[HN Gopher] Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas
___________________________________________________________________
Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas
Author : jseliger
Score : 170 points
Date : 2024-04-03 19:35 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (terraformindustries.wordpress.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (terraformindustries.wordpress.com)
| airstrike wrote:
| I'm more used to seeing the other Terraform on HN so I would have
| perhaps titled this "Terraform Industries..."
| playingalong wrote:
| "Terraform stinks" seems to match both.
| leesec wrote:
| Why the hatred buddy? Does anyone on Hackernews like
| technology anymore?
| LastTrain wrote:
| Is not liking some software and making a mild joke about it
| considered hate now?
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Rust or bust!
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > "Terraform stinks" seems to match both.
|
| As compared to what, IaC-wise?
| whirlwin wrote:
| CDKTF. Or in other words, shit camouflaged by a pleasant
| clown outfit
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Looks like a bad joke made by somebody confused about the
| composition of farts.
| _Microft wrote:
| Natural gas doesn't stink. It's the additives that are there
| for exactly the reason to be able to smell it if there is a
| leak.
| ilc wrote:
| April 1 date on the article. Wordpress site.
|
| I ain't saying it ain't true, but I await their next press
| release.
| pseudosudoer wrote:
| Here's their company page. Might explain the use of word
| press...
|
| https://terraformindustries.com/
| ilc wrote:
| It makes something ring hollow then.
|
| Why do the whole high and mightly we're using ASCII thing,
| then to throw me to WordPress. Certainly a bit of HTML with a
| few inline images fit the overall goal better.
|
| That said, I wish them the best, and I hope that they
| dominate their market. :)
| rbliss wrote:
| Really exciting for Terraform to hit this mark. Hopefully true,
| and not an April 1st joke. Casey Handmer (founder) is a pretty
| interesting guy. He also helped with the initial analysis of the
| crackle on the Vesuvius challenge scrolls that contributed to the
| breakthrough of reading the first passages from the scrolls. See
| https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/08/05/reading-ancien...
|
| Highly recommend checking out more articles on the Terraform
| Industries blog and Casey's personal blog.
| whirlwin wrote:
| I would like to see Terraform succeed with their green goals!
|
| When I can run 'terrform plan' on my entire infra without using a
| billion joules of energy, I'll chip in
| pfdietz wrote:
| One can make natural gas from CO2 captured from air and with
| hydrogen electrolysed form water. But then one has to ask: why
| not just use hydrogen directly and skip the inefficiency and cost
| of direct air capture of CO2 and of making methane? If one is
| dead set on making a carbon-containing synfuel, why methane and
| not something more storable, like methanol or higher
| hydrocarbons? Or, why not use the hydrogen to deoxygenate biomass
| (including waste biomass like paper) instead of laboriously
| collecting completely oxidized CO2 from air?
| papercrane wrote:
| My guess is that the answer is taking advantage of existing NG
| infrastructure.
| carbonguy wrote:
| > why not just use hydrogen directly and skip the inefficiency
| and cost of direct air capture of CO2 and of making methane?
|
| Broadly speaking, one key reason is that we've already got the
| infrastructure in place for using methane (and other
| hydrocarbons) whereas we do not have this for hydrogen.
|
| Another point is that this really isn't an either-or
| proposition: if people want hydrogen, then the Terraform
| electrolyzer can in principle provide it.
| ajb wrote:
| In the UK, our gas infrastructure actually used to be used
| for hydrogen[1], so a lot of it should still work if we were
| to switch back.
|
| [1] Actually "town gas" which was a mixture of hydrogen and
| carbon monoxide. But I imagine not including the CO would not
| be a problem.
| sollewitt wrote:
| I would guess because natural gas has hundreds of years of us
| handling it, and we already have a lot of things from power
| generators to domestic driers that consume it.
| rbliss wrote:
| Another point others haven't made, which Terraform Industries
| points out: that using solar to make Natural Gas is going to be
| the cheapest form of natural gas production.
|
| You can effectively short circuit the existing fossil fuel
| industry and pull the hydrocarbons from the air instead of the
| ground to stay carbon neutral. No need to re-invent industry.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| But if the main problem with industry is that it leaks then
| maybe you do still have to reinvent it.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Seriously, how do you know whether the supply chain is
| truly using one process to synthesize, vs. Adding/cutting
| with extracted fuel.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| On the demand side, I imagine you'd be drawing fuel gas
| from a rig that's like, in your neighborhood, being
| powered by the solar panels on your roof. So you'd
| probably notice if there were tanker trucks showing up to
| fill it.
|
| On the supply side, you could use things like methane
| sniffing satellites
| (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00600-z) to
| find cases of extraction and tax (at first) or arrest
| (eventually) those participating in it.
