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A CO2 capture solvent with exceptionally low total costs of capture

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Re: A CO2 capture solvent with exceptionally low total costs of capture

#11

Post by mrpopo »

chobeat wrote: post #4
qeternity wrote: post #2

Alright HN domain experts. I’m prepared. What’s the rub?

Like with every other solution, under the current political and economic systems, there's no incentive to scale it up quickly enough to make a dent in global warming and it will just live in small local prototypes and in the dreams of techno-solutionists.

I think the bigger gotcha with carbon capture is it sustains the quid pro quo that climate change is the biggest threat to unchecked energy consumption growth. Behind climate change, there's also biodiversity collapse, ocean fish depletion, and that's gonna ruin the food system billions of people depend on, way before they see the benefits of globalisation.

Re: A CO2 capture solvent with exceptionally low total costs of capture

#12

Post by grodes »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #8

For making a dent in global warming we'll need to have billions of tonnes of this "N-(2-ethoxyethyl)-3-morpholinopropan-1-amine (2-EEMPA)" stuff.. I wonder if this won't be an environmental hazard in itself. What do we do with it after it's captured its CO2? We can't just dump that stuff in the sea. I wonder if CO2 capture does not cause more problems than it solves. Even if we magically could capture CO2 as pure car…

but we must capture de one we already emitted to balance the CO2 cicle

Re: A CO2 capture solvent with exceptionally low total costs of capture

#13

Post by iamthemonster »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #8

For making a dent in global warming we'll need to have billions of tonnes of this "N-(2-ethoxyethyl)-3-morpholinopropan-1-amine (2-EEMPA)" stuff.. I wonder if this won't be an environmental hazard in itself. What do we do with it after it's captured its CO2? We can't just dump that stuff in the sea. I wonder if CO2 capture does not cause more problems than it solves. Even if we magically could capture CO2 as pure car…

1. The solvent in carbon capture runs in a closed loop. You typically heat it, and it releases the CO2 so you can compress it and inject it below ground.

2. You don't necessarily need a depleted natural gas reservoir to inject CO2 subsurface (though they sure are convenient) and there is plenty of room for CO2 subsurface. It also doesn't creep to the surface on any meaningful timescale.

3. How do we transport it there? Pipelines.

I feel like CO2 sequestration is second only to nuclear in the amount of unfounded concerns. There's one very well founded concern directly in the article - they estimate $50 per tonne of CO2 just to capture, let alone to store. My experience on a 2009 carbon capture plant design was that approx $100 per tonne of CO2 was the lowest carbon price that would really make carbon sequestration highly attractive and widespread.

I also happen to think a $100 per tonne carbon price is not such a bad idea. But it is possible that other technologies would beat carbon sequestration at that carbon price point. I don't know.

Re: A CO2 capture solvent with exceptionally low total costs of capture

#14

Post by GekkePrutser »

iamthemonster wrote: post #13
GekkePrutser wrote: post #8

For making a dent in global warming we'll need to have billions of tonnes of this "N-(2-ethoxyethyl)-3-morpholinopropan-1-amine (2-EEMPA)" stuff.. I wonder if this won't be an environmental hazard in itself. What do we do with it after it's captured its CO2? We can't just dump that stuff in the sea. I wonder if CO2 capture does not cause more problems than it solves. Even if we magically could capture CO2 as pure car…

1. The solvent in carbon capture runs in a closed loop. You typically heat it, and it releases the CO2 so you can compress it and inject it below ground. 2. You don't necessarily need a depleted natural gas reservoir to inject CO2 subsurface (though they sure are convenient) and there is plenty of room for CO2 subsurface. It also doesn't creep to the surface on any meaningful timescale. 3. How do we transport it ther…

Ok closed loop sounds better, the article didn't clarify this. But the compression itself and the heating will cost significant energy too, don't forget this.

But consider for a moment how much coal and oil we've been digging up since the industrial age. CO2 is much less dense once it's uncontained underground. It won't stay liquid at that pressure.

In that case we'll need to have underground space of a size of many times the space that all that coal and oil took up, due to the lower density. Just pumping it there, forcing it underground in different spots etc will also cause significant ecological disruption. It's a lot of land we're going to be running pipelines to, drilling into to inject it, using heavy machinery etc.

And if some of it does end up being released due to a mistake, it can have potentially deadly effects. Like what happened at Lake Nyos. Safety would really have to be guaranteed.

I don't know, it just sounds like a solution that won't scale to the enormity of the climate problems, and rather more like big business wanting to monetise the problem itself (and also use it as an excuse to not reduce consumption).

But anyway, if it does prove itself in trials I would change my mind on it.

