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So you want to build a carbon capture company

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Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#101

Post by cagenut »

senko wrote: post #95

Armchair strategizing on the topic I know nothing about (but it's fun to think about!): Constraints: - C removal requires lots of energy (can't avoid thermodynamics) - electricity on that scale is either expensive, dirty, or both Additional concerns: - cheap/clean energy is intermittent (and still a small percentage) - excessive electricity is as bad as not enough electricity Solution: - build lots of new (safe and c…

I really like your idea on a personal 'neat' would-be-nice level, but it makes one of the most common mistakes in the nuclearclimate-change discussion: time.

The development of next-gen/thorium/msr/whatever from first-commercial-success to repeatable-and-therefore-cheaper is, even in a highly optimistic scenario, a 30+ year proposition. I fervently believe we should fund and invest in that r&d, but even if it pans out (which I bet it would, but you have to acknowledge its our guess), its simply not a part of our "it is time to act now" timeline.

I do this all the time too, its largely a part of the fact that many of us are middle aged men now. We were taught to think of, and mentally frame this as, an "over the course of the next several decades" type of problem. In which case a nuclear solution was fairly obviously the best path available.

The problem is we didn't take that path. And the decades have passed. So while we should start down that path now ASAP from an r&d/investment perspective, it is almost completely a distraction today from a "net-zero in 20-30 years" perspective.

I guess what I'm mostly trying to say is, whenever engaging in the climate-change/energy-generation-mix "debate" these days, try to mentally factor in time as one of the top constraints in your model. Here's an IPCC chart of four example scenarios that show you what the slope of the curves need to look like: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3...

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#103

Post by ephbit »

rasputnik6502 wrote: post #76
Aerroon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Maybe there's not enough space on Earth for all humans and everything they need to live ...

I recon the problem isn't what humans need to live but rather what many of them want to have.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#104

Post by magicalhippo »

tarjei wrote: post #96
magicalhippo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Every Norwegian needs this illusion(Or livsløgn as Ibsen would have said) to sustain the idea of belonging to a nation that is up to something good. Reality is that Norway is increasingly subsidizing it's oil industry in a way that is not sustainable - especially not economically. Instead of investing in the future Norway is investing in old dying industries - our Corona package contains almost no investments in sust…

I feel confident that if Norway stops pumping oil tomorrow, it would be pretty devastating to our economy. I also feel confident that other countries would increase production in response. Is that just an illusion?

I absolutely agree that we should focus a lot more on making new jobs that aren't oil-related, and stop investing in oil like we do. Oil is most definitely not the future, and we should push hard to make a transition starting yesterday.

That's not at odds with what I wrote above though. Reducing climate change is a global game of prisoners dilemma.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#105

Post by nemacol »

wodenokoto wrote: post #85
Aerroon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You’re so close to saying the solution without getting there. Fast growing plants are probably the most effective carbon extraction we have. Problem is when they die they turn back into CO2. So we should bury those plants before they rot. Our excess CO2 stems mostly from dead plants and animals that have been buried. Seems sensible to put some of our excess back into the ground.

I like the idea of sort of (but not really) making coal again in a fight against climate change.

In WV we have tons of old strip mine - we should fill them up with plants and bury it.

If we did something like that I imagine the biomass under the earth would compress over time and the land above would end up shifting and causing issues for anyone that wants to use it.

Edit - Daydreaming about this scenario and I am imagining trying to sell the idea of refilling the old coal mines with biomass to folks living in coal country. An interesting and funny situation.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#106

Post by ephbit »

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…

> 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 need to get carbon out of the carbon cycle. The natural life of plants doesn't do that.

Taking (sustainably harvested) wood from old trees which are close to dying anyway and using this wood to build durable (lasting decades) houses would be helpful. This would channel carbon from the natural cycle into an artificial reservoir made up of buildings.

Questions left unanswered:

- would this reservoir be big enough?

- is the rate of carbon fixation sufficient?

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#107

Post by Beltiras »

mothsonasloth wrote: post #3

Tangential thought; aren't compressed gas companies who bottle CO2/Nitrogen etc. technically carbon capturing? Surely they have optimised their industrial processes, which could be repurposed into a large storage unit rather than a cast iron gas bottle?

Industrial CO2 is produced by burning natural gas as a byproduct to produce ammonia. DAC is way too expensive.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#108

Post by Beltiras »

LeanderK wrote: post #86

I literally don't know anything about those processes beside super basic knowledge. But maybe somebody can explain to me why we can't use something like bio-inspired photosynthesis to extract co2? I bet plants are not co2 throughput optimised. The technology may not be there, but would it be feasible in theory without using too much energy?

I don't know of any technology where you get both the desired effect as well as an in-built mechanism for cloning the machine using locally sourced materials, often without human intervention.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#109

Post by danpalmer »

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…

In some cases even more than costly to build, they're an area of cutting edge research.

The public assume that it's just a matter of building a "big wire", but the "big" here has to be so big to be effective that we're actually into the realm of new materials science.

The idea of solar panels in Africa powering homes in Europe is probably unlikely to happen for a long time, and even if it did history has shown us time and again that a distributed network is far more resilient than a centralised one, and so the best solutions look a lot more like putting solar panels on every house.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#110

Post by Beltiras »

mikro2nd wrote: post #94
enriquto wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A plant is basically a self-healing, self-replicating CO2-capturing machine running off solar power and some chemicals. Not in itself. When the plant dies, it rots and all the carbon goes back to the atmosphere by the action of fungi and bacteria. Plants can function as the zeroth step in a carbon capture pipeline. The actual capture happens when the plant dies and you bury (or otherwise process) its tissue somewhe…

OTOH, growing plants, turning them into charcoal and sequestering that can be carbon-negative.

It's carbon-negative even if you don't count the buried carbon due to it being a powerful fertilizing agent.
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