.
|
| But on the company's side, it's probably because the companies
| that own large static exhaust pipes aren't interested on
| helping cleaning anything up.
| avmich wrote:
| There are examples - and, I guess, a rather common practice
| in some places - cleaning up the exhaust from large plants.
|
| The company may not be interested until ordered by judge. Or
| resented an air cleaning bill. Or having loss of market when
| customers require ecology-aware approach. Sometimes companies
| aren't interested even then. Our job is to change this.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Explain like I'm 5:
|
| Why is this better than just growing trees and then cutting them
| down and burying them so the co2 never gets back into the
| atmosphere?
| mchannon wrote:
| One reason, and not a very compelling one, is that trees in
| certain latitudes exacerbate global warming by absorbing more
| heat than naturally occurring grasses (which tend to be more
| reflective).
|
| In sum, it's not better.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| Burying trees is too unwieldy to be practical. Burning the
| trees and capturing the resulting co2 is more feasible. It's an
| example of BECCS, bio energy carbon capture and sequestration,
| some argue it's a practical solution.
| Bellend wrote:
| Do that but with spent nuclear fuel. A few million trees
| compressed into a barrel.
| pojzon wrote:
| Its not, but we are slowly becoming desperate and rich ppl feel
| like they have to have a plan B in case Earth becomes
| unhabitable.
| j16sdiz wrote:
| Your plan don't have the ecological and geological risk of
| pumping acid into the ground.
|
| You cant get VC funding without risk.
| goethes_kind wrote:
| This is a luxury service sold to people you should not be friends
| with. They are not price competitive with other DAC technologies.
| shafyy wrote:
| Climate scientist David Ho has a good thread on CDR:
| https://mastodon.world/@davidho/109511745525784891
|
| _It 's hard for people to visualize removing tons or billions of
| tons of #carbon #dioxide (CO2). I propose we talked about CO2
| #removal (CDR) like a #time #machine (e.g., this machine will
| take us back 5 minutes). For example:
|
| Q: How far back in time does planting 100 million #trees take us?
|
| A: If one mature tree takes up an average of 25 kg of CO2 per
| year, then 100 million trees will take up 2.5 MtCO2. That's a
| time machine that takes us back 33 minutes and 6 seconds in a
| year. It's not a lot._
|
| The bottom line being: 99.999% of today's efforts need to focus
| on cutting emissions. This is like if you want to lose weight: It
| won't help you if you keep eating 5k kcalories a day and work out
| for 2 hours a day. Cut the intake, and then do some workout for
| the rest.
| cameldrv wrote:
| This is an excellent unit of CO2 to communicate with. I've read
| Vacslav Simil's books and I still have to look up numbers when
| hearing about a million tons of CO2.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| The numbers don't look right, they would imply human CO2
| generation of over 100 million tons per day.
| dvh wrote:
| That's 14kg per human per day. Seems about right.
| onos wrote:
| And one tree does 25kg per year. So each person should
| plant 14 * 365 / 25= 204 trees. Seems very reasonable.
| johndunne wrote:
| Consider UK; 204 trees * 65 million people = 13.2 billion
| trees. Woodland estimates there's approx 3 billion trees
| in the UK now. That's over 4 fold increase in trees every
| year. I doubt the terrain/nature could support such a
| significant increase in just one year, let alone a number
| of years. But I like the idea of more trees.
|
| https://woodlands.co.uk/blog/woodland-economics/how-many-
| tre...
| kitd wrote:
| The UK is one of the least forested countries in Europe.
| It is very doable.
| uoaei wrote:
| It used to be covered in trees! Surely it can support
| forests again.
| pydry wrote:
| UK population density is 715 / sq mi. World average
| excluding Antarctica is 154.
|
| There are less densely populated places where more trees
| could be planted.
| 3m wrote:
| Yes but that is skewed by the South of England. There's a
| TON of hardly populated land in Scotland/Wales.
| onos wrote:
| You don't need a new tree each year cause they can live
| decades. UK 4xing it's tree coverage sounds doable and
| nice!
| johndunne wrote:
| :facepalm: you're right! Just 4xing alone is enough to
| cover the population's emission. I'm totally up for
| upping the tree population in the UK.
| tda wrote:
| This planting should happen one time, not yearly. Of
| course every dead tree should be replaced though. If
| there are 204 trees capturing CO2 for every human (and
| these numbers are correct) we should effectively be
| carbon neutral. No idea if that is even remotely
| realistic though
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Humans emit about 35 billion tons a year according to the
| reports which comes out to emit 100 million tons per day.
| 14 wrote:
| Then we will need to see these machines scale up over time
| like we see solar doing now.
|
| I hope one day industry will be required to match their
| carbon capture with devices like this to their carbon
| output.
|
| Perhaps someone will make a solar farm in tandem with these
| co2 capture devices with the fans from these devices
| cooling the solar panels as solar panels work more
| efficiently at cooler times (1).
|
| 1: https://www.solar.com/learn/do-solar-panels-work-less-
| effici...
| vlovich123 wrote:
| It's not enough to get to zero emissions. We're well past
| the point where we need to get to negative. And afaik
| these machines can't scale to even a fraction of the way
| to net 0 unless we start building out fission/break
| through with fusion.
|
| Think of it this way. It's more energy intensive to
| capture carbon than it was to generate the electricity
| from that carbon. The amount of energy required to make
| this work requires you to generate roughly the same order
| of magnitude of energy as has been emitted through the
| burning of fossil fuels since the beginning.
