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The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

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Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#141

Post by ncmncm »

sinuhe69 wrote: post #114
acollins1331 wrote: post #108

Carbon capture is the dumbest and most expensive way to move forward. It would be cheaper to just turn every coal plant into a solar farm then it would be to capture the carbon out of the air so why even bother. Oh yeah, corporate interests.

True. Especially if nature already has the best direct carbon capture technology since hundreds millions of years for free: trees!

Plants convert at most 2% of incident light into chemical energy, and spend only a fraction of that binding carbon.

Trees are cheap but need a lot of space and water. People are cutting down forests because they want to use the space for something else.

Ocean surface algae also collect solar power and carbon, and there is little demand for ocean surface for other uses. Algae are limited by available trace minerals -- cheap ones.

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#142

Post by leemck »

OK to shout Eureka when you figure this out:

I have a website where I explore the idea of "not emitting fossil fuel CO2." www.lowco2america.com

Instead of thinking in terms of "cost of extracting CO2" I have sort of stumbled on the idea of "recapitalizing America around social systems that do not emit CO2."

My scheme has a payment of $394 per metric ton of CO2 not emitted. The payment from govt. funds is a prompt no bank account required electronic transfer payment. What it can purchase is a continuing free share of the electricity generated by the workplace parking lot, or an electric car, where the car is free is provided the driver carries 2 or 3 workplace commute riders. The car runs with an average load of 1 driver and 2 or 3 riders. The payment can pay for other things or be redeemed for cash, optionally.

The ancient Chinese Tao Te Ching poem Verse 80 describes a happy society that might sound a little bit like an America that figures out how to live well with 2 mt per person CO2 emissions, maybe in 40 years?

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#143

Post by acollins1331 »

ncmncm wrote: post #141
sinuhe69 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. Especially if nature already has the best direct carbon capture technology since hundreds millions of years for free: trees!

Plants convert at most 2% of incident light into chemical energy, and spend only a fraction of that binding carbon. Trees are cheap but need a lot of space and water. People are cutting down forests because they want to use the space for something else. Ocean surface algae also collect solar power and carbon, and there is little demand for ocean surface for other uses. Algae are limited by available trace minerals --…

Iron seeding of the oceans to increase producer activity is currently being done but on large enough scales to sequester enough CO2 to make a difference it's basically impossible.

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#144

Post by xbmcuser »

svara wrote: post #95
xbmcuser wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With solar prices hitting negative rates for some periods in a day capturing carbon and converting into burnable fuel will probably start making sense in the next few years.

As long as there's still fossil fuel powered transportation, it would make more sense to use that excess power to charge batteries, since that converts electricity into motion more efficiently than taking the detour through synthetic burnable fuel.

Destroying fossil fuel powered transportation then replacing them with electric would actually produce more carbon. All new transportation should be electric but the already running transportation if can be run on captured carbon would result net carbon decrease.

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#145

Post by ncmncm »

acollins1331 wrote: post #143
ncmncm wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plants convert at most 2% of incident light into chemical energy, and spend only a fraction of that binding carbon. Trees are cheap but need a lot of space and water. People are cutting down forests because they want to use the space for something else. Ocean surface algae also collect solar power and carbon, and there is little demand for ocean surface for other uses. Algae are limited by available trace minerals --…

Iron seeding of the oceans to increase producer activity is currently being done but on large enough scales to sequester enough CO2 to make a difference it's basically impossible.

Where is it being done, and by whom?

The only one ongoing I know of is Sahara dust being (naturally) blown out to the Atlantic ocean. Otherwise, just talk. Somebody who did an experiment had his results suppressed, crudely, with a false narrative promoted in its place. Why that was seen as necessary, and how it happened, seem even more interesting than the experiment.

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#146

Post by bobthepanda »

4w5gfder wrote: post #119
fastbeef wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or capture the methane, upgrade it and run generators/cars/busses of it. It's existing tech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biogas

Why bother for landfills? If the landfill can generate electricity that would otherwise be generated, it will convert the CH4 more efficiently than a bus and you don't expand energy upgrading it. You can power the bus with the already high quality CH4 you extracted from the ground that you would have otherwise burned in to generate the electricity.

Buses have different power requirements than cars; they need a lot more range because they run throughout the day.

I was reading somewhere that in buses in cold climates, heating is actually what eats up all the energy in an electric bus. ICE buses just use the waste heat from a combustion engine.

Re: The impact of direct air carbon capture on climate change

#147

Post by leemck »

To rephrase this article: The impact of direct air carbon capture will require enormous input of energy or enormous tonnage of materials such as limestone.

Another approach to reducing the human contribution to atmospheric carbon dioxide is to have each person adopt a low CO2 emission life style.

Just like a massive carbon capture technology, enabling individuals to adopt a low CO2 emission lifestyle is not a free proposition. How much to pay an individual to implement a specific low CO2 life style? Gasoline (the high emission variety 19.6 lb per gallon) at $3.50 a gallon produces a metric ton of CO2 for $393.

More detail at:https://www.lowco2america.com/2018/10/gasoline-co2-in-air-wh...

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