| konschubert wrote:
| It doesn't matter. This isn't driven by consumer choice,
| it's driven by production cost.
|
| At least that's the idea.
| pydry wrote:
| Hydrogen is _much_ more difficult to store.
|
| It escapes easily from any container you put it in and causes
| hydrogen embrittlement for any metal you try to use to contain
| it.
|
| Apparently it can be stored in abandoned salt mines and we
| probably will use them for that eventually but you dont always
| have one of those handy.
| pfdietz wrote:
| All those points are overstated.
| groby_b wrote:
| Because we kinda know how to do natgas storage/transport/use at
| large scale, while we're not quite there on the hydrogen
| economy.
|
| Higher complexity hydrocarbons likely have higher synthesis
| costs, and if you want to enter the market, you probably want
| your pricing as competitive as possible.
|
| Same for the biomass approach.
|
| It is ultimately an approach striving for as much simplicity as
| possible. That's firmly baked in their culture, too - see their
| home page :)
| pfdietz wrote:
| We use all that because natural gas is cheap. If hydrogen
| were cheaper than natural gas, we'd use that instead, at
| least for the industrial processes, and we'd switch away from
| combustion of a gas in the distributed residential/commercial
| applications.
| groby_b wrote:
| And if wishes were horses... ;)
|
| Kidding aside: That's the whole point. This is a project
| that can work without retooling infra all over the world.
| It's a drop-in replacement to get to carbon-neutral fuel.
|
| This solves problems right now, with limited investment.
| This isn't about perfection. This is specifically about
| "works right now, cheap, no impact on the surrounding
| infrastructure".
|
| (Also, strong doubts on "we'd use hydrogen instead",
| because storage is a beast. Until that's solved, there is
| no chance we'd use that)
| pfdietz wrote:
| I don't believe their cost figures (look above; their
| 250/t for CO2 doesn't jibe), and I think electrification
| of most residential/commercial uses will be the superior
| solution (it's more efficient even if the electricity is
| produced by burning natural gas). Industrially, hydrogen
| is just fine. After all, industry already manipulates
| vast quantities of hydrogen.
|
| The fossil fuel uses that are the most difficult to
| displace involve liquid fuels for transportation; natural
| gas has limited use there.
| andrewla wrote:
| Other commenters have pointed out that hydrogen may not be
| feasible, but the other direction -- methanol or higher
| hydrocarbons, seems way more interesting. Storage and density
| are orders of magnitude easier, and since we're synthesizing it
| from atmospheric component we don't have to be concerned with
| contaminants, especially sulfur compounds, that plague higher
| hydrocarbon use.
|
| Even better in a lot of ways would be to move to amorphous
| carbon; generating coal from atmospheric CO2 would be a huge
| win in transportability especially around safety and
| reliability dimensions.
| carbonguy wrote:
| As a "carbon industry" observer, this is pretty exciting news.
| I've had my eye on Terraform Industries for a while and love what
| they're doing; they're one of the few groups that actually seem
| to understand the implications of what it will take to shift to a
| carbon-neutral economy, and their core insight about the
| economics of atmospheric fuel synthesis is one of those "obvious
| when you hear it" ideas: solar electricity is trending ever-
| cheaper, so rather than trying to maximize efficiency in an
| expensive piece of kit you can make cheap 'inefficient' equipment
| and get lower overall costs, which in turn unlocks scale.
|
| Their recent post on "Terraformer Environmental Calculus" is a
| great read, if you are interested in this space:
| https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/2024/02/06/terrafo...
|
| Congratulations to the team!
| groby_b wrote:
| It's an excellent way forward because it's not only carbon-
| neutral, it can also "fall back" to pure CO2 capture should we
| ever get a decent enough grid & storage mechanisms to afford
| that.
|
| Really exciting work!
| joe_the_user wrote:
| It looks good.
|
| I wish their headline was "natural gas from solar power" 'cause
| many things labeled "carbon neutral" wind-up being conventional
| petrochemicals plus some worthless "offsets" baloney.
| tgtweak wrote:
| In theory you can use any power source - hydroelectric,
| geothermal, nuclear, wind - but the benefit to solar is that
| you can fully utilize it when the sun is shining and store
| the output (compressed natural gas) for storage,
| transportation and use off-hours.
|
| You could also technically use this as a grid-battery, taking
| in excess grid energy when it is cheap and converting it into
| natural gas that can be run back through a gas peaking plant
| that spins up to meet peak demand. You could also look into
| SOFC fuel cell plants [1] to convert the stored natural gas
| into electricity at 60% and heat at 30% (the heat is high
| temperature which is good for cogeneration or as a direct
| heat source). There would need to be some very large spreads
| in margin on those to make up for the fact you're likely
| double-dipping on inefficiencies when going from electricity
| in -> natgas production -> storage -> generation ->
| electricity out.