|
| I'm a big fission supporter but I doubt even fission
| could get to the cost scaling needed to generate all this
| energy effectively. Even fusion might struggle since we
| don't actually yet know what the unit economics of it
| will be.
|
| We might get lucky and figure out a way where recapturing
| carbon is net cheaper energy than it generated but I
| doubt it as that feels like it would be very close to a
| perpetual motion machine scenario.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Even a complete cessation of fossil fuel use won't change the
| current trajectory much, it'll just mean the slope (rate of
| warming) doesn't get much steeper. This is due to the long lag
| (much of it related to slow ocean equilibration to atmospheric
| forcing), as well as the permafrost emissions:
|
| > "Given current rates of warming, an estimated 130-160 billion
| tons of permafrost carbon, could be released in the form of
| greenhouse gases--primarily carbon dioxide but with an
| important warming contribution from methane--during this
| century. Thus, emissions from thawing permafrost, in total
| equivalent to 61-75 ppm atmospheric carbon dioxide, could be
| similar to other Jluxes from other environmental changes, such
| as deforestation, but far less than fossil fuel emissions. New
| plant growth is expected to offset only ~20% of this carbon
| release, but this offset could help to delay impacts on
| climate."
|
| - "Climate change and the permafrost carbon feedback", Schur et
| al. (2015) Nature
|
| Humans will have to adapt to a new climate regime, by
| necessity. It's not going to be very pretty.
| briantakita wrote:
| > Humans will have to adapt to a new climate regime, by
| necessity. It's not going to be very pretty.
|
| Somehow, I get a sense that the governing bodies are going to
| cause far more harm to people than the climate change.
| Similar to how Mao ordered the mass killing of Sparrows in a
| misguided belief that since sparrows eat crops, killing
| sparrows will increase yields. Unfortunately, killing the
| sparrows meant a predator of bugs (which eat crops in a more
| destructive manner) was drastically reduced. The crop yields
| plummeted largely from the policy to kill sparrows, resulting
| in millions people dying of starvation.
|
| Human institutions with their "brilliant" ideas of
| intervening with nature often make matters worse, especially
| when chasing a single metric & ignoring other aspects of a
| system.
| garbagecoder wrote:
| >Somehow, I get a sense that the governing bodies are going
| to cause far more harm to people than the climate change.
|
| That sense is called "your priors." This is a very simple,
| mostly linear switch on top of very very very complex
| systems, ie CO2 concentration. Your argument is basically
| "we broke it, but if we fix it it will be more broken" and
| there's just no evidence for that, just speculation.
|
| As long as other bad policy decisions aren't made because
| of the existence of CO2 sequestration there is absolutely
| no reason not to use it, but it's one out of perhaps 100
| major initiatives that will be required to get us back to a
| good level.
|
| And by the way, if you're living in a man-made climate
| crisis and governments start doing bad shit (like Syria?)
| it's still the fault of the man-made climate crisis, at
| least in part.
| specialist wrote:
| Time machine is neat metaphor. Thanks for sharing.
|
| --
|
| Net Zero is not enough. We must do Net Negative, a much bigger
| project than Net Zero.
|
| The goal is CO2 350ppm, or lower.
|
| Today is 417ppm. It will be >600ppm in 2050, our current global
| Net Zero deadline.
|
| There is no either-or. We need all the solutions. To stop and
| then reverse emissions: solar, wind, geothermal, nukes (old and
| much more new), storage, transmission, carbon direct capture,
| solar reflection, etc, etc.
|
| Renewables and electrification buy us a little bit of time.
|
| Meanwhile, we need to over invest in CDR. Birth of Flight type
| thinking. Moonshot type efforts. Dump money onto every semi-
| plausible idea.
|
| Any viable CDR solutions will take decades to scale up. So we
| must start today.
|
| --
|
| PS- Ditto methane and other GHGs. Ditto fusion and solar
| reflection (mirrors). And maybe even, god forbid,
| geoengineering.
| Retric wrote:
| The earth naturally sequesters carbon on its own, we are
| simply vastly outpacing that process. So no we don't need
| artificial carbon sequestration to hit even preindustrial
| levels again.
|
| Carbon sequestration is unfortunately more of a scam than a
| practical process. Without actual discouraging the burning of
| fossil fuels people aren't going to simply stop on their own
| and if we can't even get that far nobody is willing to pay
| for any kind of meaningful rather than token carbon
| sequestration.
| masklinn wrote:
| > The earth naturally sequesters carbon on its own, we are
| simply vastly outpacing that process.So no we don't need
| artificial carbon sequestration to hit even preindustrial
| levels again.
|
| Debatable: not only have human activities taken over huge
| swathes of land which previously sequestered carbon (aka
| forests), we have been releasing huge amounts of carbon
| which had been sequestered through processes which
| basically can not work anymore, at least not naturally.
|
| There is no millions of years of trees being buried
| wholesale because fungi haven't evolved peroxisade yet,
| because they did, a while ago, and so dead trees rot and
| release their carbon.
| Retric wrote:
| Carbon sequestration down to a tiny fraction of
| atmospheric carbon has happened all the way back when
| phytoplankton first showed up causing the Oxygen
| Holocaust and has been steady since then. Volcanic
| activity releases an enormous quantity of net carbon over
| time, but that carbon doesn't accumulate in the
| atmosphere.
|
| The misconception around the lack of fungi resulting in
| massive sequestration is that carbon would have been
| sequestered either way. It was similarly limited by the
| amount of carbon available per year from volcanic
| activity, what changed was the location of carbon storage
| not the net rate it was stored.
| masklinn wrote:
| > Volcanic activity releases an enormous quantity of net
| carbon over time, but that carbon doesn't accumulate in
| the atmosphere.
