Catching CO2 from trucks and reducing their emissions by 90% • Hacker News Board

Re: Catching CO2 from trucks and reducing their emissions by 90%

#71

Post by tptacek » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 3:51 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #70

tptacek wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The numbers in this report compare the emissions cost of a new BEV to that of a new ICE. But I don't see anyone seriously arguing that people should buy new ICE's; rather, the claim seems to be that people should keep modern ICEs on the road as long as possible before replacing them (with something better than an ICE). This analysis says it takes 19,000 miles of driving to make the acquisition of a BEV emissions-neut…

It's questionable whether keeping your car longer seriously affects how many new cars get made. If you buy a new car and sell it in three years then somebody else can buy it. If you keep it for six years then the person who would have bought it still needs a car for those three years, so now they have to buy a new car in your place. Selling your completely functioning car just puts it in the hands of someone else. Wh…

That... doesn't sound right to me. Cars are manufactured in numbers to satisfy demand. Buying new cars fuels demand. We'd all like new cars --- we like new everything! --- but this sounds like rationalizing.

Re: Catching CO2 from trucks and reducing their emissions by 90%

#72

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 4:05 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #71

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's questionable whether keeping your car longer seriously affects how many new cars get made. If you buy a new car and sell it in three years then somebody else can buy it. If you keep it for six years then the person who would have bought it still needs a car for those three years, so now they have to buy a new car in your place. Selling your completely functioning car just puts it in the hands of someone else. Wh…

That... doesn't sound right to me. Cars are manufactured in numbers to satisfy demand. Buying new cars fuels demand. We'd all like new cars --- we like new everything! --- but this sounds like rationalizing.

Sure, they'll make as many cars as people will buy. And if you were buying new cars and crashing them, that would cause them to have to make more new cars. But if you're buying new cars and then selling them, your demand is offset by you satisfying the demand from the person who bought your old car.

If everybody did that then it wouldn't work -- nobody would be buying the used cars. But there are more than enough people who would never do that anyway because they can't afford it, that it's a gain for all the people who can afford it to do it.

And, of course, the substitution isn't perfect, so if 95% of new cars were already electric then this might not be worth it. The benefit comes from you choosing a new BEV when someone else might have chosen a new ICE. But when existing new sales are much less than half BEV, making the better choice can easily outweigh the imperfect substitution.

Re: Catching CO2 from trucks and reducing their emissions by 90%

#73

Post by sp332 » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 5:03 AM UTC

crca wrote: post #28

mhandley wrote: post #25

Seems like this might be a better solution for shipping than for trucks. Batteries are not really a viable solution for shipping, except on short routes. They're probably stuck with hydrocarbon fuels, but this might work, and the extra mass of CO2 carried wouldn't really be a big deal for a ship. Probably won't work with current dirty bunker fuel though, as I expect that contains too many contaminants; it would need…

77% of semi truck routes are 250 miles or less, a distance easily covered by today’s EV technology.

A modern EV sedan can do 250 miles, but how far can that tech drive a semi truck? I'm guessing it's quite a lot less.

Re: Catching CO2 from trucks and reducing their emissions by 90%

#74

Post by sp332 » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 5:06 AM UTC

rfrey wrote: post #46

egdod wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s wait to see if it actually works before we start threatening to put people in prison for not using it.

I’m pretty sure the proposal is actually for on-the-spot extra-judicial executions of anybody who even criticizes the idea. Or maybe it’s just a call for a bit of regulation, I dunno.

"A bit of regulation" will still get you thrown in jail, exactly as egdod says.

Re: Catching CO2 from trucks and reducing their emissions by 90%

#75

Post by AnthonyMouse » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 5:15 AM UTC

hanniabu wrote: post #39

dragontamer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> voting isn't helping Because the will of the people is in the other direction. At this point, its a matter of convincing the greater public of the evidence. People are stubborn and difficult to convince. And you need to convince roughly half of the voting population (maybe ~50-million people) before things happen in the USA. That's how democracy works. There's also a power-imbalance that gets somewhat political: ho…

> And you need to convince roughly half of the voting population Not with gerrymandering, you'll effectively need much more. And then there's the fact that people are consistently voted in on a set of plans/promises that either are never followed through with or they do they opposite because they were just saying the things that get votes rather than what they actually intend to do. The system is broken, plain and si…

Gerrymandering isn't really the issue. Even in a gerrymandered district, the representative is generally going to do what the majority of people in the district want. If you can convince the majority of the people in the majority of districts, you can get something done.