|
| On that same note though - in some free and open energy
| markets it is not unheard of to buy at <$10/MWh during excess
| production periods and sell at >$200/MWh at peak on-demand -
| plenty of margin for arbitrage there - as the tesla megapack
| facilities have demonstrated in Australia. In comparison a
| 4MWh megapack facility (2MW in/2MW out) is priced at $1.9M
| before installation [2]
|
| [1]https://assets.bosch.com/media/en/global/stories/sofc/soli
| d-...
|
| [2]https://twitter.com/SawyerMerritt/status/16434888569461227
| 54...
|
| (updated for M/Mega - thanks)
| _Microft wrote:
| > _On that same note though - in some free and open energy
| markets it is not unheard of to buy at <$10/mWh during
| excess production periods and sell at >$200/mWh at peak on-
| demand - plenty of margin for arbitrage there - as the
| tesla megapack facilities have demonstrated in Australia.
| In comparison a 4mWh megapack facility (2MW in/2MW out) is
| priced at $1.9M before installation [2]_
|
| m means milli, M is mega.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > You could also technically use this as a grid-battery,
| taking in excess grid energy when it is cheap and
| converting it into natural gas that can be run back through
| a gas peaking plant that spins up to meet peak demand.
|
| The loss in such a cycle is abysmal, alone from thermal
| loss (not to mention the loss during compression and
| decompression) - even straight fuel cells are at 60% round-
| trip, compared to batteries with >>90% efficiency.
| jseliger wrote:
| Other discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39896560
| rhelz wrote:
| Fraking has made natural gas so cheap, I can't see these being
| used for anything but virtue signaling. They claim a breakthrough
| in converting hydrogen to natural gas, but natural gas is by far
| the cheapest source of H2.
|
| And, given that methane is 80 times more potent of a greenhouse
| gas than CO2 is, is it really a good idea to be manufacturing it?
| Inevitably there would be leakage, and it wouldn't take much to
| leak enough gas to more than compensate for any C02 sucked out of
| the air.
| alexb_ wrote:
| > They claim a breakthrough in converting hydrogen to natural
| gas, but natural gas is by far the cheapest source of H2.
|
| Are you serious? Water is right there!
| jfengel wrote:
| Water is right there, but the hydrogen is _really_ closely
| bound to the oxygen, and extremely hard to get out.
|
| It's considerably easier to get H2 out of methane.
| Unfortunately, that process also yields CO2, so it's not
| helping the greenhouse gas situation.
|
| Hydrogen proponents suggest a route where we start with "blue
| hydrogen" from natural gas. Then, when we've got a good H2
| infrastructure going and a lot of excess electricity from
| solar, we can switch over to "green hydrogen" from water.
|
| Skeptics point out that this is incredibly stupid, and that
| "hydrogen proponents" tend to be closely in bed with the
| fossil fuel industry. It looks an awful lot like an excuse to
| delay the elimination of fossil-fuel replacements like wind
| and solar.
| pfdietz wrote:
| There is this really dumb internet meme, that hydrogen is
| just there as a plot by the fossil fuel industry to keep
| selling fossil fuels.
|
| What this ignores is that hydrogen must still be made even
| in a post-fossil fuel economy. It's not optional.
| Production of ammonia requires hydrogen, and without
| ammonia-derived nitrogen fertilizer billions of people will
| starve. About half the nitrogen atoms in your body came
| from synthetic ammonia.
|
| The meme is really weird. In all other applications, we
| assume that fossil fuels will be displaced, by law and
| force if necessary. But somehow SMR will always be used to
| make hydrogen; the technology will somehow be immune to the
| forces that will be deployed against all other fossil fuel
| uses. It's really crazy when examined closely.
| rhelz wrote:
| 100% of anything doesn't really go away. We still use
| horse-drawn vehicles for some purposes. But we didn't
| have to get rid of 100% of the horse-drawn vehicles to
| get rid of the mountains of horse shit which used to
| accumulate on city streets.
| rhelz wrote:
| > Are you serious?
|
| yes :-) Think about it: why did Saturn V use hydrogen and
| oxygen? Because burning hydrogen produces more energy by
| weight than any other chemical reaction.
|
| If putting hydrogen and oxygen together _releases_ the most
| energy, then splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen would
| also _take_ the most energy. Any other chemical reaction
| which yielded H2 would take less energy.