|
| Volcanic activity releases nearly 2 orders of magnitude
| less carbon than humanity does. That's a much easier
| amount to cycle.
|
| > The misconception around the lack of fungi resulting in
| massive sequestration is that carbon would have been
| sequestered either way.
|
| By the process of magic? Because if that's your
| hypothesis you need to explain why that magic was
| overwhelmingly more active during the Carboniferous than
| at any other epoch.
| Retric wrote:
| > By the process of magic.
|
| No, by other carbon sinks like dead ocean algae.
|
| > Volcanic activity releases nearly 2 orders of magnitude
| less carbon than humanity does
|
| But they have been around far more than just 2 orders of
| magnitude as long.
|
| Between the great oxygen event and the emergence of woody
| plants volcanic processes releasing ~100,000x as much all
| of humanity across all of human history yet levels didn't
| hit 90% CO2. Further woody plants didn't increase the
| rate of carbon release by volcanoes so across such long
| timescales they had zero net effect on total carbon
| sequestration.
|
| So, across long timescales it was on average 100% of all
| new carbon before they showed up and it remained 100% of
| all new carbon afterwards. What changed was where the
| carbon ended up, the ocean floor sees subduction into the
| mantle, woody plants stuck around on the surface.
|
| Now, yes on human timescales these things seem slow but
| net zero + 1,000 years really will have a noticeable
| impact.
| 411111111111111 wrote:
| Humans are responsible for about 1% of annual co2
| emissions.
|
| What they said is spot on: the problem would go away in
| short order if we ceased all emissions today.
|
| That's obviously not going to happen though, and the
| original argument is spot on too: the technology is just
| socialised greenwashing. It's basically only there to
| postpone legislature and offload the cost to tax payers
| while keeping private profits high.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >It's basically only there to postpone legislature and
| offload the cost to tax payers while keeping private
| profits high.
|
| Not just taxpayers, every living thing has to endure the
| increasing effect of failed climate preservation. As we
| have seen there's not really enough taxpayers to make a
| difference, what's more effective would be voters but
| there's even far less of them since voting is prohibited
| most places and proven ineffective for this purpose
| almost everywhere else.
|
| The after-effect is spread so far & wide that's one more
| reason why it's been so lucrative not to do the most
| effective emission reduction immediately, since the
| outset of gassifying as much carbon as industrialists
| could possibly do, far in excess of what the earth has
| been able to naturally capture for eons.
|
| In natural science, renewable energy is still far more
| effectively employed for reducing the need for emissions,
| secondarily for near-complete source capture.
|
| The only viable energy that can be sensibly devoted to
| air capture appears to be pure waste energy for the
| forseeable future. Most probably still better recovered
| and used for conservation instead.
|
| You realistically can't fool mother nature.
|
| Where are all the CO2-trapping chemicals going to come
| from without prohibitive amounts of additional emissions
| unless that chemical process is driven by only pure waste
| energy as well? Using even renewable energy for any part
| of direct air capture simply reduces the benefit of that
| valuable low-cost energy to that of pure waste energy
| instead.
|
| Thermodynamics is supposed to be top-of-mind here, not
| mumbo-jumbo. When you read the article one of the first
| things you see is:
|
| >1. Air is drawn in through a fan located inside the
| collector. Once sucked in, it passes through a filter
| located inside the collector which traps the carbon
| dioxide particles.
|
| Umm, no. Atmospheric CO2 does not exist in particle form
| at temperatures much above minus 78 degrees C. Who writes
| this stuff?
|
| >2. When the filter is completely full of CO2, the
| collector closes, and the temperature rises to about
| 100degC -- about the same temperature it takes to boil
| water for a cup of tea!
|
| That's supposed to be exciting? One can safely assume the
| temperature of significant sized filters will not rise
| all by itself, boiling water for a cup of tea that big
| may very likely take enough energy to more than offset
| what could be accomplished if the energy could be
| diverted to conservation or emission reduction instead.
| Not exactly my cup of tea as a chemist experienced with
| material balance on a large scale.
|
| >3. This causes the filter to release the CO2 so we can
| finally collect it.
|
| Now once the "captured" CO2 is _released_ (re-gassified)
| again in more concentrated form like this, you can expect
| an _additional_ collection /capture mechanism to be
| orders of magnitude more physically effective. All signs
| point to increased effectiveness of capture in proportion
| to the ppm content of the CO2 present. More or less the
| same technology needed for direct source capture, so why
| not just capture at the source instead? Duh.
|
| In the research lab you can purchase trapping chemicals
| easily within the reach of most budgets whether grants or
| "investments", and as you scale up you will definitely
| reach more attractive but false economies of scale until
| eventually the diminishing returns fall far short of what
| is needed to make a significant difference to the planet
| as a whole.
|
| Who's willing to settle for putting research dollars, or
| worse large amounts of renewable energy into not making
| much of a difference anyway?
|
| Ha, I think I've found it. That was easy.
|
| Elsewhere on the website, preceded by their partnership
| with JPMorgan announced a week ago:
|
| >Climeworks published a statement calling for a clear
| distinction between emissions reductions and carbon
| dioxide removal
|
| >Reductions and removals have different roles to play
|
| Correct, one conserves resources and the other wastes
| resources better put to use in further conservation until
| after massive conservation efforts have fully halted
| rising atmospheric concentrations.
|
| >1. Limiting the moral hazard It presents a simple way to
| mitigate the moral hazard coming with carbon dioxide
| removals, as it makes for greater clarity over the role,
| foreseen share, and timing of removals alongside
| accelerated emissions reduction.
