[HN Gopher] Scientists Develop Artificial Leaf, Uses Sunlight to...
___________________________________________________________________
Scientists Develop Artificial Leaf, Uses Sunlight to Produce
Valuable Chemicals
Author : gnabgib
Score : 268 points
Date : 2025-04-24 22:10 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (newscenter.lbl.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (newscenter.lbl.gov)
| changoplatanero wrote:
| Something I'm curious to know: How does the efficiency of this
| new process compare to using regular solar panels to generate
| electricity and then using that electrical energy to synthesize
| the same chemicals?
| bognition wrote:
| Efficiency is likely much lower than solar panels, however,
| solar panels are expensive and complicated (chemically) to
| manufacture. Teaching plans to make stuff for us is a better
| long term solution as we can just grow the plants.
| turtlebits wrote:
| What? Solar panels are cheap and little to no maintenance.
| Even though wildly inefficient, I opted to heat water using
| PV instead of a solar hot water because of how low complexity
| it is.
|
| Also, nowhere in the article does it mention growing these
| artificial leaves, they probably need to be manufactured.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I roll my eyes at these "artificial leaf" claims for just
| the reason you've identified.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Solar panels have a limited lifespan, decrease in
| efficiency over time, and also get ruined when things like
| hail happens. This doesn't mean PVs are a bad idea, but
| it's not accurate to say they have little to no
| maintenance.
| dwattttt wrote:
| Aside from the hail, none of those are maintenance
| requirements. I've done 0 maintenance on my panels over
| their lifespan.
| msy wrote:
| 'Replace every 15-20 years' is not maintenance. Neither
| is replacement in the case of catastrophic weather events
| that'll have you replacing all your windows as well. The
| only 'maintenance' solar panels benefit from (which is
| still entirely optional) is occasional cleaning.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| To be fair your windows are less likely to take the full
| brunt of an extra large hailstone since they're usually
| mounted vertically.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Sure but how do these artificial leaves fare when
| analyzed with the same criteria? Presumably worse, given
| that solar panels are (roughly speaking) nothing more
| than a few sheets of material laminated between glass
| panels.
|
| Artificial leaf is an alternative term for extra
| complicated solar panel.
| gus_massa wrote:
| If you ignore the nice " _Artistic depiction of an
| artificial tree_ " it looks like this will also be " _few
| sheets of material laminated between glass panels_ ", but
| I'm worry it will also need plumbing for the water and
| output gas.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| 20 year solar panels just loose 5-10% capacity and
| degradation slows over time the reason most people
| replace them today is 20 year old panels were 200w where
| as today panels are 5-600w.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Sadly our solar panels don't self heal or come with
| 100(0) years warranty.
| trollbridge wrote:
| [flagged]
| dwattttt wrote:
| Make sure to include the time and inputs to make the grass,
| and especially trees; those don't just appear out of nothing.
| And we already know how it works, it's called logging.
| lithocarpus wrote:
| None of the inputs required for plants to grow require
| toxic pollution or destructive extraction.
|
| Of course humans can bring in toxic or destructive inputs
| to try to favor certain plants over others, or humans can
| do other non destructive things to favor certain plants
| over others. Or humans can step aside and let the plants do
| their thing which will create abundance too. (I like the
| middle of these three.)
|
| Also, trees provide far more value than timber alone.
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| Would you give up fertilizer and pest control and stop
| feeding the 8 billion ?
|
| Please dont be a holdomorehippy.. Those back-to-nature
| loving massmurderers without a cause creep me out beyond
| repair.. those that openly hate some humans at least give
| the monstrous game away.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Eventually, you won't have a choice when fertiliser
| produced from oil runs out, becomes cost prohibitive, or
| is made illegal due to greenhouse gas problems; likewise,
| "pest control" has already resulted in a 40% decline in
| insect populations; it won't be good if it gets to 100%.