| mikeatlas wrote:
| Their claim is that this method is still yet cheaper than
| drilling/fracking.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The cost of natural gas on the Henry Hub is somewhere around
| $300/ton. A ton of natural gas requires 2.75 tons of CO2, so
| the cost of CO2 capture has to be well below $110/ton (and
| that ignores the cost of the hydrogen and the equipment for
| doing the methane synthesis.)
|
| They must be assuming large increases in natural gas prices
| or large CO2 taxes.
|
| I think it will be much easier to get the price/BTU of H2
| down below the current price of natural gas than it would be
| to get synthetic methane down that cheap.
|
| (If they are assuming large CO2 taxes then it's probably a
| better business model to just collect CO2 from the air and
| sequester it.)
| riku_iki wrote:
| > so the cost of CO2 capture has to be well below $110/ton
|
| they say $250/t in the article, but could you expand how
| you came to "A ton of natural gas requires 2.75 tons of
| CO2"? Where 1.75t of CO2 is disappearing in result?
| pfdietz wrote:
| Molecular weight of methane (CH4): 16
|
| Molecular weight of CO2: 44
|
| One molecule of CO2 is needed to get the carbon atom to
| make one molecule of methane.
|
| 44/16 = 2.75
|
| The 1.75t of CO2 that went missing is the oxygen, which
| obviously isn't in the methane.
| riku_iki wrote:
| Thank you, I am an idiot in chemistry )
| rhelz wrote:
| > Their claim is that this method is still yet cheaper than
| drilling/fracking.
|
| They claim the green way to go is converting hydrogen into
| methane....check out the link for a company claiming the
| green way to go is converting methane to hydrogen:
|
| https://www.pnnl.gov/news-media/new-clean-energy-process-
| con...
|
| I rather suspect that taking an energy detour through methane
| either way is a red herring. I mean....the OP says that their
| whole process is powered by solar energy. So they are
| presupposing that solar energy is going to be WAAAYYYY
| cheaper than methane. Why not just use the solar power
| directly?
| rdedev wrote:
| The US is already extracting a lot of natural gas and leaking a
| ton of it. The main culprit of these leaks are those regulatory
| bodies who outsource their jobs onto the companies. Fund them
| better and enforce heftoer penalties and the issue of leaks can
| be minimized drastically
| noutella wrote:
| Leakages are indeed an enormous problem. It's estimated than
| more than 2% of the gas leaks !
| samatman wrote:
| Last time I looked into this, Terraform's 1MW reactor can fill a
| normal LNG truck in 145 days of operation. Or if you prefer, 145
| such reactors would be needed to fill one (1) LNG truck per day.
|
| The work they're doing will help prove out DAC, moving it further
| down the tech adoption curve, which is good. The task of making
| methane from the air should be performed with multi-GW nuclear
| reactors, which produce full power 90% of the time they exist,
| and which can use heat instead of electrolysis to free hydrogen,
| which is more energetically efficient. The use of an extensive
| and intermittent power source which only produces electricity is
| a severe limitation here.
| rbliss wrote:
| Would love to see nuclear do this, but the challenges to
| getting nuclear built are myriad. Regulatory burdens, cost to
| build reactors, painfully slow learning rate for nuclear
| reactor design and buildout.
|
| Solar, while certainly not ideal, is comparatively trivial to
| build out. Functionally you buy and lay out cheap panels. Far
| smaller political challenges. Some friction around land use and
| interconnect, but compared to nuclear, orders of magnitude
| easier and the way forward seems clear with the existing
| political realities and economies of scale in action for solar
| panels.
| tyler569 wrote:
| The best part about using nuclear for fuel generation is that
| you get to sidestep the biggest problem with nuclear - when
| you build a power plant you want to build it near people (who
| may object on safety grounds), but you can build a DAC fuel
| generator way out in the middle of nowhere.
|
| Even better, you could build your nuclear DAC fuel generator
| in an old natural gas field, where there's ready-made
| transportation infrastructure for your product to where it's
| needed!
| leesec wrote:
| Natural gas is just the beginning, they'll be able to make any
| hydrocarbon in time
| _Microft wrote:
| Casey is also very bullish on Musk and his Mars plans. I
| wouldn't be surprised if half of the plan is to have the tech
| ready to build the methane generation infrastructure for Musk's
| Mars colony.
| leesec wrote:
| In fact he started this company after looking into how
| they're going to make gas when they get to Mars
| kartoffelmos wrote:
| How will this address methane leakage, which is a substantial
| source of athmospheric greenhouse gas emissions? Converting Co2
| to methane is not carbon neutral if/when leaked...
| tombert wrote:
| You beat me to it, because I was going to say the same thing;
| wouldn't it only be carbon neutral if you had some means of
| guaranteeing that there's no leaks? It seems like converting
| CO2 to methane could actually make things worse...
| bamboozled wrote:
| If we're converting CO2 that already exists in the
| atmosphere, how could it make things worse?
|
| Isn't problem making new CO2 from burning fossil fuels, not
| converting existing Co2 into other things?
| jtsiskin wrote:
| Yes if you're considering the terms 'carbon neutral' at
| face value; but in terms of global warming, methane traps a
| lot more heat per carbon atom
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| Methane is a 30x stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. So if 4%
| of the converted methane leaked into the atmosphere, you
| would be worse off (from a climate heating perspective)
| than if you had done nothing.