|
| Obviously the most pressing hazard they will be
| addressing together is the moral threat to JPMorgan more
| so than the climate threat to the rest of the planet.
| They might not have even invested enough for that limited
| an approach yet. Looks like there's more to come, maybe
| whatever it takes, this could be a bigger threat than
| people realize and might need to be overcome at all
| costs.
|
| >2. Adding integrity to carbon markets It adds further
| integrity to carbon markets and climate policy, as it
| allows for clarity and aligns with best practice
| concerning "net-zero", where carbon removal credits need
| to be singled out to counterbalance residual emissions.
|
| The highest integrity will not be achieved as long as
| there remains a market for carbon in excess of that which
| can be captured naturally and through waste energy
| combined. This means reduction in market size for high-
| energy carbon forms much more so than CO2 whose energy
| has been fully depleted.
|
| As long as JPMorgan continues to earn more from fossil
| fuels than they invest in reduction or capture, they can
| afford for the capture investment to be largely
| ineffective, maybe even some financial writeoffs could be
| possible allowing for indefinite maintenance of status-
| quo. $200 Million sounds like a lot of money because it
| is, lots of people will prosper financially as the funds
| are dispersed, but the continued CO2 dispersal will
| always be much wider than having the same money focused
| on conservation instead. Also to some large firms,
| especially in aggregate, $200 Million is just a drop in
| the bucket.
|
| >3. Responsible deployment It provides a framework
| wherein carbon removals can be deployed in a responsible
| and just manner, in addition and complementary to vast
| and rapid emission reductions and avoidances.
|
| How much have they put into the these rapid emission
| reductions and avoidances that are the only thing within
| anyone's reach to make much of a difference in the short
| term?
|
| >4. A question of scale CDR urgently needs a dedicated
| framework with opportunities to scale the entire sector,
| as well as guardrails against a deployment that is
| incompatible with global sustainability objectives. A
| dedicated CDR framework allows to tackle these aspects in
| the most effective way.
|
| Effective for who, the climate itself needs much more
| scale on emission reduction before capture makes sense.
|
| >In summary, it presents a scientifically sound framework
| to deliver on the temperature targets set within the
| Paris Climate Accord.
|
| Not as scientifically sound as it could be.
|
| Just because you can actually capture kilos of CO2
| doesn't mean that is the best use of your time,
| resources, and energy when it comes to climate action
| overall.
|
| Regulatory capture just may not be enough, how about
| hedging your bets with a bit of scientist capture too?
| Who's any good at large-scale hedging around here anyway?
| adrianN wrote:
| Natural sequestration is a very slow process. If we want to
| avoid tipping points we shouldn't rely on it alone.
| Retric wrote:
| Slow is debatable, it's something like 3 orders of
| magnitude faster than all the current artificial carbon
| sequestration systems in operation right now _combined_.
| specialist wrote:
| > _more of a scam than a practical process_
|
| Elites and grifters always co-opt and subvert any and all
| reform, revolution, rebellion. That hardly absolves us of
| our collective moral obligation. We must protect and
| provide for (present and) future humans. Despite the
| obstacles.
|
| > _people aren't going to simply stop on their own_
|
| On the other hand, CDR determines the floor price of
| removing that pollution. Less arm-wavy than current
| proposals for determining carbon taxes amounts.
|
| Anywho, I'd rather try than not try. YMMV.
| slashdev wrote:
| I think we have to get used to the idea that we're not going
| to be less than 600 ppm, even with CO2 capture. I would be
| surprised if we manage to scale that enough to make a larger
| difference. But that's still much better than we'd get at
| without attempting to remove CO2, so it's an important goal.
|
| The one thing that might change that is very ambitious geo
| engineering. Which actually is the solution that makes most
| sense to me. But the very people who are most concerned about
| climate change don't seem to support that.
| specialist wrote:
| Yup. We'll need additional cooling strategies.
|
| Dr Tao's MEER project is so audacious and crazy, it just
| might work.
|
| https://www.meer.org
|
| "Volts podcast: Dr. Ye Tao on a grand scheme to cool the
| Earth" [2022/06/08] https://www.volts.wtf/p/volts-podcast-
| dr-ye-tao-on-a-grand
|
| "MEER | Mirrors For earth's Energy Rebalancing with Dr Ye
| Tao at Harvard University"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZAIIe4X2MU
|
| TLDR: We need to shade a lot of agriculture. So make those
| shades mirrors too. Practical and scalable with today's
| tech and supply chain. Adding mirror shades to 15% of
| arable land cools enough to stay under 1.5C warming.
|
| > _...very people who are most concerned about climate
| change don't seem to support [geoengineering]._
|
| Ya. Boomers. Whaddya gonna do? Fortunately, or hopefully,
| the cohort of anti-development environmentalists are
| finally being displaced.
|
| Meanwhile, at least someone is finally doing the
| prerequisite basic science on the problem:
|
| "How to think about solar radiation management"
| [2023/02/24] https://www.volts.wtf/p/how-to-think-about-
| solar-radiation
|
| --
|
| Please share any other climate crisis mitigation ideas you
| may stumble upon. My inner geek appreciates these kinds of
| hacks.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I'm always amazed at how little attention and resources
| are given to these types of strategies. Solar radiation
| management and geoengineering. Clearly we have a problem
| of too much CO2, and are having massive trouble even
| reducing the rate of increase.
|
| We need to think of actual countermeasures and
| mitigations.
