So you want to build a carbon capture company • Hacker News Board

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#151

Post by chr1 » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

SyzygistSix wrote: post #128

chr1 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only forests, but converting a desert, like Sahara, into agricultural land will help too. Same is true for ocean deserts, places where there is no upwards flow bringing nutrients from ocean floor to the surface, which is the majority of the ocean.

I think the math has been done for this and the CO2 captured by planting the Sahara would be offset by the increased warming due to the reduction of albedo effect. Which is crazy to think about.

AFAIK this was done simply by assuming the change of the color, without taking into account the change of cloud coverage, and clouds have a huge effect. So it can go both ways depending on how exactly we will be changing the climate of Sahara.

And there are many possible ways to control the climate in a smart way instead of trying to simply remove CO2. One possibility is to use ocean thermal energy conversion plants [1], to cool down tropical region of northern hemisphere, artificially re-creating conditions that cause green Sahara periodically. Aubrey de Greys new moonshot https://viento.ai/ is working on similar ideas.

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

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#152

Post by marcusverus » Tue, May 04, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

sershe wrote: post #149

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?).

In terms of getting the most capture for your buck, it seems like you could just harvest the logs, ship them by rail to an arid area, pile them loosely to facilitate drying, and (optionally) treat them with an anti-fungal agent.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#153

Post by tomjakubowski » Tue, May 04, 2021, 7:15 PM UTC

sershe wrote: post #149

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?).

Right, trees provide a buffer. If you can plant faster than the trees are dying, you gain ground.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#154

Post by Valgrim » Tue, May 04, 2021, 7:22 PM UTC

gonzo41 wrote: post #145

cogman10 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 su…

Algae are generally autotrophic, meaning they don't need sugar or food, they create sugars from CO2 and light, and they need nutrients like phosphorus and nitrate and other minerals to do so.

But if you provide too much nutrient, too much algae grow, and when they die and decompose they absorb all the oxygen in the water and kill the whole ecosystem. (That's called eutrophication).

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#155

Post by Valgrim » Tue, May 04, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

My favorite carbon-capture solution is to breed whales:

https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2019/12/natures-s...

Whales act as a nutrient pump in the ocean; beside the 30-tons of carbon they capture and sink over their lifetime in their own biomass, they eat in the deepest parts of the ocean and come back to the surface to breathe, where they release a large amount of nitrate, phosphorus and iron every time they defecate, causing a lot of algal growth.

restoring whales population to their pre-industrial levels could have the same effect as planting several billion trees.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#156

Post by rasputnik6502 » Tue, May 04, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

nosianu wrote: post #50

punnerud wrote: post #20

Norway have been doing CC since 1996 from natural gas and pumping the CO2 back into the well. The first commercial reservoir (Northern light project) for pumping CO2 back into old oil wells will open in 2024. The drilling is finished and the capacity is estimated to 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year for this first project. There is not any capacity left now for new contracts, but they are planning for additional wel…

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…

I was always wondering what is the logic behind that - pump oil from underneath the sea, sell it and buy stock or bonds with the money. Basically trading valuable resources for some paper that may be worth nothing in future.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#157

Post by supernova87a » Tue, May 04, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

__sy__ wrote: post #33

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...

I will definitely read some more of his posts.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#158

Post by supernova87a » Tue, May 04, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC

algo_trader wrote: post #77

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.

It's on his Linkedin.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#159

Post by qayxc » Tue, May 04, 2021, 8:26 PM UTC

Valgrim wrote: post #155

My favorite carbon-capture solution is to breed whales: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2019/12/natures-s... Whales act as a nutrient pump in the ocean; beside the 30-tons of carbon they capture and sink over their lifetime in their own biomass, they eat in the deepest parts of the ocean and come back to the surface to breathe, where they release a large amount of nitrate, phosphorus and iron every time th…

> restoring whales population to their pre-industrial levels could have the same effect as planting several billion trees.

I would like to see the maths on that :D Whales usually don't create their own microclimate or provide a habit for a number of species. They also don't rebuild and support topsoil, can't be harvested for fibres and are not very suitable as building materials.

In other words, trees are more versatile than whales.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#160

Post by cloverich » Tue, May 04, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

barathr wrote: post #146

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...

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

Its not about that. Its about the cold hard reality: Planting tree's will not be a significant factor in fixing climate change. Its not that its worthless, its that its not worth discussing relative to the other items on the list. Because (for arguments sake) of the 20 or so other ideas we have for fixing climate change, we need roughly all of them to work, and they will all have 100-1000x the impact of planting tree's. And we don't have a concrete plan to get them going. We need focused discussion and action and a lot of innovation.