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-
| science/articles/...
| bamboozled wrote:
| Ok thanks.
|
| Well we're super fucked then because I've read that all
| the freaking / coal seam gas infra leaks million of tons
| of methane every year.
| aaronax wrote:
| 30x strong on what measurement? Per molecule?
|
| How much CO2 is Terraform Industries pulling from the
| atmosphere to create that 4% of methane that might be
| leaking?
| slashnode wrote:
| I think the point is that methane is a more potent
| greenhouse gas than CO2, so if leaked, the net greenhouse
| impact is greater than that of the original CO2 that went
| into the process
| joking wrote:
| Because methane is worse than co2 as a greenhouse gas
| tgtweak wrote:
| Even if it all leaks out, you're still back at 0 essentially.
| wmf wrote:
| No, because methane is worse than CO2. Anyway, replacing
| fossil methane with synthetic is strictly better so the
| leaks are irrelevant.
| api wrote:
| Methane has a much shorter atmospheric half life than CO2--
| years as opposed to millennia. It does end up getting
| oxidized into CO2 and H2O, just not nearly as quickly as when
| it's burned.
|
| Leaks would happen to a small degree, but since a leak
| represents money drifting away there's a strong incentive to
| fix them. Methane leaks of any size are fairly easy to
| detect. There's been an effort to put up satellites for this
| purpose.
|
| If using this technology helps us to phase out fossil fuels,
| it would be a huge net win. This could effectively let us
| repurpose all our existing natural gas storage, transport,
| and generation infrastructure into a battery to store surplus
| renewable or off-peak nuclear energy.
|
| This could also allow renewable energy to be shipped as LNG,
| allowing the gigantic amounts of solar power in places like
| the Sahara to be harnessed and exported. The only other way
| to do this is extremely long distance superconducting or
| incredibly high voltage transmission lines that would
| probably be more expensive and very vulnerable.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| >Leaks would happen to a small degree, but since a leak
| represents money drifting away there's a strong incentive
| to fix them.
|
| This is true of existing natural gas infrastructure, and
| yet...
| Latty wrote:
| This was my thought, methane is _much worse_ than carbon when
| not burned, but just released. Any claims of carbon neutrality
| that rely on assuming perfect storage and transport without
| leakage are fantasy.
|
| If anything, when you are calling it "easily transportable" at
| the same time, as they do, you are actively misleading. You
| can't have both: it's either easily transportable and you are
| accepting a bunch of methane released (and thus terrible for
| climate change), or it's carbon neutral and you are baking in
| the cost of making sure it doesn't leak in transport/storage
| (and thus not easily transportable). They are having their cake
| and eating it too by claiming both.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I'd be interested in a quantitative analysis here. Methane is
| much worse, but sunlight has broken most of it down after a
| decade or so. CO2 is comparatively forever.
|
| Presumably there's a point where the lines cross and leaking
| green methane is still a win. I guess it just comes down to
| where those lines cross and whether we deem that an
| acceptable goal.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| Sunlight breaks methane down into CO2, so I don't think
| there's much of a win there.
| solid_fuel wrote:
| But that CO2 is then theoretically recaptured to make
| more fuel, right? At least if the carbon in the methane
| is sourced from the atmosphere in the first place.
| scq wrote:
| Of course there is. CO2 and methane are not equally bad,
| methane is about 100x worse initially. After about 60-70
| years the lines cross and the impact of a tonne of
| methane released is less than a tonne of CO2 released at
| the same date.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| > After about 60-70 years the lines cross
|
| Methane's global warming potential is estimated to be
| _ten times_ CO2 after _500 years_ [1].
|
| > and the impact of a tonne of methane released is less
| than a tonne of CO2 released at the same date.
|
| A ton of methane released into the atmosphere breaks down
| into 2.75 tons of CO2 [2]. There is no possible way that
| this statement can be true.
|
| [1] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/I
| PCC_AR6..., Table 7.15 (page 1017)
|
| [2] Simple stoichiometry: CH4 (weighing ~16 g/mol) breaks
| down into CO2 (weighing ~44 g/mol) at a 1:1 ratio. 44/16
| is 2.75.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| But that methane "started" as CO2 in the atmosphere, so
| after the breakdown happens you're carbon neutral. Carbon
| capture and storage are still relevant topics, but "stop
| making the problem worse" is a good start.