|
| It's like if a patient has dangerously high blood
| pressure. It's all well and good to tell them about diet
| and exercise but if the situation is really bad you need
| to give them medicine too.
| slashdev wrote:
| I don't know where the link is at the moment, but I've
| heard it said that it would take about one mountain worth
| of lime, ground up and spread in the ocean to completely
| balance out the climate change up to now. I don't know
| how much I trust that.
|
| The other one that seemed quite viable is using
| reflective aerosols like sulfur dioxide over the
| Antarctic. It would circle around in the polar vortex and
| not have massive effects outside of the South Pole. But
| cooling Antarctica would add more ice, slow sea level
| rise, and the ice itself would reflect heat away from the
| planet.
|
| Could be problematic for Argentina/Chile, but probably
| not so much anywhere else. The potential benefits seem
| huge.
| paxys wrote:
| Yup. First treat the problem then treat its symptoms.
| GreedClarifies wrote:
| We created this problem by using energy and energy is the way
| back out of the problem.
|
| Energy released by burning one barrel of oil: ~6 GJ. Total
| number of barrels consumed per year: ~100M
|
| Total energy per year: 6 * 10^17 J
|
| Solar flux on 10^17 J/s or 3 * 10^24
|
| _if_ we had a machine that could convert CO2 - > Carbon in
| some stable form, we would need to use 10^-7 of the earth's
| solar flux.
|
| At a very high level such a machine would have two principle
| "knobs" (1) the efficiency and (2) percent of earth that would
| need to be covered. The product of the 2 must equal (or be less
| than) 10^7.
|
| Some example parameters:
|
| Efficiency : 10^-2 Area: 10^-5
|
| This seems wildly plausible for some microbe that we design in
| the near future that lives in the ocean. This efficiency
| parameter is lower than current plants.
|
| For those wild eyed technologists that think we can beat nature
| by a good amount:
|
| Efficiency : 10^-1 Area: 10^-6
|
| That's a couple of hundred square miles. That seems paltry for
| an "existential threat". Even a couple of orders of magnitude
| more area seem like they would be _fine_ to sequester for this
| purpose.
|
| This type of technology seems well within our grasp (or within
| the next 20 years). I never understand the hysteria over this
| topic.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| > I never understand the hysteria over this topic.
|
| It seems to be a gross mix of a few things:
|
| -Most people are simply incapable of doing this type of
| analysis. They hear that "the sky is falling, and the only
| way out is to perpetually give up our comforts and live
| shittier lives", and they believe it.
|
| -People get really hung up on forcing their personal
| "correct" way of doing things on everyone else. Whatever
| their personally acceptable use of energy miraculously
| happens to be "acceptable", and anyone else who uses more is
| a "bad selfish person".
|
| -A lot of people seem to just enjoy the "us-vs-them"
| mentality, and shitting on others for their differing energy
| use seems to be a way to scratch that itch.
|
| Our entire civilization is fundamentally based on energy use,
| and we have so much energy available to us in the form of
| sunlight. We can unwind all our carbon issues, and enable
| everyone to consume as much energy as a typical American, and
| more. But people seem to be more interested in shaming and
| shrieking at each other over bullshit.
| stouset wrote:
| I have read this analysis several times, and near as I can
| tell you're basically saying "if blowing up a stick of
| dynamite provides x energy, we can just use that same x
| energy to find all the original bits of that stick and put it
| back together".
| GreedClarifies wrote:
| We're not talking about some kind of very complex macro
| object.
|
| We're talking about converting hydrocarbons -> CO2 + water
| (or whatever if you care) and reversing that reaction (or
| similar, since we may want something more stable than
| hydrocarbons).
|
| There are already machines which do this (anything that
| does photosynthesis). We're just going to play around the
| edges of making the reaction more efficient and/or the
| results more stable.
| stouset wrote:
| Oil before burning is an incredibly concentrated source
| of carbon. After burning, it's less than 0.05% of the
| makeup of the atmosphere.
|
| If it were so simple, _we'd be doing it_. Over here in
| reality, carbon capture remains a difficult and unsolved
| problem in practice, requiring enormous amounts of energy
| that is--at present--generally far better put to use
| replacing carbon-based forms of energy than trying to put
| the carbon genie back into the oil barrel.
| fatuna wrote:
| We might have the technology in 20 years, but only if people
| are hysterica about it being needed. If everyone thinks
| everything is okay and it will solve it self, nothing will
| happen! It's a prior to the preparedness paradox.
| GreedClarifies wrote:
| I don't think so. The technology to enable this is being
| worked on anyway since it is economically _very_ valuable.
| Its probably the 2nd most valuable technology being worked
| on today.
| nosmokewhereiam wrote:
| Soil converts it to carbon.
| it_citizen wrote:
| Yet I see carbon capture being a top pick in discussions about
| effective altruism and by the clean air task force.
|
| I believe their reasoning is that for the amount of money
| invested, it remains one of the most efficient investment to
| decarbonize.
|
| I don't know what to do with that information.
| newsclues wrote:
| It's like bailing water out of a boat. Doesn't matter how fast
| you can bail the water if you can't stop or slow the leak
| coming in.
|
| Which is why world leaders flying jets to Climate Change
| Conferences makes no sense!
| tlb wrote:
| That must reflect a suboptimal choice of tree. Sequoias, for
| instance, can capture 400 kg / yr for a few hundred years.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| My friend runs this amazing ASCII website which also happens to
| be the news feed for their Carbon-capture-to-fuel devices.
|
| Like top comment suggests, it doesn't make sense to just
| capture, you have to get off carbon positive processes
| entirely.
|
| This company aims to do both, effectively.