|
| It would be best to find sustainable ways to grow food
| now, instead of continuing unsustainable ways (including
| supplying massive food aid to unsustainable populations
| so they can keep growing) until there is a precipitous
| crash.
|
| The idea that only industrial scale farming can feed the
| planet is mostly a myth promoted by producers of
| industrial scale inputs and the oil/gas industry, by the
| way.
| pfdietz wrote:
| > Eventually, you won't have a choice when fertiliser
| produced from oil runs out, becomes cost prohibitive, or
| is made illegal due to greenhouse gas problems
|
| You mean, aside from the process of making ammonia using
| green hydrogen that doesn't use fossil fuel at all? A
| process that can be sustained indefinitely, using
| renewable energy?
|
| The single big concern is nitrous oxide emission from
| bacteria in the soil, but that can be reduced by
| nitrification inhibitors, some of which can be produced
| naturally by plant roots (and likely engineered into crop
| plants.)
| lupusreal wrote:
| Fertilizer is mainly made from natural gas, not oil.
| Accordingly it should last much longer. Worse case
| scenario when we run out is we switch to less efficient
| production, for instance splitting water using nuclear
| power.
|
| Any plan that relies on depopulation isn't going to work
| and any attempt to force it to work would require crimes
| against humanity.
| mapt wrote:
| The production of concentrated nitrogen compounds from
| thin air is useful enough that we'll almost certainly
| keep doing it en masse in an electric-only future.
|
| Mining for phosphorous and potassium fertilizers,
| likewise, but situationally a little different because
| these aren't very mobile in the groundwater column like
| nitrogen is, and they don't offgas back into the air like
| nitrogen compounds do. Quite possibly we'll be mining
| manure lagoons more, for CH4 and for closing the loop
| better on P and K.
|
| Ag will continue at industrial scale for cereal grains,
| because half the population is not going back to the
| fields.
|
| Within that framework, there's a lot of difference
| between outcomes in terms of how green we make our farms,
| what we grow, how we grow it. Herbicide and insecticide
| practices do not have to be what they are, as we witness
| massive overuse of things like neonics, glyphosate, and
| aminopyralid mostly because there's little financial
| reason to constrain use. We could stand to dramatically
| reduce the amount of cereal grain we consume, from a diet
| perspective, but the logistical difficulties of
| alternatives like more fresh fruits & vegetables will
| tend to increase carbon emissions. Eating less grain-fed
| meat and more high-protein legumes is basically a win-win
| from diet and climate perspectives. Returning to a less
| industrialized industry where livestock are raised on
| farms instead of on "feeding operations" seems like a
| fair tradeoff against something like subsidized corn-
| ethanol production. Attempting to encourage long-term
| soil stability with reduced tillage and is another goal
| that we might tangle with that would reduce yields; We
| have plenty of yield to spare in the US, so this is an
| option.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| To be a pedant, the inputs for photosynthesis are pretty
| toxic to humans. Sunlight burns and causes skin cancer.
| CO2 also kills people each winter when space heaters
| aren't properly vented.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Whose time and what inputs are required to make grass and
| trees? If you simply leave a place alone, it will turn into
| either a forest, a grassland, or desert (the latter when
| human activity has thoroughly destroyed it).
| chongli wrote:
| I'm just picturing whole new swathes of rainforest being
| clearcut and bulldozed to make way for "artificial leaf
| farms."
| joak wrote:
| Imagine you have 100 acres growing corn for biofuels, would
| it be nice to replace these by 99 acres of wilderness and 1
| acre of photovoltaics producing the same amount of biofuels?
|
| If your photovoltaics are 100x more efficient to produce your
| chemicals, agriculture is the dirty way of doing it.
| saretup wrote:
| Does it mention it's 100x more efficient anywhere? Or is it
| just an example you're providing, in which case, why not
| 1000x?
| joshuaturner wrote:
| > why not 1000x?
|
| now we're talking - can I invest in your company?
