A CO2 capture solvent with exceptionally low total costs of capture • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by djrogers » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 2:09 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #79

quotemstr wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can't keep doing this In the broadest possible sense, no, we can't keep doing "this": either we limit fertility somehow or we got the Malthusian limit eventually. That's just the consequence of the exponential function. And right now, whether population will stabilize on its own before we hit carrying capacity is an open question. But if you hold population constant? Yes, we can keep doing this indefinitely, or…

Right now most population models suggest we'll see growth flatten within decades, and peak within a century. It's not really an open question - it would take reversal of long lasting trends in large parts of the world to do more than at most delay the reversal.

> Right now most population models suggest we'll see growth flatten within decades, and peak within a century.

We’re way off topic here but what the heck… in my entire life, I’ve not seen one single ‘population model’ play out accurately. We’ve seen dozens of popular ones that have failed to come true in the past century alone - what makes today’s different?

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

#122

Post by sseagull » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

linknoid wrote: post #80

iamthemonster wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe you can help enlighten me on this. I've been struggling to understand the basics thermodynamics of carbon capture for quite some time. So we have a hydro-carbon, we mix it with oxygen, and the oxygen combines with the hydrogen and the carbon, and releases heat as a byproduct. The heat energy increases the pressure of the newly created CO2. This higher pressure is placed on one side of a turbine or a piston, and…

This is a really good question, and a bit deeper than it first appears. So here is some semi-educated spitballing (I'm a chemist, but thermodynamics was a while ago):

1. Immediately after ignition, you have a low-volume, high-pressure, high-temperature amount of gas. Sequestration does not aim to turn CO2 back to this exact same state, but only a high-ish, average-temperature state.

2. Combustion often evolves more molecules of gas (look at the formula for the combustion of octane, and remember that water after combustion will be a gas). This increases the pressure, but is not something that needs to be reversed during sequestration.

3. Carbon dioxide isn't bad, but having too much in the atmosphere is. Sequestration doesn't aim to completely reverse the reaction in the first place, it just aims to remove it from the atmosphere so that it can't act as a greenhouse gas.

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

#123

Post by ethbr0 » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #106

tjoff wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Double the price of coal sounds like an excellent thing! Still very cheap. Promotes better sources of energy.

Indeed. The fact is that coal energy externalities have been ignored, artificially depressing the cost. Increasing the cost of a product to reflect those externalities is not a "blow to the industry", but rather the first time in history coal's price will reflect its externalities. Nope, it's not a great time to be a coal-miner, but I hear Biden is trying to spend $4T on infrastructure so maybe some of those miners c…

The issues with coal mining are (a) it sucks and is dangerous, (b) therefore, people who do it, or whose families have done it, feel a lot of pride about it, (c) in the US, it's typically located in parts of states that don't have a lot of other employment (Wyoming, Illinois, Pennsylvania, West Virginia).

If you're serious about getting rid of coal in the US, it needs to start with "We appreciate your and your family's work over the years, and here's a truckload of money and economic development for your region so that you can lay down that burden."

Nobody reacts favorably to doing a hard job, every day, and then listening to someone tell them they're killing the planet.

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

#124

Post by Jabbles » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 2:19 PM UTC

cryptica wrote: post #105

Jabbles wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not natural selection, that's artificial selection. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_breeding

Your counter-argument is about semantics. Logically, it only reinforces my argument. Unless you're suggesting that global warming is natural and not caused by humans... If you agree that 'artificial selection' can work quickly (as scientific evidence suggests) and you believe that humans are the main driver of climate change (as is the consensus among climate scientists). Then my proposition that evolution can work v…

Wow what a watertight argument.

The key is the word "can" - which you interpret to mean "extremely likely", and I interpret to mean "extremely unlikely".

Other than that, we agree.

