Silly questions.
Assuming someday we have an abundance of electricity, could we not just Capture x% of the Carbon from atmosphere and store them as Diamond?
China begins first of eight large-scale carbon capture projects
21–25 of 25 posts
Re: China begins first of eight large-scale carbon capture projects
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's it fair to attack cryptocurrencies for being wasteful when far more resources are being "wasted" on entertainment? How about we go after vacations? Cruises, airplanes, hotels sitting mostly vacant, RVs, snow mobiles in the winter, boating in the summer. How are these not wasteful? Or rather why are you calling out Bitcoin instead?
Consider this, you have this huge truck consuming gallons of fuel and expending pollution and you have to drive it up and down a 1km road 24/7 to get some tokens. And that's it, just drive up and down. Do you think this is a proper use of scarce resources? Is this defensible? You point to other trucks on the road, they are transporting goods and providing essential services to society and both truck manufacturers and…
>Do you think this is a proper use of scarce resources? Is this defensible?
Oh come on, you going to make an analogy about doing nothing and completely ignore my argument that vacations are nothing. Humans don't need vacations. Humans probably also didn't need cryptocurrencies.
>You point to other trucks on the road, they are transporting goods and providing essential services to society
And you ignore all the vehicles on the road transporting humans and their toys to the distant destinations where they are going, not to do work, no they are avoiding work.
>Would it be fair to say this is an act of utter recklessness and irresponsibility?
Would it be fair to say I never said Bitcoin was not that, just the we might have more egregious actions that we perform that are accepted as a part of daily life.
Re: China begins first of eight large-scale carbon capture projects
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Capturing carbon is a valuable step, but only as part of a process that net removes it from the atmosphere. The IPCC, the IEA, and a boatload of scientists disagree. We cannot prevent catastrophic global warming without doing the type of CCS you describe as useless. Sure, we also want to be doing stuff that's net carbon negative, but that's a long way into the future. And CCS from power generation is only one aspec…
How effective is carbon capture? Are we talking 30% less carbon? 99% less carbon? somewhere in the middle? How much cost does it add to a typical coal plant? How does that compare to new solar installations? Is carbon capture tech renewable? I.e. does it depend on some finite chemical material? Is carbon capture feasible in smaller scales? E.g. can we stick a carbon capture system on a car?
> How effective is carbon capture? Are we talking 30% less carbon? 99% less carbon? somewhere in the middle?
Usually this is something you can tune to optimize your total system and the cost of capture. But typical requirements are >90% CO2 captured, often you see >95% or even 99%.
> How much cost does it add to a typical coal plant? How does that compare to new solar installations?
IIRC the target for something like a coal plant is getting below $100 total cost per ton of CO2 captured, transported and stored. Usually that's calculated summing up CAPEX paid down over some time span, plus OPEX, plus the price you pay someone else for taking the CO2 and storing it. To put that into perspective, if you pass this cost directly on to the consumer, it would correspond to almost doubling the price of electricity. Usually some form of government subsidy accounts for this price increase.
> Is carbon capture tech renewable? I.e. does it depend on some finite chemical material?
Depends very much on the tech. Broadly, we can split into four categories: solvent-based, adsorbent-based, membrane-based and liquefaction-based. E.g. for membranes for H2/CO2 separation, palladium is a key ingredient, which is hardly renewable (but we're not exactly running out tomorrow).
> Is carbon capture feasible in smaller scales? E.g. can we stick a carbon capture system on a car?
On a car? No. I've heard it discussed for diesel locomotives, anything smaller than that your CAPEX and OPEX are so high it makes much more sense to either go electric, or do "pre-combustion" capture, such as converting natural gas into CO2/H2 in a big plant and separating out CO2 while distributing H2 for use in cars.
Re: China begins first of eight large-scale carbon capture projects
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Capturing carbon is a valuable step, but only as part of a process that net removes it from the atmosphere. The IPCC, the IEA, and a boatload of scientists disagree. We cannot prevent catastrophic global warming without doing the type of CCS you describe as useless. Sure, we also want to be doing stuff that's net carbon negative, but that's a long way into the future. And CCS from power generation is only one aspec…
> Sure, we also want to be doing stuff that's net carbon negative, but that's a long way into the future. Isn't refusing emitted carbon (net negative) the entire point? That wouldn't be an "also" then, and newfangled ideas that don't give such a result are nothing to be excited about. Seems to me capturing from the air is a wholly separate matter, whereas capturing at the source (i.e. power plant) should be the focus…
I guess "net negative" can be interpreted different ways. I was thinking of "net negative" to mean "capturing CO2 that's already been emitted", as opposed to "capturing CO2 before it is emitted in the future".
I agree any CCS scheme must be "net negative" in the sense that it doesn't produce more CO2 than it captures. But all the technologies in the pipeline today fulfill this.
Re: China begins first of eight large-scale carbon capture projects
#25Silly questions. Assuming someday we have an abundance of electricity, could we not just Capture x% of the Carbon from atmosphere and store them as Diamond?
You could, but where would all that power come from? Fusion is the only thing I can see that fits the bill, and we're decades from commercialization.