| spauldo wrote:
| Corn isn't particularly great for producing ethanol. I'm
| guessing that a synthetic process won't be able to get
| close to 100x less land usage, but any improvement would
| be welcome.
|
| The problem I see is that there's not enough money in in
| to develop a new process. Cellulosic ethanol outperforms
| corn on nearly every measure, but there's not enough
| money in it to pay for the development needed to scale it
| up to industrial levels.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| They might be remembering the stat that:
|
| > Looking at land-use efficiency, corn-derived ethanol
| used to power internal combustion engines requires about
| 85x (range: 63-197x) as much land to power the same
| number of transportation miles as solar PV powering
| electric vehicles.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| What's that supposed to be relevant to? We don't make
| corn-derived fuel because it's cost-effective. It isn't.
| The idea is to give corn farmers something to do, which
| won't work if you reduce the amount of corn you're
| growing.
| mapt wrote:
| We make corn-derived fuel in order to power the Iowa
| caucus.
|
| Corn farmers could be doing literally anything else,
| including a whole variety of things that rebuild soil or
| capture carbon or generate electricity, and it would be
| equally effective at powering the Iowa caucus, as long as
| we pay them to do it. They could even be producing crops
| organically, producing free-range livestock, or producing
| different lower-return higher-nutrition types of food,
| should we ever be interested in changing our diet a
| little. Deciding to produce the world's largest excess
| food supply in an industrialized fashion and then
| literally burning it was maybe a poor use of resources.
| rcxdude wrote:
| We could more or less do that now. In fact we should
| probably just stop growing corn for biofuel, it's not
| obvious that it's even energy-positive, let alone a good
| use of farmland.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| What do you mean by Biofuel? Like getting it from
| Biomass.
|
| I don't understand, can't we get Biomass from like
| undesirable items like (not to gross anyone out, but
| feces?) whereas corn still has some value where you can
| actually eat it.
| the_sleaze_ wrote:
| Yes, and don't forget photovoltaics aren't limited to the
| crust - they can scale upwards, outwards, on top of oceanic
| deserts and arid lands.
|
| Cover sunny, bleak northern africa in towering
| photovoltaics panels baby!
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Labeling a massive geographic zone in an underdeveloped,
| historically exploited area--one which plays a key role
| in how the climate works---as useless, and then
| converting it to an extractive industry...what could go
| wrong?
|
| I'm as optimistic as the next person about energy tech,
| but I hope it doesn't turn out like yet more colonialism.
| linkregister wrote:
| Yeah, it would be terrible to offer the citizens of Chad,
| Mali, Tunisia, Libya, etc an opportunity to get revenue.
| Only Western democracies like Norway and Australia are
| allowed to extract substances!
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Grass and trees are pretty bad at converting sun into
| glucose. Main enzyme in photosynthesis Rubisco is both slow
| (few molecules per min vs several hundred per second) and
| lowly selective (confusing O2 for CO2 regularly).
|
| Which makes sense, for most of Earth's geological history CO2
| was more abudant. So chance of mistaking O2 and CO2 was nil.
|
| https://youtu.be/vYVSH2RpHcQ?feature=shared
| robbiep wrote:
| Photosynthesis in nature is 1% efficient so it doesn't need
| to be greatly better to beat it
| otherme123 wrote:
| The rubisco enzime is specially ineficient. While most
| enzimes can usually do thousands of reactions per second,
| rubisco does up to 10. Organisms compensate making loads of
| copies, to the point it's the most abundant enzime in
| nature.
| ordu wrote:
| What can a molecule do for such a long time? I mean they
| move very fast, the distances there is very short, so I
| kinda assumed that all the molecules do they do almost
| instantly. But 0.1 sec doesn't seem like an instant
| event.
| breakyerself wrote:
| I wouldn't replace grass or trees with this, but there's
| places where not much of anything is growing.