|
| https://terraformindustries.com/
| nahnahg wrote:
| [dead]
| tjpnz wrote:
| How will this address the public health issues which relate to
| the burning of fossil fuels? Isn't it just going to make it
| easier for polluters to pollute more?
| avmich wrote:
| It's like "don't have police, the people become careless and it
| increases temptation to steal from those careless people.
| Instead, train everybody to always be alert, sleep with an axe,
| then it will be hard to steal".
|
| Of course we need to address the public health issues related
| to burning fossil fuel. But in addition to that we should also
| clean up what we already polluted - even if that seems like an
| invitation to pollute more, it's not.
| thx-2718 wrote:
| "Our plants require less land than other techniques. E.g., on a
| land area of 0.42 acres, our Orca plant can remove 4,000 tons of
| CO2 from the air every year, which is almost 1,000 times more
| effective than trees. The same land would host around 220 trees
| with an estimated capacity of 22kg each"
|
| How much land, in solar panels for example, is required to power
| this?
|
| Also what's the carbon waste that this generates? Is there a
| synergistic use for it?
| shipman05 wrote:
| > How much land, in solar panels for example, is required to
| power this?
|
| It says "The CO2 can then be safely and permanently stored
| underground by our storage partners -- Carbfix in Iceland."
|
| So my assumption was that the collectors are located there as
| well and using Iceland's abundant geothermal electricity.
| usrusr wrote:
| In other words: it definitely will not scale.
| hef19898 wrote:
| But it looks good on a pitch deck. I just wonder if it
| cannot be combined with those particle emitting start-up
| that wantsbto creat artifical clouds. Both ideas sound like
| they are ment to be combined in the same company just
| before an ICO or a SPAC.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I remember watching something about Carbfix on TV: they
| inject the CO2 into underground magma and it is then
| incorporated in the rock formation (carbonate rocks?)
|
| So, yes, it would make sense to use local geothermal
| electricity or even to produce it at the same time as the CO2
| injection process if that's possible.
| tenthirtyam wrote:
| Ummm, seems to me that 0.42 acres of trees would sequester a
| lot more that 22kg of CO2 per year. Let me guesstimate from my
| typical annual hedge clipping - we have a (appx) 1.5m wide
| hedge that is (appx) 120m long equal to (appx.) 180m^2=0.044
| acres. The annual clipping produces 10 hefty bags (the big bags
| used to carry e.g. 1 ton of gravel or stones), so maybe a total
| of 300-400kg for my hedge. Multiply by ten for 0.42 acres,
| yields about 3000-4000kg.
|
| Sanity check anyone?
| silisili wrote:
| Unless it was edited...that sentence says 22kg per year each.
| So it's 22*220.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| How much carbon is produced by the transportation and storage
| of the carbon that is captured? I want to see their carbon math
| for the whole process (including electricity) to prove this is
| all truly carbon neutral, seems like something that should be
| front and center on their website but they only vaguely discuss
| the carbon footprint of the plants.
|
| Having a business saying their product is carbon negative when
| the actual end to end process isn't seems par for the course,
| especially one with VC backing...
| thinkcontext wrote:
| There is no transportation, they site the plant where they
| are going to store it. That's one of the advantages of
| capturing from the atmosphere.
| Mizza wrote:
| For context, 4000 tons of CO2 is roughly the emissions of a
| full 777 flying from San Francisco to London and back twice.
| pilaf wrote:
| That doesn't sound right, 4000 tons is more than 10 times the
| maximum takeoff weight of a 777.
| A1kmm wrote:
| I tried calculating it two ways to see.
|
| Firstly, based off two full fuel tanks for a 777.
| Apparently a 777-200 has a 117350 L fuel tank, and the
| density of jet fuel is approximately 800 g / L.
|
| The emitted carbon dioxide combines oxygen from the air
| with carbon from the jet fuel. Apparently the average chain
| length is 12, so it would be C_12H_10 for a straight
| hydrocarbon.
|
| Factoring in the molecular masses, the amount of CO2 from
| two full tanks would be: (12 * 12.011 + 2 _12.011_ 15.999)
| / (1.0080 * 10 + 12 * 12.011) * 117350 * 800 * 2/ 1E6 = 643
| tonnes.
|
| Now, they might not use the full tank. Another estimate is
| that long haul flights use about 0.1 g / passenger / km.
| Apparently it is 4308 km in a straight line from SF to
| London, and a 777 seats about 350 people depending on the
| configuration, so multiplying by 2 for a return trip comes
| out at 302 tonnes of CO2 (that's probably an underestimate
| since it is a straight line).
|
| So I think 4000 tonnes is an overestimate (and they said
| tons, which is even more than a metric tonne, at 4480), but
| the emissions of such a flight is still significant (and
| the global warming impact is higher because combustion also
| disperses water, which also has a warming effect at that
| altitude).
| jackweirdy wrote:
| It looks about right to me (I used
| https://www.atmosfair.de/en/offset/flight/)
|
| It's about 850 US tons per full leg * 4 legs to make up the
| two round trips
|
| (388 pax in a -300ER)
| alhw wrote:
| Jet fuel is comprised mostly of hydrocarbons with 8 to 16 C
| atoms, and a large fraction of these hydrocarbons are
| straight-chain alkanes.
|
| Combustion of dodecane (a C12 straight-chain alkane) makes
| 12 CO2 molecules. A 747 jet consumes about 4 L of jet fuel
| per second when in flight. Based on the density and
| molecular weight of dodecane and the stoichiometry of its
| combustion reaction, you'd arrive at something like 0.01
| ton of CO2 emitted per second of flight time.