|
| If we all switched to still-leaky synthetic methane
| today, things would continue getting worse only until the
| atmospheric breakdown rate equalled the leak rate. That's
| still a decade of things getting worse, but it's possible
| that the alternatives are even more problematic.
|
| I'm not saying it's the right or wrong path, I haven't
| done that analysis, I'm just saying that approaches to it
| could use a bit more pragmatism.
| mkobit wrote:
| I've been watching a YouTube channel named _Climate Town_ that
| recently did a video talking about natural gas, and leakage was
| a focus point in the video. It 's like a documentary-style
| comedy channel, and I quite enjoy both the content and the
| format. It reminds me a bit of Jon Stewart and John Oliver.
|
| Video link: https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw
| rich_sasha wrote:
| Natural gas is already stored in enormous quantities, and
| shipped around the world. Leakage appears to happen mostly in
| transit, or at poorly maintained installations. My guess is,
| it's a solvable problem.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| Solvable, probably. Has oversight and a commitment to fix the
| issue? Not yet.
|
| https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw?si=zbr_fr5TDK2EHT72 (Topical and
| recent take from a favorite YouTube channel of mine)
|
| The industry provided (self reported) estimates of linkage is
| a little over 1%. The realistic value is over 2% and is at
| the point that coal and natural gas are likely equally bad
| for the environment given our current infrastructure.
|
| Carbon neutral is a useful feature but doesn't solve that
| problem.
|
| I will say I am a fan of carbon neutral methane in place of
| the efforts to move to hydrogen combustion (this is a thing)
| and hydrogen for fuel cells since there isn't a commercially
| viable carbon neutral version of that yet.
|
| Making existing methane infrastructure cleaner and less leaky
| is better, in my mind, in the path to solar/wind/nuclear
| electrification than trying to capture the emissions of coal
| or retool petroleum infrastructure into hydrogen.
| imbusy111 wrote:
| We have a bunch of new methane monitoring satellites, so it
| is very observable and enforceable.
| BWStearns wrote:
| Doesn't methane get reacted away in a relatively short
| ([?]years) period of time?
| realreality wrote:
| Atmospheric methane oxidizes into CO2 and water vapor. Then
| the CO2 hangs around for much longer...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#Natural_si.
| ..
| stephen_g wrote:
| No, that's the problem. The GWPs usually quoted are over 20
| years (GWP 81.2) and 100 years (27.9), but over 500 years
| it's still around a GWP of 8.
|
| Depends on your definition of a 'long time' but it's not like
| it reaches the low single digits even after 500 years...
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| What are some applications where its worth taking the highest
| grade energy (electricity) and turning it into a lower grade (eg
| liquid fuels), rather than electrifying the application?
|
| Electricity to motion is significantly more efficient per input
| energy than burning fuel->heat-> gaseous expansion->drive a
| piston->convert to rotation chain.
|
| What am I missing about this?
| rini17 wrote:
| Seasonal storage. Large amounts of gas can be stored
| underground.
| DenseComet wrote:
| Energy density is much higher, which is important for
| applications such as aviation.
| dr_kretyn wrote:
| Lack of sockets is likely the main one.
|
| Then, lack of the long long cable to the nearest socket.
| megaman821 wrote:
| Seasonal storage of energy is likely only practical in fuel
| form. Also, there is no easy pathway to electricity to high
| temperature heat.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I'm guessing you mean high temperature + high energy (ie lots
| of watts). Cause lasers can do high temp rn, right?
| spenczar5 wrote:
| You're missing density of storage. Gasoline and natural gas are
| in the region of 50 MJ/kg, while batteries are more like
| 10MJ/kg or lower. That 5x factor is what stops us from having
| electric airplanes.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I actually think the reason we don't have electric airplanes
| has to do with traction vs propulsion.
|
| Eg: spinning a jet engine to propel air backwards is very
| different than spinning a motor that is (through a series of
| solid objects) directly connect to the ground.
|
| and while a battery is only 1/5th density, the motors on a
| tesla deliver 3x the range per energy compared to a prius.
| (not true break even, but impressive that one of the most
| efficient hybrid ICE cannot compare KWh for KWh to a battery
| + electric)
| timerol wrote:
| 10 MJ/kg is way overstated for batteries. Current Li-ion is
| around 1 MJ/kg (278 Wh/kg)
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| The only way a technology like this will help get us to carbon
| zero is using it in places where there is not much hope of
| replacing electricity. While small elective airplanes have been
| demonstrated, it doesn't seem like we will be able to build, in
| the next couple of decades, large electric airplanes that can
| substantially replace current fuel powered ones.
|
| This would require the additional step of converting methane to
| jet fuel, but that is also a technology under development.
|
| That said, I personally think, in practice technology like this
| will only delay getting to net zero, because the existence of
| this will disincentivize investments in electrification. I
| recall Sun Tzu's claim that a force completely surrounded will
| fight fiercely, but if you give a way out, it will look to
| escape or retreat.