| dang wrote:
| " _Don 't be snarky._"
|
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us
| something._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| photochemsyn wrote:
| After following the literature down several different rabbit
| holes, I found this argument in some of the supplementary
| figures on that tree that seems to address your question:
|
| > "Supplementary Note 1 | Advantages of PEC hydrocarbon
| synthesis.
|
| "In general, PEC systems have the potential to combine the
| performance of wired PV-electrolysis (PV-E) systems with the
| simplicity of photocatalytic (PC) systems. PV-E is an
| established technology, which can take advantage of commercial
| solar cell modules with light harvesting efficiencies above 20%
| 24 and state-of-the-art gas diffusion electrolysers operating
| at high current densities above 1 A cm-2.25 However, PV-E
| assemblies require additional components including reactors,
| membranes, pumps, corrosive electrolytes, external cables and
| control electronics, increasing the overall system complexity
| and associated cost.26,27"
|
| "On the other hand, PC powders provide an inexpensive
| alternative to PV-E, since light absorber particles and any
| necessary catalysts are dispersed in solution, which greatly
| minimises the overall system complexity. However, wide band
| gaps and charge recombination often limits solar-to-hydrogen
| conversion efficiencies to below 1%.28 While a homogeneous
| dispersion of the light absorber and catalyst can increase
| reactivity, this also poses challenges for the subsequent
| separation of all components and products from the reaction
| mixture."
|
| "Accordingly, PEC artificial leaves provide a balance between
| PV-E and PC approaches in terms of complexity, cost and
| performance, by integrating state-of-the-art semiconductors and
| catalysts into a single compact panel. These PEC devices can
| perform reactions beyond water splitting (e.g., CO2 reduction
| to C1 products, or the light-driven C2 hydrocarbon and organic
| synthesis introduced here), while allowing product separation
| between the anodic and cathodic sides. This intrinsic design
| advantage is demonstrated by lightweight PEC systems using
| 15-fold less material than conventional solar panels, which
| combine the high performance of wired systems with the high
| activity per gram of photocatalyst nanoparticles.29 This
| applicability and potential of PEC-based fuel production also
| translates to hydrocarbon synthesis. In addition, direct light-
| driven hydrocarbon synthesis is carbon neutral, avoiding the
| energy-intensive Fischer-Tropsch process for indirect
| hydrocarbon synthesis from syngas (H2 + CO)."
|
| Practically speaking the catalysts in these processes have
| relatively short lifetimes, so you'd want to incorporate an
| efficient catalyst regeneration process into the production
| pipeline, i.e. you might only get 16-128 hours of efficient
| production before catalyst regeneration is required so that
| needs to be built into any commercial process. So if you can
| design a catalyst that's easy to regenerate, that's very
| important.
|
| Source material with nice pictures of the copper nanoflowers:
|
| https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs419...
| japanuspus wrote:
| Agreed: this is the key question. One effort I follow in this
| direction is Terraform Industries[0] who are building exactly
| this type of system.
|
| Their approach is PV + DCC (Direct Carbon Capture) and then
| simple carbohydrate synthesis, with the goal of establishing
| standalone autonomous systems that can generate valuable
| resources on their own in remote areas with ample sunlight.
|
| They have a great blog where they go through their motivation
| for the approach from first principles [1].
|
| [0]: https://terraformindustries.com/ [1]:
| https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/home/
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| Direct solar-to-chemical systems like this can be more
| efficient in theory because they cut out the middleman
| (electricity storage and conversion), but in practice, they're
| often less mature and have lower overall efficiency right now
| compared to established solar-electric-chemical setups
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Modern solar panels are about 20-25% efficient. Putting it in a
| battery and using it to drive a car is about 80-90% efficient.
| Both the battery and motor lose some energy. If you multiply
| that, you get to about 16-22% efficient (starting with
| sunlight). And solar panels and batteries are still improving.
| Perovskite and other multi layer panel technologies provide a
| path to 35-40% panel efficiency.
