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So you want to build a carbon capture company

caseyhandmer.wordpress.com

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Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#31

Post by rini17 »

WJW wrote: post #18
berkes wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A plant is basically a self-healing, self-replicating CO2-capturing machine running off solar power and some chemicals.

They also need massive amounts of water when planted at scale and die after anything between 1-100 years (some hardwood trees live longer but capture carbon relatively slowly compared to faster growing plants), after which they release the carbon back into the ecosystem. Energy efficiency of photosynthesis is also really low. Just planting a lot of plants and expecting they will efficiently capture a lot of carbon ou…

That's very shallow dismissal. Yes, it's true "just planting a lot of plants" will lead to disappointment. But it's the same as with "just build lots of solar panels/windmills" without any systematic thinking.

Natural and sustainably managed biomes don't require irrigation. I know, there are deserts where much biomass won't ever naturally grow, but no solution is suitable everywhere.

Trees can and do last longer than 100 years, and even after death they don't puff release co2 immediately. When left undisturbed, large part of carbon is left fixed in the soil.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#32

Post by timv »

godmode2019 wrote: post #19

Here is a untested idea, probably unworkable. Solar has a problem that consumers tend to need more energy during the night. So the solution is to pipe electricity from somewhere east so everyone's electricity is piped in from say a location east where its still light. I got the idea when I heard Singapore wants to run a cable to Australia to get solar because they are too small for renewables. If if could work for th…

> a location east where its still light.

You've got your directions backwards.

7pm in NYC is 4pm in SF, so you wanted to use solar power to provide evening energy then you generate in the West (SF) to power the East (NY).

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#33

Post by __sy__ »

supernova87a wrote: post #25

He acknowledges helpfully at the outset that he's not a CCS expert. He's just posing questions by which you could evaluate whether a company is doing anything remarkable, isn't that correct? This isn't a proposal for a CCS company or anything -- more of a guide on how to poke holes in a proposal for such a company. A side note, I had never heard of Casey Handmer before seeing this. I'm wondering how he appears to be…

Then I suggest you start following his blog :)

Casey's writing is second to none on doing engineering analysis.

A few of my favs:

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/the-spacex-sta...

https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2020/11/18/supersonic-ele...

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#34

Post by _Microft »

binbag wrote: post #30
binbag wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think about it for a moment. How far would you need to transmit power for this to be useful without storage, and from what longitudinal spread of locations?

Implicit in my first comment is the transmission losses...

Losses in high-voltage direct current transmission lines are approximately 3-4% per 1000km. Wikipedia has a good article on HVDC btw.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#35

Post by folbec »

Swenrekcah wrote: post #28
godmode2019 wrote: post #19

Here is a untested idea, probably unworkable. Solar has a problem that consumers tend to need more energy during the night. So the solution is to pipe electricity from somewhere east so everyone's electricity is piped in from say a location east where its still light. I got the idea when I heard Singapore wants to run a cable to Australia to get solar because they are too small for renewables. If if could work for th…

Another perhaps even cooler and not so unrealistic that people are actually working on it, is building the solar farms out in space and beaming the energy down to where it’s needed! Edit: OK I looked it up again and there are two stages. The one that's having actual work done is beaming energy between two places on earth, but the space one is being "explored". https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/02/…

And the difference between a space solar farm and a military grade space ray is ?

If you are beaming serous amount of energy toward earth, you better have a good answer to that. Or you will get the visit of very serious people with no sense of humor.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#36

Post by sideshowb »

sunshineforever wrote: post #16
bobthepanda wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Algae biofuel has definitely been a thing that people have tried over and over again and it hasn’t happened after a few decades so presumably there is some issue with commercialization. Wikipedia claims algae has very high water requirements (>600L of water for 1L of fuel) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel

Im proposing a conspiracy theory here, but the basically all of the world's most profitable companies are involved in fossil fuel production. They definitely have an incentive to not want this technology to thrive and their leaders have a lot of influence and money. The retort to this theory would be that a company with a lot of resources could simply invest in the new technology. But with the level of lazy corruptio…

On the other hand if one of them cracks algae fuel production they get to make an awful lot of future money off all their existing fuel distribution infrastructure. Iirc several of the big oil companies were at least experimenting with it 10 years ago.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#37

Post by tomglynch »

timv wrote: post #32
godmode2019 wrote: post #19

Here is a untested idea, probably unworkable. Solar has a problem that consumers tend to need more energy during the night. So the solution is to pipe electricity from somewhere east so everyone's electricity is piped in from say a location east where its still light. I got the idea when I heard Singapore wants to run a cable to Australia to get solar because they are too small for renewables. If if could work for th…

> a location east where its still light. You've got your directions backwards. 7pm in NYC is 4pm in SF, so you wanted to use solar power to provide evening energy then you generate in the West (SF) to power the East (NY).

And if you want to provide morning energy then they are correct.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#38

Post by henearkr »

folbec wrote: post #35
Swenrekcah wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another perhaps even cooler and not so unrealistic that people are actually working on it, is building the solar farms out in space and beaming the energy down to where it’s needed! Edit: OK I looked it up again and there are two stages. The one that's having actual work done is beaming energy between two places on earth, but the space one is being "explored". https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/02/…

And the difference between a space solar farm and a military grade space ray is ? If you are beaming serous amount of energy toward earth, you better have a good answer to that. Or you will get the visit of very serious people with no sense of humor.

> is ?

is the presence of failsafe mechanisms using lasers around the energy beam so that if any of these lasers are not anymore aligned with its receptors (or if they are interrupted by any obstacle) then the energy beam is immediately cut.

It can even be implemented via optomechanical systems, to be better failure resilient.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#39

Post by vkou »

henearkr wrote: post #38
folbec wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the difference between a space solar farm and a military grade space ray is ? If you are beaming serous amount of energy toward earth, you better have a good answer to that. Or you will get the visit of very serious people with no sense of humor.

> is ? is the presence of failsafe mechanisms using lasers around the energy beam so that if any of these lasers are not anymore aligned with its receptors (or if they are interrupted by any obstacle) then the energy beam is immediately cut. It can even be implemented via optomechanical systems, to be better failure resilient.

That's not the problem.

The problem is 'What assurance does the Department of State have that your space death ray is not going to be deliberately pointed at the next RNC?' and 'What assurances does the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have that it is not going to be deliberately pointed at the May Day Parade?'

You're incredibly unlikely to explain yourself to the satisfaction of both of those groups of people at the same time.

Never mind that this is also a multiple-orders-of-magnitude-impractical means of generating energy.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#40

Post by murbard2 »

godmode2019 wrote: post #19

Here is a untested idea, probably unworkable. Solar has a problem that consumers tend to need more energy during the night. So the solution is to pipe electricity from somewhere east so everyone's electricity is piped in from say a location east where its still light. I got the idea when I heard Singapore wants to run a cable to Australia to get solar because they are too small for renewables. If if could work for th…

This was an idea pushed by Buckminster Fuller, at the global scale. There seems to be a non profit focused on promoting this [1]. I have no idea if they are credible, and it seems they haven't updated their website [2] in a decade, but it's likely a good starting point to find more resources on the topic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Energy_Network_Institut...

[2] http://www.geni.org/

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