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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

#141

Post by thechao »

tim333 wrote: post #120

For comparison I was looking back at the "Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches" thing. There were estimates of $10-$25 a ton for olivine rock https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20415138

I don't know why the Democrats, in particular, don't turn this into political hay: it's literally the perfect counter to the coal issue.

1. Olivine is plentiful, everywhere, including as the tailings from huge defunct coal mines;

2. All of the mining & transportation infrastructure is already in mining country;

3. Mining country is desperate for solid, dependable blue collar work; and,

4. Mining country already has expertise in ... mining.

Instead of rolling in and telling mine workers that "their livelihood is destroying the world, please go find something else to do", the Fed could roll in and say: "now it's your turn to ~save the world~; go dig!"

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

#142

Post by _jal »

kenmacd wrote: post #138
TigeriusKirk wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think we should really reduce our energy usage instead. There is no viable future scenario in which mankind's energy usage decreases. It's a pipe dream, and ultimately a dangerous one. Energy use is fundamentally tied to progress to such an extent that we should always be looking for ways to increase the energy available to us. Of course the energy should be produced in as low-impact a manner as possible, but it's…

It seems this excludes increases in efficiencies. For example today we have lighting that uses a small fraction of the power of a couple decades ago. Plus we're nearing peak populations, after which the number of humans will be going down.

Energy efficiencies do not decrease energy use, you just get more of the cheaper thing.

I agree more with the second point; the way that I'd say that is humans as a species will never self-moderate energy use.

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

#143

Post by danmaz74 »

plutonorm wrote: post #140
TigeriusKirk wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think we should really reduce our energy usage instead. There is no viable future scenario in which mankind's energy usage decreases. It's a pipe dream, and ultimately a dangerous one. Energy use is fundamentally tied to progress to such an extent that we should always be looking for ways to increase the energy available to us. Of course the energy should be produced in as low-impact a manner as possible, but it's…

Is transitioning slowly back to a hunter gatherer life style morally a bad idea? If so why?

How many billion people would need to die to make that sustainable?

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

#144

Post by PaulAJ »

plutonorm wrote: post #140
TigeriusKirk wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think we should really reduce our energy usage instead. There is no viable future scenario in which mankind's energy usage decreases. It's a pipe dream, and ultimately a dangerous one. Energy use is fundamentally tied to progress to such an extent that we should always be looking for ways to increase the energy available to us. Of course the energy should be produced in as low-impact a manner as possible, but it's…

Is transitioning slowly back to a hunter gatherer life style morally a bad idea? If so why?

A pure hunter gatherer lifestyle is going to support a percent or less of current population. So you are basically going to have to prohibit the vast majority of the population from having children for a century or so. It also means abandoning all technology. Good luck persuading people to go along with that.

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

#145

Post by aardvarkr »

thechao wrote: post #141
tim333 wrote: post #120

For comparison I was looking back at the "Project Vesta – Mitigating climate change with green sand beaches" thing. There were estimates of $10-$25 a ton for olivine rock https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20415138

I don't know why the Democrats, in particular, don't turn this into political hay: it's literally the perfect counter to the coal issue. 1. Olivine is plentiful, everywhere, including as the tailings from huge defunct coal mines; 2. All of the mining & transportation infrastructure is already in mining country; 3. Mining country is desperate for solid, dependable blue collar work; and, 4. Mining country already has e…

Just a side note, as I don’t know a thing about olivine, but wouldn’t they be able to pull the material from the waste piles instead of mining new material? I remember this popping up in a discussion about thorium (super abundant in coal mining waste) and that was one of the points brought up

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

#146

Post by lostapathy »

magicalhippo wrote: post #47
raverbashing wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how research is doing to concentrate CO2 from the PPM amounts we have "in regular air" There are at least two low-hanging fruits that make it "easier": CO2 is heavier than other important gases and mildly polar.

Plant lots of trees or similar, then burn them for electricity and capture the CO2 from the smoke. Compared to a lot of the other proposals out there it almost sounds plausible.

Or skip a step. Turn the trees into lumber and build something with it. Long-lived wooden structures sequester carbon until they are abandoned and rot.

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

#147

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #64
quotemstr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 100usd/tn would let me (limey brit) maintain my wasteful lifestyle for just 5300 a year. That's very affordable In the eyes of the annoying kind of climate activist, the affordability you've mentioned is a bug, not a feature. Too many people who claim to care about the planet want to use the climate as a pretext to reform everyone's lifestyle and to roll back industrial civilization more generally. This sort of act…

> to use the climate as a pretext to reform everyone's lifestyle and to roll back industrial civilization more generally. Not roll back. But do smarter. It's not just global warming. We're shipping billions of tons of stuff from one side of the planet to another in sulphur-blowing rustbuckets. Creating continents of floating plastic in the oceans. Causing toxic lakes from harvesting rare earth minerals. We can't keep…

A lot of the seemingly-dumb stuff happens because the market is a lot more effective at finding efficient solutions than gut feelings.

Some of it is also because externalities like pollution aren't priced in, but often the seemingly-bad thing is actually better by most metrics.

Reducing plastic packaging may be one such example: Sure, it reduces plastic waste, but it creates more wasted product, and packaging from stuff consumed in households is exceedingly unlikely to end up in the ocean in a western city that burns their trash in a waste-to-energy plant.

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

#148

Post by aardvarkr »

danmaz74 wrote: post #143
plutonorm wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is transitioning slowly back to a hunter gatherer life style morally a bad idea? If so why?

How many billion people would need to die to make that sustainable?

This sounds like hyperbole but it’s the honest truth. Billions would die due to food shortages. Our modern farming system is incredible at its job of feeding 7 billion people.

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

#149

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

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…

The fossil fuel CO2 tax in Switzerland is currently 96 CHF = 102 USD.

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

#150

Post by marcusverus »

magicalhippo wrote: post #47
raverbashing wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how research is doing to concentrate CO2 from the PPM amounts we have "in regular air" There are at least two low-hanging fruits that make it "easier": CO2 is heavier than other important gases and mildly polar.

Plant lots of trees or similar, then burn them for electricity and capture the CO2 from the smoke. Compared to a lot of the other proposals out there it almost sounds plausible.

Why not just do a partial burn and reduce the remainder to charcoal? It would be much cheaper, require no chemicals, and the end product is pure carbon, which would be easier to store. You could literally dump it in a pile and deal with it later.
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