The biggest "problem" is that neither party is predicted to control the House, Senate and Presidency all at once any time soon, so it almost inherently has to be bipartisan. But the prevailing spirit is not exactly cooperation and good faith, on either side.

Re: Catching CO2 from trucks and reducing their emissions by 90%

#76

Post by mirimir » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 5:21 AM UTC

egdod wrote: post #58

rfrey wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m pretty sure the proposal is actually for on-the-spot extra-judicial executions of anybody who even criticizes the idea. Or maybe it’s just a call for a bit of regulation, I dunno.

At the end of the day, every government regulation is enforced at the point of a gun.

True. But most targets give up well before it comes to that.

Re: Catching CO2 from trucks and reducing their emissions by 90%

#77

Post by adrianN » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 6:24 AM UTC

TheRealPomax wrote: post #36

nothrabannosir wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a carbon tax. It will automatically make fossil fuels more expensive, while this device produces a fuel not subject to the tax.

The problem is that people focus on the word "carbon" and then ignore what the word "tax" means: tax is collected into a single account. Where it came from is irrelevant, and what's done with it is in no way tied to where it came from, so if you want a carbon tax, you better damn well also have some system in place that forces X% of a munipal/state/provice/federal/whatever budget to first be formally declared as rese…

The point is to let the market decide where to allocate money for reducing CO2.

Re: Catching CO2 from trucks and reducing their emissions by 90%

#78

Post by adrianN » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 6:27 AM UTC

thereisnospork wrote: post #67

What a stupid idea[0]. Massive distributed capital expenditure for the express purpose of collecting CO2 for an uneconomic (but technically feasible) conversion to methane. If converting CO2 to methane made sense in any form[1], it would happen first at point sources (e.g. breweries) long before this Rube Goldberg-esque inanity. [0] No really, it's awful. Might as well try and collect the water cars emit to try and r…

Converting CO2 to Methane makes a lot of sense if you want to store large amounts of power. Every country already has the infrastructure for storing and distributing gas and turning it into electricity and heat.

Re: Catching CO2 from trucks and reducing their emissions by 90%

#79

Post by onion2k » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 7:24 AM UTC

remote_phone wrote: post #11

Making electric trucks makes more sense. Then you can centralize the CO2 collection to the power plants and make it much more efficient.

No doubt an electric truck is better than a diesel truck, but the diesel truck already exists. Consequently any comparison needs to include the impact of scrapping all the existing trucks and replacing them with electric ones.

Ideally you'd do that slowly to maximize the utility of the emissions from building the diesel truck in the first place, so add-on technology to make them more environmentally friendly is a very good thing.

Re: Catching CO2 from trucks and reducing their emissions by 90%

#80

Post by thereisnospork » Wed, Dec 25, 2019, 7:25 AM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #78

thereisnospork wrote: post #67

What a stupid idea[0]. Massive distributed capital expenditure for the express purpose of collecting CO2 for an uneconomic (but technically feasible) conversion to methane. If converting CO2 to methane made sense in any form[1], it would happen first at point sources (e.g. breweries) long before this Rube Goldberg-esque inanity. [0] No really, it's awful. Might as well try and collect the water cars emit to try and r…

Converting CO2 to Methane makes a lot of sense if you want to store large amounts of power. Every country already has the infrastructure for storing and distributing gas and turning it into electricity and heat.

Not compared to doing pretty much anything else with that power. Which includes easy things like pumping water uphill, charging lithium batteries, or just making H2 and distributing that into the gas grid directly.

To make CH4 from CO2 takes 8 electrons at (near enough) 2V, giving 1 / (96450 * 8) moles CH4 per amp second. Per tonne, that works out to roughly 1000$/tonne CH4 or 2900$/tonne CO2. Assm 4c/kwh.

So with an exceptionally efficient process requiring negligible capital expense or labor it is possible to convert 3000$ and one tonne of CO2 into 200$ of natural gas. Short of making rocket fuel on Mars, I'm not smelling even the slightest whiff of an application: which is why I am so derisive of the article's proposal - charitably it is at best proposing the equivalent of solar roadways.