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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

#71

Post by yc-kraln »

walrus01 wrote: post #26
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…

Long distance high voltage DC inter ties are a thing (there is one running from Washington to southern california), but very costly to build. If you have a truly ridiculous amount of free or almost free photovoltaics somewhere, you could theoretically crack hydrogen from seawater and compress it into tanks, ship it elsewhere (using hydrogen powered ships, hopefully) to be run through giant proton exchange membrane fu…

This is more-or-less what the EU will be doing along the northern coast of Africa in the future.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#73

Post by BLanen »

boldslogan wrote: post #63
lokischild wrote: post #59

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…

my understanding from watching that crazy netflix sea documentary is that algae is the go to for oxygen production / carbon capture...anyone have ideas on which is the more important case?

Algea is only a co2 battery unless you can capture it and store the algea without it fermenting. If you just grow it in the Ocean, you need to increase the Ocean's algea carrying capacity and form it thus into a battery because dead algea gets fermented by bacteria into co2 and methane again. Also the ocean's carrying capacity for algea is currently ever decreasing due to oceanic acidity increasing from co2.

Artificially growing algea in pools and using that to make fuel/ pump it underground so the fermentation products don't get released is not nearly efficient enough to be viable. Ironically this usually also uses fertilizers which are dependent on the fossil fuel industry.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#74

Post by Aerroon »

de6u99er wrote: post #54

How about producing less CO2 in the first place and planting trees to reduce CO2 concentration

Some numbers:

The US Forest Service estimates that 1 acre of forest stores about 80 tons of carbon. You could store about 180 billion tons of carbon onto that area if it were all a forest.

CO2 makes up about 3 trillion tons of the atmosphere. ~27% of it is carbon, therefore there is roughly 800 billion tons of carbon in the atmosphere.

It seems plausible that if we somehow planted a forest on the entire Sahara desert, that we could reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere by a significant amount.

I hope I didn't make any errors in my calculations.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#75

Post by justatdotin »

magicalhippo wrote: post #69
nosianu wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be far more efficient (since additional energy is used for all the actions around it all) to not bring up carbon from below ground in the first place. As long as Norway brings up new oil those actions are just marketing. See the article we are talking about here. First you spend energy to bring up carbon. Then you spend more energy to get it back down again. The math does not check out. Not bringing up the c…

As a Norwegian I agree we should phase out oil sooner. Like you say, not releasing the CO2 to begin with is the best option. However Norway is not the sole oil producer. If demand is not reduced and other producers compensate for our reduction, then that won't really help the planet at all. As such it seems reducing demand would be the best way. Not that easy to achieve on a global scale though, it would seem.

yes, that's what we all say

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#76

Post by rasputnik6502 »

Aerroon wrote: post #67
lokischild wrote: post #59

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…

The ecosystem is more or less in a balance. Forests that are cut down will become forests again. Plants already grow pretty much everywhere where they can grow. It's still not enough. We've spent over 200 years pumping carbon into the atmosphere from a source we can't return it to. No amount of growing forests is going to fix this issue without being able to turn those forests into carbon that's in the ground. We nee…

The system will eventually return to balance, for example few million years after all humans die out. The question is if we can keep it in such balance that allows humans to live. Maybe there's not enough space on Earth for all humans and everything they need to live + sufficient area of forests on top of that

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#77

Post by algo_trader »

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…

> CEO-for-hire on only interesting problems

This is a nice (side) job if u can get it. Where do u see any marketing like that in his blog?

As a side note. The blog seems very knowledgable and technical. So good for him.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#79

Post by henearkr »

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…

That's just baseless fear from the moment that the system has been designed to be safe.

Plus, you can count on the bazillion scientists working on it to whistleblow any sticks that would have been put in their wheels during the design if the military wanted to middle.

There are only two kinds of projects: secret projects for the military, and civil projects where the design and the safety are pretty much the thing of hundreds engineers not bound by military oaths.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#80

Post by rasputnik6502 »

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/…

The Sun is beaming free energy to Earth already. If it's not enough then humans should become extinct as a species unfit to live in Solar system
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