|
| Getting a similar efficiency generating some fuel that you then
| burn at 20% efficiency in a combustion engine results in a net
| efficiency of about 5%. That might improve on the fuel
| generation side but electricity generation would improve in a
| similar way and it would not be as efficient as that
| (thermodynamic laws and all that). It's basically not going to
| get much better than being between 4-8x less efficient than
| battery electric.
|
| BEVs are winning on price and cost for that reason. Batteries
| are getting dirt cheap (50-60$/kwh). Solar and wind energy
| basically have no marginal cost. Driving 500K miles at 20
| gallons/mile costs 75K$ at 3$/gallon for 25K gallons of fuel.
| 500K miles is a realistic life expectancy for modern battery
| electric drive trains. Good luck with that with an ICE car.
| Grid electricity isn't free but it won't cost you 75K. And
| honestly, you're going to be spending more than that on fuel in
| most parts of the world. And there's maintenance, parts, oil
| (engines use a lot of that too), etc. Bottom line: you could
| buy a new EV for 30-40K, and use the remaining savings for
| maintenance, tires, etc. All on the money that you aren't
| spending on fuel. Even a free ICE car would be a bad deal
| compared to that. You'd lose more money on just the fuel than
| you save on the car.
|
| Now are efuels going to be cheaper or more expensive than
| regular fuel? It's a rhetorical question. We all know the
| answer (no way in hell). Hydrogen, bio fuels, efuels, etc.
| don't really stand any chance economically. None whatsoever.
| This is just greenwashing noise. None of that stuff is going to
| scale or matter. Some of the technology might matter for other
| purposes though. Hydrogen is super useful for lots of things
| and providing chemicals that we currently produce from oils
| synthetically could be valuable too.
| rsoto2 wrote:
| I'm in my early thirties and I feel like i've heard about an
| "artificial leaf" every five years for the last fifteen.
|
| We have leaves. Can scientists invent something to help us
| convince politicians to actually give a shit about saving the
| planet we depend on.
| Arkhadia wrote:
| I think the reality is there is no saving anything. Only
| surviving as long as we can. Why dump billions into an
| impossible goal of saving when we could invest in survival? I
| hope I'm wrong but anyone that knows anything about investments
| knows that there's a point where you need to cut your losses
| doctorwho42 wrote:
| The system of economics that we use is quite new on the
| historical scale, using it in your argument to say that
| saving earth based life (which we are apart of) is not
| financially viable is the most absurd thing in modern
| society. Without the ecosphere, the economic system ceases to
| exist... So by the very definition, it is the utmost
| important and therefore not only viable but absolutely
| necessary.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| It isn't clear what criteria is being used here for
| "saving" something. People often use "save the planet" to
| mean stopping most or all ecological changes. That very
| well might not be viable in which case survival ie
| adaptation is the other option.
| incompatible wrote:
| Many politicians are more interested in protecting the coal,
| oil, and gas industries. Renewable energy and methods of
| extracting carbon from the atmosphere are the last things they
| want.
| teamonkey wrote:
| Removal of carbon from the atmosphere is exactly what they
| want, because it gives them justification to sell more oil
| and gas.
| cyjackx wrote:
| The pragmatic answer is that it is probably a better spend of
| time to innovate tech that circumvents politics than to spend
| time winning politics.
| lukas099 wrote:
| A lot of the tech research and investment is done by
| governments, though.
| usrnm wrote:
| Yeah, because it worked flawlessly the last time we tried
| (crypto)
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >I'm in my early thirties and I feel like i've heard about an
| "artificial leaf" every five years for the last fifteen.
|
| You have a good memory. Most people don't, so the ruse of
| living in a world with amazing breakthroughs works really well
| with most people.
| fred69 wrote:
| Early seventies here, can extend and confirm your observation.
| Also flying cars, artificial intelligence, fusion power,
| equitable wealth distribution, ...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Decarbonizing is the biggest political project in the world.
| Enormous resources are applied to it.
