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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

#141

Post by bobthepanda »

BelenusMordred wrote: post #10
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

> 600L of water for 1L of fuel Is this actually the problem or is there other factors? A lot more is needed for 1kg of beef or certain crops. I live in the tropics and water usage is just never an issue and if it was they'd actually store some of what falls from the sky. Truly doubt that water is the real bottleneck here. edit: From the wiki page Among algal fuels' attractive characteristics are that they can be grow…

"Can be" != commercially viable.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#142

Post by bobthepanda »

corty wrote: post #60
pjc50 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Losing entire batches of your product on a regular basis is pretty bad for a commercial product

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#143

Post by SyzygistSix »

Aerroon wrote: post #74
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…

The reduced albedo effect from the no longer radiant Sahara would cause a significant amount of heat absorption. While it would remove CO2, for a while, the increased heat would be enough to almost offset the entire benefit from the project.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#144

Post by corty »

bobthepanda wrote: post #142
corty wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Losing entire batches of your product on a regular basis is pretty bad for a commercial product

It is not lost, just a little more dilute than usual, and the gunk is not the end product, just a step in between. It is like prematurely harvesting grass. You get shorter stalks, and some extra work, that is all.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#145

Post by gonzo41 »

cogman10 wrote: post #140
gonzo41 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good idea, But getting the biomass will be difficult. I dream about large lakes of algae that can be skimmed and then sundried, and cooked in solar ovens to create essentially a solar powered only capture process. This sort of operation would need a stable cap and trade or carbon tax system to be profitable. I should also add, I think China or somewhere in the hot parts of Africa would be a a good place for…

Pretty much the description of all carbon capture. Capturing carbon is inherently difficult. IMO, barring some breakthrough, biology will be the most efficient mechanism for capture. Millions of years of evolution have made plants and algae pretty good at carbon capture as the carbon levels slowly depleted (until recently). An appealing benefit of biological carbon capture is the fact that all biology is solar powere…

The timescale is the issue for humanity.

I'm hoping someone can find, or mix and match an algae in lab that will have the right mix ofproperties to explosively grow.

Providing food stock will be tricky, either through something very efficient like straight sugar or designing the algae to consume anything which could have other upside benefits.

And like all well meaning engineering the real challenge will be making sure the algae that can grow by eating anything doesn't get out of the pond.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#146

Post by barathr »

hh3k0 wrote: post #133
barathr wrote: post #127

If a machine were invented that scrubbed carbon from the atmosphere and turned it into useful food, construction materials, animal feedstocks, and fibers, all while rebuilding topsoil, it would be on the cover of every tech magazine in the world and its inventor would be a celebrity millionaire. Yet I’ve never seen a tree on the cover of Wired. https://hipcrime.blogspot.com/2012/06/vertical-farms-and-lab... Sometimes…

> Sometimes we overlook the simplest approaches. We should plant trees. Lots of them. It's not a perfect solution That's because it's not a solution at all: https://www.wired.com/story/trees-regenerative-agriculture-c...

This is all or nothing thinking. No one solution will solve everything, but trees plus emissions reductions are probably the two easiest and biggest.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#147

Post by vkou »

henearkr wrote: post #81
WJW wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well obviously what I said only stands in non-dictatorship. I don't care to comment on the dictatorship case, that's bad anyway if they launch any satellite at all, we'll never know what's in, so that's not an actionable subject of discussion (except, shoot down all of their spacecrafts).

Democracies have throughout history conducted plenty of assassinations, and started wars of aggression. Some of them have even killed a few hundred thousand people with firebombing and nuclear weapons.

Any country with ASW capabilities would find it prudent to shoot this thing down, because there is no defense from it being used against it - with exactly zero warning.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#148

Post by vkou »

henearkr wrote: post #79
vkou wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

'Trust me, I'm an engineer' doesn't fly with me, and it sure as hell isn't going to fly with another country's government - for the same reason that an engineering firm using nuclear bombs to dig canals isn't going to fly. It's a dual-use technology that can be trivially repurposed for aggression, that cannot be defended against.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#149

Post by sershe »

barathr wrote: post #127

If a machine were invented that scrubbed carbon from the atmosphere and turned it into useful food, construction materials, animal feedstocks, and fibers, all while rebuilding topsoil, it would be on the cover of every tech magazine in the world and its inventor would be a celebrity millionaire. Yet I’ve never seen a tree on the cover of Wired. https://hipcrime.blogspot.com/2012/06/vertical-farms-and-lab... Sometimes…

Isn't the issue with trees is that they release the carbon back after they die and decompose? You have to actually sequester carbon somehow. No idea how easy it is to do with trees (presumably you'd have to cut them and put them somewhere they don't degrade?).

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#150

Post by PicassoCTs »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #137
hh3k0 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes we overlook the simplest approaches. We should plant trees. Lots of them. It's not a perfect solution That's because it's not a solution at all: https://www.wired.com/story/trees-regenerative-agriculture-c...

Trees alone might not be. However, photosynthesis is the answer. Plants exude sugars and carbohydrates, made from atmospheric CO2, into the soil feeding massive amounts of bacteria and fungi(carbon). The bulk of carbon in the soil comes from plant exudates, not plant matter. As long as this ecosystem is healthy the carbon stays in the soil. When the soil ecosystem is healthy plants are healthier which makes everythin…

Could creating algea flowering allow for large scale photosynthesis binding?
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