|
| 4000 tons is a good estimate.
|
| Back of the envelope...
| mabbo wrote:
| Ah, so you're saying (if I'm reading this correctly) that
| the plane only carries the carbon portion of the CO2, and
| the oxygen comes from the air itself. That's how it's
| emitting more CO2 then it's fuel mass.
|
| Is that right?
| Tuxer wrote:
| Correct. Fuel is around 16/36th of the CO2 mass it emit
| when being burnt. A 777 carries around 120 tons of fuel
| for a SF/LON flight, so that's around 300 tons of
| emissions per flight.
| coderenegade wrote:
| You have to account for the mass of the oxygen that gets
| bonded to the carbon in the jet fuel to form CO2. i.e. most
| of the mass is coming from atmospheric oxygen, not what the
| aircraft is carrying onboard.
| pilaf wrote:
| TIL, thanks for the explanation.
| kuprel wrote:
| The entire aviation industry emitted 619 million tons of CO2
| in 2019 [1]. So about 155 thousand of these plants would be
| needed just to offset air travel
|
| [1] https://www.iea.org/reports/aviation
| DannyBee wrote:
| I mean, that's not a lot compared to trees. There are >3
| trillion trees in the world.
| nabla9 wrote:
| >The energy usage: We're committed to driving down energy
| consumption as much as possible. We only use renewable energy,
| energy-from-waste, or other waste heat to power our plants.
|
| They make it impossible to do the math. Energy consumption,
| lifetime capital cost per ton, are what make or break this
| scheme.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Unit economics are so unsexy, they died with e-scooter
| rentals and fresh food deliveries.
| usrusr wrote:
| And the land for the solar panels that substitute the energy
| you'd harvest from the trees while turning them into highly
| concentrated CO2 for storage. And the land for the batteries
| you'd have to add to achieve the same dispatchability as the
| burn trees (or faster-growing plants!) and work on that CO2
| alternative. DAC is a joke.
| mchannon wrote:
| 1000 kWh/ton (found it on google):
|
| 166 kW/ton in a sunny place:
|
| 1000 square meters/ton in a sunny place:
|
| 4 million square meters = ~1000 acres of PV to power. One unit.
|
| Yeah, that's going to happen. /s "We're too ashamed of our
| energy requirements to post them on our page and are well aware
| they're dooming this technology until cold fusion comes out" is
| what I read between the lines on their fluff page.
| mchannon wrote:
| Too late to edit, but I should qualify this:
|
| They claim 4000 tons per year, I did the math on 4000 tons
| per day. So ~3-4 acres of PV to power, not 1000 acres.
|
| To completely counteract the 37 billion tons per year
| produced worldwide, and do it with PV only, assuming desert
| southwest conditions, would require ~30 million acres of PV.
| That sounds impossibly high, but is only about the size of
| the US state of Mississippi. 20% of the land area of Texas,
| on the El Paso side, would be sufficient to keep pace with
| the entire world's carbon dioxide emissions.
|
| I remain skeptical that this is the most cost-effective
| approach, as well as skeptical of its ability to scale, but I
| apologize for crapping on it at first gloss.
| wolfram74 wrote:
| two comments: they claim to sequester 1000 tons (1e6 kg) vs
| 22kg, so the sequestration space difference is on the order
| of 200000 difference. They may include the solar panel area
| in their stated efficiency calculation.
|
| Secondly, the solar panels are a bit more liquid than a
| comparable area of trees, when industrial demand is high, you
| can route it there, when it's low, it can be working on
| sequestration. There are some advantages there. Especially
| considering the atmosphere is fairly homogeneous, but soil in
| proper condition for forests is less so.
| stavros wrote:
| 1000 kWh/ton to sequester, and how many tons per kWh to
| generate?
|
| EDIT: Apparently, one ton of CO2 is released by 1000 kWh of
| electricity:
|
| https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11
|
| So you have a coal plant generating energy and emitting CO2
| just for this factory next to it to capture all that CO2
| again. Seems more efficient to just not run the coal factory.
|
| It seems like this idea will be worthwhile when the last coal
| factory closes.
| cogman10 wrote:
| It'll always be more efficient not to emit carbon.
|
| Imagine you have a teaspoon of salt and a cup of water.
|
| Adding salt into the water is dead simple and requires
| little energy. Now how hard is it to remove that teaspoon
| of salt?
|
| That's effectively what's happening with the atmosphere.
| adammarples wrote:
| Their plant is in Iceland and runs on geothermal
| strohwueste wrote:
| Geothermal is not good for global warming bc it is an
| additional source of energy which would normally be
| contained. The sun gives such amount of wattage and the
| earth can give so much wattage back to the universe.
| Nuclear, geothermal and fusion is stored energy like fossil
| fuel which adds to the heat in the atmosphere. Today that
| only amounts to 5% of global warming but if it's the only
| source of energy it could add more. CO2 is the focus right
| now bc it is continuous warming potential but the other
| energy forms have it too. Wind and solar is just "saving"
| sun energy from being instantly converted into heat and can
| be so used for our pleasure as it doesn't add to the
| input/output equation.
| tadfisher wrote:
| Heat waste is absolutely miniscule compared to the amount
| of energy the Earth receives from the Sun. As in, the
| Earth is continuously bombarded by 173 petawatts of solar
| radiation. So you can see why it would be worth trading
| some waste heat to reduce the retention of solar energy
| in the atmosphere.
| yodelshady wrote:
| It's such an easy, relevant question to ask that it boggles the
| mind that investors don't have their own engineers to ask it. I
| know you're money people not tech, but how do you know you're
| not being ripped off if you can't check figures that basic?