Re: A CO2 capture solvent with exceptionally low total costs of capture

#15

Post by cryptica »

I don't see what is the point to try to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. I don't even understand the fuss around global warming.Why is global warming a bad thing?

The plants and animals will adapt and evolve to handle the additional heat. There will be natural selection as usual. New variants of plants will evolve which can absorb more CO2. All species on earth will find a new equilibirum as they always had in the past.

The fear of global warming is only a human concern. The planet and the animals don't give a crap - Each individual specimen just tries the best they can to adapt to whatever the universe morphs into.

The problem with trying to manage global situations is that evolution is cleverer than you are.

To quote George Carlin:

“We’re so self-important. Everybody’s going to save something now. 'Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails.' And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. Save the planet, we don’t even know how to take care of ourselves yet."

"The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn’t share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, 'Why are we here?'"

Full quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/251836-we-re-so-self-import...

Re: A CO2 capture solvent with exceptionally low total costs of capture

#16

Post by shoo »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #8

For making a dent in global warming we'll need to have billions of tonnes of this "N-(2-ethoxyethyl)-3-morpholinopropan-1-amine (2-EEMPA)" stuff.. I wonder if this won't be an environmental hazard in itself. What do we do with it after it's captured its CO2? We can't just dump that stuff in the sea. I wonder if CO2 capture does not cause more problems than it solves. Even if we magically could capture CO2 as pure car…

I agree that avoiding emissions in the first place is preferable to trying to figure out how to undo the emissions afterwards.

Mental model of emission removal scope is some giant world system maybe 1x or 2x the size of the fossil fuel industry, trying to run in reverse what we've spent the last hundred or two years doing.

Carbon tax, carbon tax, carbon tax. Something significant like $250 / ton. Cannot come soon enough. Ideally a global carbon tax, failing that just between a few countries & with tariffs or sanctions or so on to penalize trading partners that don't regulate externalities of pollution.

Re: A CO2 capture solvent with exceptionally low total costs of capture

#17

Post by neolog »

chr1 wrote: post #7
chobeat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like with every other solution, under the current political and economic systems, there's no incentive to scale it up quickly enough to make a dent in global warming and it will just live in small local prototypes and in the dreams of techno-solutionists.

That's not a techno solution worth to dream about, the real techno solution is a fine grained control of weather (like https://viento.ai ) and in that case the extra CO2 in atmosphere will be naturally sequestered in fields and farms in Sahara.

That "leadership team" doesn't seem qualified to be working in this area.

Re: A CO2 capture solvent with exceptionally low total costs of capture

#18

Post by GekkePrutser »

cryptica wrote: post #15

I don't see what is the point to try to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. I don't even understand the fuss around global warming.Why is global warming a bad thing? The plants and animals will adapt and evolve to handle the additional heat. There will be natural selection as usual. New variants of plants will evolve which can absorb more CO2. All species on earth will find a new equilibirum as they always had in the pas…

True. Some areas will become uninhabitable or flooded but others will become more habitable (like permafrost/tundra regions). Nature will indeed adapt though there will be reduced biodiversity for a while. Especially because this effect normally happens on a much longer timescale.

I think the problem is more that the regions that will become uninhabitable are currently mostly inhabited by people. And often pretty poor ones. It will cause millions to billions of people having to be relocated, causing many societal issues on its own, with a serious potential of societal collapse or war. Especially because the source and destination of these mass-migrations will often lay in different countries. See how refugees from wars in e.g. Africa or Syria are currently not really welcome anywhere, and multiply their numbers by 1000. That's the kind of disruption we're talking. Migrants will get more desperate while on the other side of the fence anti-migrant feelings will grow more and you have an explosive situation just waiting for a spark.

And war itself is a major destructor not just of humans but of the planet itself. Especially now that we have nuclear weapons.

Re: A CO2 capture solvent with exceptionally low total costs of capture

#19

Post by dalbasal »

chobeat wrote: post #4
qeternity wrote: post #2

Alright HN domain experts. I’m prepared. What’s the rub?

Like with every other solution, under the current political and economic systems, there's no incentive to scale it up quickly enough to make a dent in global warming and it will just live in small local prototypes and in the dreams of techno-solutionists.

True, but if it's really good, it probably could be brought into the political/economic system at some point. Just mandate zero emissions for certain classes of carbon fuel burners... like power new stations.

Replacing the first 30% of fossil fuel usage is hard/slow. At some point, it will become much easier/quicker... because the economics will be favourable.

The last 30% of fossil fuel will be hard/slow. Fossil fuel burning use cases that for different reasons are hard to replace. For these, exhaust capture makes sense.

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