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

#201

Post by sargun » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

galangalalgol wrote: post #190

stephanheijl wrote: post #6

I've been looking at the use of algae with regards to sequester img CO2 from the atmosphere. This seems to have some remarkable advantages: single molecules which make mass production easier, presumably less finicky operating procedure and way more straightforward to pump into disused oil wells. From the abstract it does seem to need CO2 being supplied to it as opposed to drawing it from the atmosphere actively. I as…

I'm interested in causing algae blooms near the equator with iron sulfide. Not for co2 capture, most of that would get released on decomposition, but for the albedo effect. It also has the failsafe that if it gets too cold the algae will die preventing a snowball earth. They did some tests for salmon production, and scaling that linearly for area covered it would be less than a $1.5 billion project. Also we get salmo…

Would you get enough salmon to offset the cost? What’s the net cost of this approach?

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

#202

Post by worldofmatthew » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

vbezhenar wrote: post #97

Just plant trees, cut them and bury in the oceans. Nature already have all the necessary mechanisms to capture carbon. On the plus side it'll serve as an energy reserve for future civilizations should ours collapse.

We have a lot of spare space for mangroves. That will store most of the carbon in the soil for up to 1,000 years.

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

#203

Post by labster » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

petra wrote: post #199

thechao wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not enough to change people's beliefs about climate change and political choices. >> Olivine is plentiful, everywhere, That means olivine will be mined everywhere. not necessarily in coal country.

Computers are plentiful everywhere, yet more bits are mined in SV than anywhere else. Maybe the fact that bit mining expertise is concentrated there is useful to produce more zeroes and ones. I suppose the same might be true of olivine.

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

#204

Post by worldofmatthew » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #40

seesawtron wrote: post #21

This [0] AMA from the research group answers most of the questions I am seeing here in the thread. "Technologies range from aqueous amines - the water-rich solvents that run through modern, commercially available capture units - to energy-efficient membranes that filter CO2 from flue gas emitted by power plants. Our newest solvent, EEMPA, can accomplish the task for as little as $47.10 per metric ton - bringing post-…

$47.10 per ton smells like someone has calculated the cost of the reagents and cited that as the price... Any estimate of this process cost would never be to 3 Sig fig.

I am pretty sure the $0.10 per tree of the Eden reforest project would be far cheaper than $47.10 per ton, to say the least.

That would be 471 trees for $47.10.

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

#205

Post by Gibbon1 » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

phreeza wrote: post #196

eitland wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still suspicious to use so exact numbers for a technology that has not yet been tested out at scale at all.

In my experience, the obsession with correct significant figures is an american high school thing. Why should you deliberately have to choose a number that is not your best guess? Ideally you should include confidence bounds, but if you don't, it shouldn't imply that you are confident to that level.

When I was getting my engineering degree too many significant figures would earn you -2 pts.

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

#206

Post by earlyriser » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

worldofmatthew wrote: post #204

londons_explore wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$47.10 per ton smells like someone has calculated the cost of the reagents and cited that as the price... Any estimate of this process cost would never be to 3 Sig fig.

I am pretty sure the $0.10 per tree of the Eden reforest project would be far cheaper than $47.10 per ton, to say the least. That would be 471 trees for $47.10.

That price is per tree planted and there's not guarantee the tree is going to grow. It's great to plant trees, but even if we could reforest the entire Earth on the good places we'll need other technologies to capture carbon.

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

#207

Post by 8note » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 7:04 PM UTC

cryptica wrote: post #41

Jabbles wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The plants and animals will adapt and evolve to handle the additional heat" Evolution takes thousands of years. In that time species will go extinct, so there is no chance for them to evolve. For a simple demonstration of how fast we are changing the climate compared to other periods when ecosystems may have been able to adapt, see https://xkcd.com/1732/

>> Evolution takes thousands of years Not true. Natural selection can work its magic in a single generation. For example, given any normal population, choose any trait and remove all individuals which have this trait from the population. The next generation will not have this trait. Specimens with the trait will become extremely rare depending on how accurate the selection process was. It can be quite radical. For ex…

Now try this with food. In one generation get these animals to stop needing to eat.

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

#208

Post by nullc » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 7:14 PM UTC

phreeza wrote: post #196

eitland wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still suspicious to use so exact numbers for a technology that has not yet been tested out at scale at all.

In my experience, the obsession with correct significant figures is an american high school thing. Why should you deliberately have to choose a number that is not your best guess? Ideally you should include confidence bounds, but if you don't, it shouldn't imply that you are confident to that level.

Yep. The weird thing is that their sigfig rules of thumb aren't particularly accurate and after any non-trivial operations (or more than a few operations) just give wrong results.

Tracking precision through calculations requires interval arithmetic, which is a pretty big PITA and not frequently used.

I think the sig figs cult comes out of mistaking a simplified lesson on precision for a useful practice.

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

#209

Post by DesiLurker » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 7:20 PM UTC

scsilver wrote: post #134

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…

If coal plants produce 50$ in unaccounted externalities for every 1MWh they produce, is it fair to any of us to allow them not to have to pay for it's mitigation?

thats a good point, I'd argue given that CO2 concentration in atmosphere is a public bad (as in taking ability to sustain life out of 'common biosphere'), the cost to remove it on a per unit basis represents a good measure of externalized costs of unmitigated pollution (just co2, ignoring other pollutants for the moment).

this is doubly good because it provides a great incentive for the free market to minimize the costs of CO2 sequestration and hopefully will let us hit the knee of the optimization curve asap.

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

#210

Post by jfim » Sun, Apr 04, 2021, 7:20 PM UTC

phreeza wrote: post #196

eitland wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is still suspicious to use so exact numbers for a technology that has not yet been tested out at scale at all.

In my experience, the obsession with correct significant figures is an american high school thing. Why should you deliberately have to choose a number that is not your best guess? Ideally you should include confidence bounds, but if you don't, it shouldn't imply that you are confident to that level.

Because it gives an idea of what range is expected for the actual price. If someone gets an estimate of "about fifty bucks" versus "about $51.04", their reaction to seeing a final price of say $62.17 would be different. The first one implies that it's a rough estimate, while the second one doesn't.