| tcdent wrote:
| In the next couple years we'll be modifying and creating
| biological structures that perform these functions.
|
| Building it by mechanically manipulating inert materials feels so
| 1950s.
| jfengel wrote:
| Biology is stunningly efficient, but it's hard to optimize
| further. To get really high yields you usually need industrial
| processes.
| wffurr wrote:
| Solar panels are ten times more efficient than
| photosynthesis.
| joak wrote:
| Today it's 10x more efficient, but it could theoretical get
| 100x more efficient, worth working on it.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| Can it? I thought panels were well over 10% efficiency
| these days. Plus I'm pretty sure there's a hard limit
| somewhere below 100%.
| moebrowne wrote:
| It's called the Shockley-Queisser limit.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser
| _li...
| Layvier wrote:
| isn't the self replicating property of life a huge benefit
| though?
| yesbut wrote:
| How many natural habitats will need to be destroyed in order to
| make artificial leaves useful in any meaningful way?
| gaiagraphia wrote:
| I'm pretty glad that when we've chopped down all our forests,
| we'll have mechanical leaves as a backup plan. Having the means
| to generate enough electricity to take oxygen out of the
| atmosphere could be useful.
| joak wrote:
| Natural habitats has been destroyed by agriculture.
|
| In the US 10-20% of agricultural land is used to produce
| chemicals like starch, sugar or biofuels, if we could use less
| land to produce these it would be great.
|
| Photovoltaics could be up 100x more efficient in producing
| these chemicals.
|
| This technology could free agricultural land back to natural
| habitats.
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| > a perovskite and copper-based device that converts carbon
| dioxide into C2 products - precursory chemicals of innumerable
| products in our everyday lives, from plastic polymers to jet fuel
|
| Star Trek Replicator?
| gus_massa wrote:
| The device makes ethane and ethylene, oversimplify it's just
| natural gas. You must put it inside a huge petrochemical
| refinery to join some of them to make plastic or fuel.
| krunck wrote:
| Stuff like this(and fusion) is where we should be putting our
| research energies.
| aeonik wrote:
| You don't want another new JavaScript framework instead?
|
| Speaking of which, it feels like we are overdue for the next
| big one. Is it actually slowing down?
|
| Everybody just went head first into AI?
| VladVladikoff wrote:
| > Is it actually slowing down?
|
| All I want for Christmas...
| jumperabg wrote:
| ... is artificial leafs that create liquid fuel for fusion
| reactors.
| xmprt wrote:
| Clearly that's what they meant when they said fusion:
| https://fusionjs.com/
| cookiengineer wrote:
| Maybe we should make a javascript UI framework generator. Let
| an LLM build your next hype UI framework in a matter of
| seconds.
|
| Could be fun with a highscore that is measured by most amount
| of dependencies and lines of code, the more the better. The
| prompt is limited in length. Task for the user is to generate
| the most amount of code with a single prompt.
| mystified5016 wrote:
| High score based on the size of binary blob you have to
| send to user's browsers. Bonus points if you max out RAM
| without crashing the system
| noisebuffer wrote:
| So can I make a realistic plant mech mobile suit now?
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| Mimicking photosynthesis at this level, using durable inorganic
| materials like copper and perovskite, feels like one of those
| "quiet breakthroughs" that could end up being a game-changer if
| scaled up
| lukan wrote:
| In what way? Energy production? I believe there are quite some
| breakthrougs required for this to compete with cheap solar
| panels.
| ozim wrote:
| From the article:
|
| _Researchers built a perovskite and copper-based device that
| converts carbon dioxide into C2 products - precursory
| chemicals of innumerable products in our everyday lives, from
| plastic polymers to jet fuel._
| 9dev wrote:
| Converting CO2 on its own seems like a useful thing, don't
| you think?
| myrmidon wrote:
| Not necessarily.
