Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

So you want to build a carbon capture company

caseyhandmer.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 180 posts

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#51

Post by adwn »

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.

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

And the difference between an airliner and a cruise missile is? And the difference between a rocket and an ICBM is? By your argument, we wouldn't be using those technologies. And yet we do, on a daily basis.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#53

Post by WJW »

vkou wrote: post #39
henearkr wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Not to mention: - What assurances does the Department of Defense have that North Koreas orbital death ray will not cook the white house at any moment.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#55

Post by timv »

tomglynch wrote: post #37
timv wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

In which case it wouldn't be "still light" it would be "already light"

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#56

Post by WJW »

pelorat wrote: post #49

Not sure why he talks about the financial side. CC on scale will be a government driven operation, paid via taxing the population and it will cost whatever it costs, like many other things.

Of course costs matter. If it costs 100x more to capture the carbon than building higher levees, we will build higher levees and (hopefuly) use the leftover money to evacuate people in very low and/or poor countries to higher ground.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#58

Post by remus »

de6u99er wrote: post #46
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…

You can store energy by e.g. pumping water up a hill during the day and using turbine generators at night, or if you don't have a hill heating up water any converting heat back to energy. Transporting electric power over long distances comes at a cost since wires are resistors unless you're using superconductors which still rrquire low temperatures to work.

Pumped hydro storage is great but very dependant on geography, as without some big height differences it's hard to store enough energy. This makes it infeasible in a lot of locations.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#59

Post by lokischild »

I have a hunch that there is no artifical process that could possibly compete with what nature already has. The answer is plants. So the solution would be a way to sustainably grow a lot of plants in a short time.

But another main factor is the destruction of the densest of those ecosystems, the rain forest on a large scale.

That is my answer, stop humans/companies/countries from destroying the rain forest on a large scale (I'm looking at brazil and neighbors) and think of ways to rebuild lost rainforest in an efficient way. I am going to wager, from the knowledge and experience I gathered in my years of living, there is no other solution that is sustainable.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#60

Post by corty »

pjc50 wrote: post #43
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

Algal systems are ecosystems, and artificial ecosystems are (ironically) prone to collapse. It's like waking up one day and discovering all your houseplants have died, except it's a thousand tonnes of now-dead gunk in your algae bioreactor.

Doesn't matter since you want to dump the gunk somewhere anyways. Just dump it and start over.
Post reply on HN