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| You could theoretically run jet engines on directly on
| methane (liquid or not) - though I am not sure how much work
| would be required to refit an existing one for this purpose.
| Methane is already used for running the turbo-pumps in rocket
| engines like SpaceX's Raptor or Relativity's Aeon-R.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Chemical fuels are dramatically easier to store and transport
| than electricity. Batteries are heavy and expensive compared to
| a tank. Time-dependent surplus electricity (which is basically
| a guaranteed situation on renewable-heavy grids) is basically
| free, which makes efficiency concerns approximately moot.
|
| Instead of letting excess capacity go to waste, you use it to
| create chemical fuel, which can be used either just as storage
| to be later burned in a peaker plant, or you can use it as fuel
| in mobile settings (trucks, planes, ships, etc) where energy
| density is important.
| shawndrost wrote:
| Electricity (during sunlight hours) is not the highest grade of
| energy. California threw away ~32TWh of electricity last year,
| with renewables at only 19% penetration. You can't give power
| away at noon in April; this fact is a significant barrier to
| building new solar. (See "Learning is not enough" and other
| academic research on that topic.)
|
| We also use fossil fuels as feedstocks for fertilizers and
| plastics, so there are very important power-to-X applications
| which don't involve inefficient combustion.
|
| Something like Terraform would probably have to exist in order
| to transition away from fossil fuels.
|
| (Source: I'm CEO at a startup with a very different take on the
| same problem.)
| yodelshady wrote:
| There are ships that move over _one billion_ kWh of LNG around
| at a time.
|
| At $100 to store a kWh of electrical energy, along with
| approximately ten times the cost to account for structures that
| can support and move the extra weight (that's AFTER allowing
| for less energy demanded in total)... shall I leave this as
| exercise to the reader?
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Ok, so here you're referring to moving a lot of energy w/o
| wires/transmission lines? Is that a commonly needed thing?
| michael1999 wrote:
| - heating a zillion legacy homes using existing gas pipelines
|
| - running all the existing fertilizer and other chemical plants
|
| - gas peakers/backups for resiliency. Gas storage is much
| cheaper than batteries.
|
| Even if all new construction is electric, we have decades of
| infrastructure built around gas. Replacing the furnace in every
| German house with a heat pump just isn't going to happen in 10
| years.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If you are talking about thermodynamics, chemical energy is
| exactly of the same grade as electricity.
| car wrote:
| How does this compare to using microbes to produce hydrocarbons
| from CO2 and other waste gases? (NB, not from atmospheric CO2)
|
| Here a recent article on the topic, specifically for making jet
| fuel, for an industry that would be impossible to electrify.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-024-02136-z
| avmich wrote:
| It's interesting that aviation is said to be industry
| impossible to electrify, and at the same time we have electric
| airplanes for some time and keep developing the technology.
| Kon5ole wrote:
| "TL;DR: The future of energy is solar+batteries+synthetics."
|
| Basically infinite energy with clean water as a byproduct, and
| all signs point to it being financially viable compared even to
| fossil fuels. It's like a dream. I can't wait to see a bunch of
| companies being successful in this area.
| skeledrew wrote:
| I see this, and I like how it sounds on the surface. But I can't
| help but raise an eyebrow when I see "carbon neutral". Got me
| wondering how they'll be delivering the gas, if they won't be
| using trucks or building other infra that uses fossil fuel-
| consuming equipment. If they actually have resolved this end-to-
| end, super great! But otherwise, I feel like they're still
| ignoring crucial externalities.
| r3trohack3r wrote:
| > Got me wondering how they'll be delivering the gas, if they
| won't be using trucks or building other infra that uses fossil
| fuel-consuming equipment.
|
| Sounds like you've answered your own question.
|
| Time for you to get to work on an end-to-end natural gas
| powered supply chain that can run on the natural gas they're
| pulling out of thin air.
|
| Lots of fun problems for you to solve. A lifetime of fulfilling
| work ahead.
| SamBam wrote:
| Couldn't these systems be built much closer to municipalities'
| distribution centers (compared to existing NG wells), and so
| require even less transportation than what currently exists?