|
| The problem is the somewhat low atmospheric CO2
| concentration; this is why all the "lets just pollute now
| and remove the CO2 from the atmosphere with some
| futuristic tech!" approaches are also kinda doomed,
| because even if you had some workable process that did
| not cause excessive costs by itself (like this one
| possibly), you still need to process _millions_ of cubic
| meters of air, every year, just to compensate for a
| single (!!) car.
| leereeves wrote:
| That sounds like a lot, but a million cubic meters is
| only a cube 100 meters on each side. So it's on the order
| of the air in a football stadium.
|
| A 1200 CFM home air conditioning system moves roughly 20
| million cubic meters per year.
| myrmidon wrote:
| Sure. But thats still very much a lower bound, and it
| makes a bunch of idealizing assumptions that are
| hopelessly overoptimistic (assuming your intake gets the
| full 400ppm of CO2, and you manage to extract all of it
| in one go).
|
| Even from those numbers, you already get up to a football
| stadium of processed air per hour for every small town.
| For a big city, you need to process that football stadium
| worth of air _every second_.
|
| Building infrastructure of that magnitude is a major
| commitment, and if most nations can not be arsed to
| replace a small number of fossil power plants _per
| country_ , I honestly don't see us building large air
| processing plants in every single town in a timely manner
| (that are extremely likely to be less profitable than
| replacing the power plants).
| themaninthedark wrote:
| What is the size of these process units?
|
| Can it be coupled with current air processes?
|
| Every house, office building and factory has air handling
| units.
|
| Factories and other industrial sites also use
| compressors.
| teamonkey wrote:
| Right now they're a fantasy so they can be as large or
| small as your imagination permits.
| gus_massa wrote:
| It converts CO2 and H2O into ethane and ethylene,
| oversimplifying the output is natural gas. What do you do
| with the natural gas?
|
| You can put it in pipes and send it to a central
| location, but you need pumps and the pipes are a
| nightmare.
|
| You can store it in a local tank but you need a pump
| again, and burn it but it release the CO2 again. Using a
| solar panel and a battery is easier and more efficient.
|
| (Do they need also some water pipes?)
|
| For a distributed production, solar panels are much
| better.
|
| Pipes and pumps may work in a centralized setup, but I'm
| still not convinced it's better that biodiesel or
| ethanol.
|
| Photosynthesis is very inefficient, so there is a lot of
| room for improvement. But plants are like self building
| robots and they store the output in grains that are easy
| to transport.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| Earth's atmosphere is 5.15x10^18 kg and at atmospheric
| pressure density is 1.293 kg m-3. The whole thing would
| be more like 4 billion billion cubic meters. So a billion
| AC units could have the whole thing cleaned up in just
| 200 years.
|
| Which would suggest that maybe as much as 0.1% to 1% of
| earth's atmosphere has ever passed through an air
| conditioner.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| This just has me picturing a scene where global warming
| is solved not by cleaning it up, but by leaving tons of
| window air conditioners everywhere, troll physics style,
| "to cool down the outside"
| the_sleaze_ wrote:
| Psh, that's not reasonable.
|
| Outer space is like really really cold. What we need is a
| huge heat pump in outer space that pumps the planets heat
| out into deep space. All we need is a space-elevator
| style tube and we're good to go!
| lukan wrote:
| You would need GIANT radiators. Space is cold but there
| is also allmost no cold material to transfer heat. So
| even with a space elevator .. not so easy.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Makes me wonder if ACs should have built in scrubbers. If
| that was the norm everywhere, you'd have some mild effect
| going on at scale.
| myrmidon wrote:
| It would not hurt, but this just makes no (economic)
| sense currently, and that's not gonna change any time
| soon.
|
| Right now we don't have _any_ CO2 scrubbing process
| without significant maintenance or operating costs, so
| this would add significant cost to all those ACs.
