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Self-healing material can build itself from carbon in the air

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Re: Self-healing material can build itself from carbon in the air

#61

Post by realharo »

s_kilk wrote: post #46
agumonkey wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more I know about biology the less I enjoy (applied and commercial) science because .. well biology does much of it right now.

There's a certain fetish for technology that blinds us to the obvious power of biological systems. We end up chasing pipe dreams of self-assembling materials while ignoring the already-existing self-assembling materials right in front of us.

There's a difference in knowing how to use a TV and knowing how to design and manufacture a TV.

Or a difference between Jesse Pinkman and Walter White.

I guess we don't need to stretch this joke too far.

Re: Self-healing material can build itself from carbon in the air

#62

Post by PopeDotNinja »

agumonkey wrote: post #53
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember listening to a AI researcher talk about how his quest to develop an advanced intelligence led him to realize he could do that by having a child.

Remember his name ? I always thought that the limit of cyber/ai if eco-friendly survival, self-repair to an extent and reproduction was factored in would be homosapiens.exe

Sorry, I don't. I'm pretty sure I heard it on an NPR broadcast in early August of 2001, but that's as much detail as I can recall.

Re: Self-healing material can build itself from carbon in the air

#63

Post by mkstowegnv »

opless wrote: post #28
tgtweak wrote: post #20

I wonder how efficient it is. If a square meter of the material were to be placed in 1000w/m² sunlight, how many grams of carbon can it scrub per hour? Can the carbon be easily recovered? How many break/repair cycles can this material do without deforming or degrading?

Indeed. Sunlight alone can't pull a significant amount of water out of the atmosphere, and plants/bacteria need additional energy in the form of sugars to pull carbon out of CO2 in the air. Where's all this energy coming from?

>plants/bacteria need additional energy in the form of sugars to pull carbon out of CO2 in the air.

Sorry perhaps this is not what you meant to write. For anyone who wants an unmangled understanding of photosynthesis please consult Wikipedia or other text of your choice.

Re: Self-healing material can build itself from carbon in the air

#64

Post by damon_c »

shoo wrote: post #41
mcbits wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd probably mess up the arithmetic, but I wonder how many skyscrapers or Great Pyramids could be packed in a volume of 1 cubic mile. That's how much oil we use per year.[0] (All sources combined are equivalent to about 3 cubic miles of oil.) It would be nice to find a way to bump that up a couple orders of magnitude without actually pulling that much oil/equivalent out of the ground, since there literally isn't enou…

Start with a Great Pyramid of Giza, or locally sourced substitute following the traditional recipe [1]: * 5.5 million tonnes of limestone * 8,000 tonnes of granite * 500,000 tonnes of mortar For a simple approximation, we ignore ingredients that are not limestone. mass of limestone in great pyramid of giza = 5.5 * 1e8 kg of limestone Volume of limestone in one great pyramid of giza, assuming medium-high density limes…

Intuitively, isn't the volume of a pyramid going to be 1/3 of that of a prism with the same width/length/height?

Re: Self-healing material can build itself from carbon in the air

#66

Post by matt_kantor »

pvaldes wrote: post #48
gigatexal wrote: post #4

Could you “clean the air” by creating many such breaks and having it pull co2 out of the air?

Pass 1: culture a huge amount of spinachs that pull co2 out of the air Pass 2: distroy this plants releasing co2 again in the air to obtain chloroplasts from the upper half of the creature. Set free again the co2 saved in roots. (Alternatively pick only leaves from the spinach). Pass 3: use this chloroplasts to recover a part of the co2 released in the pass 2 Pass 4: ... D'oh!

> In ongoing and future work, the chloroplast is being replaced by catalysts that are nonbiological in origin

The next question is how much CO2 will be released during the manufacturing process for these catalysts.

Re: Self-healing material can build itself from carbon in the air

#67

Post by agumonkey »

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #62
agumonkey wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember his name ? I always thought that the limit of cyber/ai if eco-friendly survival, self-repair to an extent and reproduction was factored in would be homosapiens.exe

Sorry, I don't. I'm pretty sure I heard it on an NPR broadcast in early August of 2001, but that's as much detail as I can recall.

Already a lot. I'll try my luck with that :)

Re: Self-healing material can build itself from carbon in the air

#68

Post by thfuran »

ysw0 wrote: post #21
tgtweak wrote: post #20

I wonder how efficient it is. If a square meter of the material were to be placed in 1000w/m² sunlight, how many grams of carbon can it scrub per hour? Can the carbon be easily recovered? How many break/repair cycles can this material do without deforming or degrading?

If this material can convert carbon much more efficiently than plants, it would indeed be a game changer.

Plants are essentially limited by one particularly slow enzyme. There are currently research efforts aimed at fixing that enzyme to make plants much more efficient.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25123951

Re: Self-healing material can build itself from carbon in the air

#69

Post by dsfyu404ed »

mooseburger wrote: post #65

Wait, how long does it take to 'heal'? Didn't see that in the article, and it's pretty crucial with regards as to how useful this can be.

As long as it heals at least a little faster than it naturally weathers this would be amazing for all sorts of things. Imagine if you could just paint steel with a coating that's as durable as hot dip galvanizing.

Re: Self-healing material can build itself from carbon in the air

#70

Post by PopeDotNinja »

agumonkey wrote: post #67
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I don't. I'm pretty sure I heard it on an NPR broadcast in early August of 2001, but that's as much detail as I can recall.

Already a lot. I'll try my luck with that :)

Actually I think it was in April. I was headed to a U2 concert in San Jose when I heard it, and it looks like that was in April. Depeche Mode was in August :)
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