| triceratops wrote:
| You can run the trucks on liquified natural gas. Or run a
| natural gas power plant next to the Terraform module that can
| charge an electric truck's battery.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| One thing comes to mind: don't transport it. It's sitting right
| next to a solar power plant...one that shuts down at night. Why
| not store the gas locally and use it as a battery when the sun
| isn't shining?
| willio58 wrote:
| While this is impressive to some degree I just today watched
| Climate Town's "Natural Gas is Scamming America"
| (https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw) and the entire natural gas
| industry is tainted beyond belief for me now. It's not like they
| were a positive thing in my view before, but on the whole natural
| gas seems to be just as if not more detrimental than coal for
| climate change mainly due to how much is leaked out but also how
| much energy it takes to ship natural gas to other countries. The
| idea of creating carbon neutral natural gas seems great, but can
| we maybe avoid holding energy in one of the most climate-change
| inducing gases out there?
| Latty wrote:
| Indeed, and they claim it is "easily transportable": it seems
| to be the two are mutually exclusive, if you are going to shove
| it into the existing systems that leak methane habitually, it's
| horrific for climate change.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| If the natural gas is captured from the atmosphere, a spill
| will be bad, but no worse than before the capture happened,
| right?
| luhn wrote:
| They're capturing CO2 from the atmosphere, if they leak
| methane back out to the atmosphere that's much, much worse.
| Over a 20-year period, methane has ~80x the warming potential
| of CO2.
| asmor wrote:
| Being realistic, we're going to put any CO2 we manage to pull
| out of the atmosphere (if we can do it at cost at all) on a
| balance sheet.
|
| We already do this in various places. For instance, if you
| dedicate land to growing a forest in Germany to offset your
| carbon emissions, it is added to the emission trade balance
| of the country no matter if you intend for it or not - you
| can't offset.
|
| Hamburg Airport tried to do this as a publicity stunt, and
| only later noticed they're doing nothing for the CO2 bottom
| line.
| asmor wrote:
| Green hydrogen and other "e-fuels" are an attempt to keep the
| gas industries infrastructure alive and relevant. If you see
| someone break down the math it makes zero sense, it just sounds
| nice.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Keeping existing infrastructure is the whole beauty of it.
| Ships, pipelines, factories, supply chains that you can keep
| using if/until other technology replaces it.
| tedivm wrote:
| > but also how much energy it takes to ship natural gas to
| other countries.
|
| Something like this would reduce the need to transport it to
| other countries, since you can manufacture it anywhere you
| want. Right now we're limited to where we can pull fossil fuels
| out of the ground, which means that it has to be transported
| from one place to another. That's not the case with atmospheric
| extraction.
| goodguy29495 wrote:
| There's a song about this already:
| https://music.apple.com/us/album/powered-by-renewables-ep/17...
|
| "time to terraform" by Big Bear and the Sierra Serenaders
| denysvitali wrote:
| Let's hope they don't switch to the BSL license too
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Wow... what can't Terraform do?!?
|
| https://www.terraform.io/
| mattjaynes wrote:
| For more, I'd recommend Jason Carman's recently released videos
| on Terraform:
|
| Overview and tour (~20min):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g
|
| Deeper Interview (~40min):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekEdq6PhC0Q
| julienchastang wrote:
| Their minimalist website is awesome:
| https://terraformindustries.com/ complete with plain text
| chemical equations.
|
| "Why does our website look like this? At TI we believe we can
| change the world by displacing fossil hydrocarbon production at
| global scale. Like our website, our machines are simple so we can
| build millions of them as quickly as possible. Our website
| embodies our cultural commitment to allocating resources where
| they solve the most important problems."
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| "Like our machines, our website looks awful on a phone."
|
| Someone could've spent literally 5 minutes making this look
| reasonable on the world's most popular web browsing device form
| facto, whilst still retaining the site's retro virtue
| signalling aesthetic, AND it wouldn't have taken away from
| their 'core mission' or whatever.
|
| If you don't care, don't have a website at all.
| zhivota wrote:
| The pictures look oddly fake to me.
| pstrateman wrote:
| Did I miss it or does this not actually say what the cost of
| methane priced by them is?
|
| I see H2, DC power, and CO2 DAC, costs but no total.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Their whitepaper uses $10/kcf.
| pstrateman wrote:
| I assume the whitepaper missed details of production that
| they have since had to account for.
|
| I'm quite curious what their cost is today.
| joking wrote:
| Is there any place where they say how many kWh of electricity
| they need to get one kWh equivalent of gas?
| salynchnew wrote:
| It's pretty amazing to have an actually carbon-neutral way to
| create natural gas.
| elzbardico wrote:
| Well, that's really stretching the concept of Infrastructure as
| Code /grin
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