| Furthermore, the effect is marginal: With emissions of
| >6 tons of CO2/year/human, you would have to scrub _a
| lot_ of air ( >10m3/min with cost-free 100% efficiency,
| which is a pipedream) to compensate (for a single human);
| running the ACs on full flow all the time might not even
| be worth it depending on how efficient the scrubbing is
| and how clean the source of electricity.
|
| You might say scrubbing clean 10m3/min of air for every
| human sounds kinda feasible, but just compare the
| realistic cost of such a setup to the options that are
| currently implemented, and how much popular
| resistance/feet dragging they already meet (renewables,
| nuclear power, electrification, CO2 taxation).
|
| As a general benchmark, I would suggest that before the
| scrubbing technology in question has not managed to be
| installed at most major stationary _sources_ of CO2 (coal
| /gas power plants, etc), it is not even worth discussing
| it for distributed air scrubbing.
| azinman2 wrote:
| You have to start somewhere. Even a not great solution
| can set the president, with goals to gradually increase
| the efficiency. Mandates can do a lot -- just look at the
| catalytic converter. Put it on all HVAC systems and
| _something_ will happen even if a small effect given the
| HVAC itself is contributing way more CO2.
|
| We need all across the board solutions, and if you start
| requiring small scrubbers to function that can start to
| provide scale effects that can translate for bigger
| systems.
| scientator wrote:
| https://mashable.com/article/ac-units-climate-change-
| carbon-...
| zdragnar wrote:
| I was doing to say that surely it's a larger percentage,
| especially including all the commercial and industrial AC
| units running non-stop.
|
| Then I remembered that my dad didn't have indoor plumbing
| in his house for most of his childhood, and that 200
| years is a much longer time than my first gut instinct.
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| okay but what's several million cubic meters of air times
| all the cars operating on earth right now?
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| One thing that cheap solar panels can't do is produce
| feedstock for a 3d printer. The effective wattage of
| something that prevents the need to ship something from the
| other side of the planet could be quite high even if it's
| actual wattage is low.
|
| That's not to say that we're there yet. Specialists in other
| countries still make a much better widget than the robot in
| my closet and they will for a while. But it's a step.
| chr1 wrote:
| Perovskite is not durable though, and that's the main reason it
| is still not used in solar cells.
| npodbielski wrote:
| What is wrong with normal leafs?
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| One has a hard time making a ton of money with them.
| pfdietz wrote:
| They transpire enormous amounts of water.
| breggles wrote:
| Should we really be making more plastic and carbon fuels?
| once_inc wrote:
| As always: there is nothing inherently wrong about either
| plastics or carbon fuels. The problem is in using it in
| incorrect situations. Plastics are perfect for transporting an
| preserving foodstuffs in. Cheeses, meats, etc all have
| significantly longer shelf-lives because they are placed in
| plastics in a protective atmosphere. It is things like plastic
| bottle-caps, plastic straws, and other (generally small)
| disposable plastic tools that find their way into nature and
| wreak havoc.
|
| Similarly for carbon fuels: these can have extremely high
| energy density coefficients, and are usable on a global scale.
| I would still prefer a move away from them and into Nuclear,
| but for some situations, having a small canister of fuel and a
| tool to convert that into mechanical action is extremely
| useful. Chainsaws for instance.
|
| Also: I don't know what the tolerances for this material are,
| but they might be interesting for use in space?
| init7 wrote:
| It is quite fascinating to think that leaves are not just a
| static end product but make further leaves that can again spin
| off more leaves via many trees in parallel.
|
| Like the algorithm that began billions of years is nowhere done
| and is expanding. What we build on the other hand crumbles every
| few years.
| junon wrote:
| Wow the level of typical HN "if it isn't practical then it's
| bullshit and not worth doing" sentiment is unusually high today.
| parpfish wrote:
| Don't forget the classic "let's hyperfixate on any negatives
| for the new thing instead of comparing them to the negatives of
| the current solution"
| glitchc wrote:
| It's great that we can finally turn over a new leaf.
|
| I'll see myself out.
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