|
| Anyway, apparently 3 MWh/tonne is a not-unrealistic claim, so
| they're only demanding 1.5 MW (on average, though if solar-
| powered it would make sense to oversize) and a km2 of solar
| panels could reasonably generate 50-100 MW on average (this is
| conservative for most places, though not for Iceland). A km2 of
| tress, by their calculations, gets 1,000 tonnes, so DAC comes
| out ahead, although you're right to observe that trees do have
| a synergistic use for the carbon they capture.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Early investors, it seems, don't care. All they care about is
| whether or not they can sell their shares to some greater
| idiot down the line.
|
| Heck, those money people don't even care about money
| questions.
|
| Examples of non-existing due dilligence include: WeWork,
| Theranos, Nikola, FTX. Just from top of my head.
| jackmott42 wrote:
| Welcome to planet Earth. If you can do napkin math, and
| bother to do it, you can be an extremely successful in
| engineering domains, because almost everyone else is
| completely useless.
| maigret wrote:
| Napkin math is an underestimated skill indeed.
| hef19898 wrote:
| 4000 tons of CO2 removal per year is at best a proof of
| concept. If it was one of the industrial giants, with the
| muscle and budget to scale it and the sales channels to sell
| it, I would be more optimistic about that.
|
| But than I became so jaded regarding start-ups, especially
| "ddep" tech ones, lately that I tend to see even more
| negatively than I already do in general.
| z3t4 wrote:
| Plants/trees waste product is oxygen. And plants only need
| water and sun. Plants can also reproduce themselves. What we
| should concentrate on is to make artificial systems that get
| water to areas where it doesn't rain.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| A better use of CO2 is generating fuel, I suggest.
|
| https://terraformindustries.com/
| themanmaran wrote:
| > Also what's the carbon waste that this generates? Is there a
| synergistic use for it?
|
| I've wondered the same about these carbon capture plants. Is
| this literally just elemental carbon in some kind of dust/sand
| at the end of the day? Could this be a raw material input for
| carbon fiber production?
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Elemental carbon is a valuable industrial material -- and
| even low-quality carbon, like "carbon black" soot, ain't
| cheap!
|
| Nah, separating carbon from oxygen in CO2 and CO is too
| expensive and energetically demanding.
|
| To simplify things a little bit, what they do here is inject
| CO2 into water at high pressure, which results in highly
| acidic H2CO3. They then pump H2CO3 into basalt rock, which
| chemically reacts with the acid -- in fact, it is partially
| dissolved. Then there's a second stage reaction between the
| partially-dissolved basalt and the remnant HCO3-, and it
| recrystallizes as carbonate minerals, e.g. FeCO3 or CaCO3.
|
| So they're turning CO2 into a liquid acid, and then injecting
| it into rock where it reacts with basalt and crystallizes as
| carbonates.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| My friend runs this amazing ASCII website which also happens to
| be the news feed for their Carbon-capture-to-fuel devices.
|
| Like top comment suggests, it doesn't make sense to just capture,
| you have to get off carbon positive processes entirely.
|
| This company aims to do both, effectively.
|
| https://terraformindustries.com/
| haizhung wrote:
| The way I see it is that we are way beyond all reasonable bounds
| already, concerning co2 ppm in the air. Even if we stop all
| emissions this very moment, there's still way too much already in
| the atmosphere. So, we are going to need co2 removal either way
| if there shall be any hope of ever returning to a world climate
| similar to before 1980.
|
| I am no expert in the field, but this is an area that at least
| gives me some positive outlook on the future. I could imagine,
| for example, that we start over provisioning electricity with
| renewables; and instead of scaling them down when there is no
| energy demand, we will redirect the superfluous energy into
| carbon capture.
| justinzollars wrote:
| [flagged]
| nforgerit wrote:
| Superfluous renewable energy already has to go to hydrolysis to
| produce hydrogen to be saved for times whenever renewables
| don't produce energy.
| boringg wrote:
| Actually battery storage and stored hydro work. As does long
| duration battery storage options that are in the works now.
| Sinidir wrote:
| They don't work nearly as well enough or in the case of
| hydro storage are available in enough quantity to cover a
| month of weak wind.
|
| For example. The US would consume its entirety of pumped
| hydro storage in a third of a day.
| oezi wrote:
| Superfluous energy should go to the consumer which otherwise
| would consume the most CO2. We do not need to use hydrogen
| when renewables aren't available (if such a situation should
| arise). We can continue to use fossils for these (rare)
| situations.
|
| The only thing which matters is to use energy in the most CO2
| efficient way to achieve goals overall.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| It's hard for me to believe that the answer isn't biological
| given the whole self replication thing.
| samatman wrote:
| The Industrial Revolution is a history of various industrial
| processes outcompeting biology within a narrow boundary. Cars
| pull more than any horse, trains as well, an airplane flies
| faster and with much more cargo than any bird, and the
| industrial production of nitrogen is faster than bat guano.
|
| CO2 fixation might also follow this curve, in fact, as a
| technology in isolation that's what I would bet on. Economics
| aside, a machine that sucks CO2 directly out of the air will
| remove much more CO2 than the equivalent parcel of land would
| if biology were used.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| As a technology in isolation, sure. But something like iron
| seeding, assuming it works, would be orders of magnitude
| cheaper because most of the work is being done by algae and
| they don't have to be paid.
|
| I don't think horses are particularly similar, but nitrogen
| fixation in the fertilize vs crop rotation case gets
| closer.
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