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

#125

Post by lenkite » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

Gravityloss wrote: post #61

iamthemonster wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

$50 per tonne? A coal plant produces about a tonne of CO2 for every MWh produced. Industrial electricity price might be $50 per MWh. So just paying for the carbon capture doubles your electricity price? $100 carbon capture charge would triple it. I can't see how this could be competitive. We have an excellent carbon storage technology, it's called coal. And what's best, it's already there, underground, very safely, p…

How does one leverage this excellent carbon storage technology ? Plant fast-growing trees/crops, cut them upon maturity and bury them underground ?

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

#126

Post by rbanffy » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #123

javajosh wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. The fact is that coal energy externalities have been ignored, artificially depressing the cost. Increasing the cost of a product to reflect those externalities is not a "blow to the industry", but rather the first time in history coal's price will reflect its externalities. Nope, it's not a great time to be a coal-miner, but I hear Biden is trying to spend $4T on infrastructure so maybe some of those miners c…

The issues with coal mining are (a) it sucks and is dangerous, (b) therefore, people who do it, or whose families have done it, feel a lot of pride about it, (c) in the US, it's typically located in parts of states that don't have a lot of other employment (Wyoming, Illinois, Pennsylvania, West Virginia). If you're serious about getting rid of coal in the US, it needs to start with "We appreciate your and your family…

> (a) it sucks and is dangerous, (b) therefore, people who do it, or whose families have done it, feel a lot of pride about it

We really need to get rid of that “proud to kill myself to make my employer richer” trait.

> "We appreciate your and your family's work over the years, and here's a truckload of money and economic development for your region so that you can lay down that burden."

It’s only fair.

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

#127

Post by thatcat » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 2:36 PM UTC

lenkite wrote: post #125

Gravityloss wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$50 per tonne? A coal plant produces about a tonne of CO2 for every MWh produced. Industrial electricity price might be $50 per MWh. So just paying for the carbon capture doubles your electricity price? $100 carbon capture charge would triple it. I can't see how this could be competitive. We have an excellent carbon storage technology, it's called coal. And what's best, it's already there, underground, very safely, p…

How does one leverage this excellent carbon storage technology ? Plant fast-growing trees/crops, cut them upon maturity and bury them underground ?

The closest thing we have to coal creation is biochar, so you plant the trees and then anaerobically pyrolyze the material and put it underground.

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

#128

Post by rayiner » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

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…

Reducing energy usage is just the slow path to extinction. We’ll never become a multi-planet civilization with that attitude.

Also if you believe the science, reducing energy usage won’t meet targets. The developed world will have to go carbon negative over the next couple of decades to counter growing CO2 emissions in the developing world.

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

#129

Post by rayiner » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 2:43 PM UTC

LatteLazy wrote: post #48

iamthemonster wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To put it in perspective, 100usd/tn would let me (limey brit) maintain my wasteful lifestyle for just 5300 a year. That's very affordable when the alternatives are Water World level flooding or living like a vegan hermit in a cave...

Yes. But don’t forget that for many, berating people into living like a vegan hermit is part of the point, and if science solves that problem it gets taken away from them.

It’s the same people who want everyone to keep using masks even after vaccination.

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

#130

Post by Ensorceled » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 2:49 PM UTC

acje wrote: post #109

acje wrote: post #102

I can’t imagine an industrial approach that won’t fail on scale, lifecycle or both. These are not strategies to solve the problem these are strategies to get rich. The only kind of strategy that seems capable of delivering on both scale and lifecycle is one where we enhance the environment to capture the CO2 for us and store it in the organic food chain simply by scaling it up to hold the extra mass. Most likely we w…

Wow the downvotes.. was this really that controversial? Are we still trying to solve the problem with the same mindset we created it?

This is not an argument against the solution proposed:

> I can’t imagine an industrial approach that won’t fail on scale, lifecycle or both. These are not strategies to solve the problem these are strategies to get rich.

Neither this this:

> Are we still trying to solve the problem with the same mindset we created it?

I don't know if this solution is at all useful, but climate change is massive threat to a large percentage of humanity and discarding solutions because you don't like the "mindset" isn't going to get it done.