81–90 of 198 posts
Can someone explain the concept of a ton of air to me? Is the air measure as if it was compressed into a solid?
If you compress it, it keeps the same weight (to any reasonable precision), but you won't get it into a solid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
CO2 is in the dense supercritical state at the temperature and pressure conditions in storage reservoirs. It's density is between 750 and 850 kg/m3 then (water is 1000). You just have to compress it and pump it down there, and it will stay like that. Honestly, the storage part is a solved problem from the feasibility side. The remaining challenges are mainly cost optimization, across all of capture, transport and sto…
I agree with your thermodynamics, I'm just concerned about finding a volume big enough to store climatically meaningful amounts of CO2 in that form. 40 billion metric tons per year of CO2 in the form you describe is around 30 billion cubic meters, and you need to find that much storage volume every year just to keep things from getting worse. If you want to actually make a dent, like rolling things back to the year 2…
To sequester the world's carbon emissions, we would need to move and store <1% the volume per year.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
CO2 is in the dense supercritical state at the temperature and pressure conditions in storage reservoirs. It's density is between 750 and 850 kg/m3 then (water is 1000). You just have to compress it and pump it down there, and it will stay like that. Honestly, the storage part is a solved problem from the feasibility side. The remaining challenges are mainly cost optimization, across all of capture, transport and sto…
I agree with your thermodynamics, I'm just concerned about finding a volume big enough to store climatically meaningful amounts of CO2 in that form. 40 billion metric tons per year of CO2 in the form you describe is around 30 billion cubic meters, and you need to find that much storage volume every year just to keep things from getting worse. If you want to actually make a dent, like rolling things back to the year 2…
I would love to see a page on your website where you compare yourselves (in a fair and transparent way) to the best plant that does the same thing. I am not knowledgeable in the field. But there will be some algae or mangroves that get CO2 out of the air. I would love to see that comparison. Incl. the aspect that the plant does not need to be repaired, multiplies on its own, etc.
The problem with plant based sequestration is that it is a net neutral proposition unless you can bury the plants. All the talk about forests being so great(and they are, just not as carbon sinks) ignores the complete lifecycle, which is only as negative as the sustained volume of the forest, assuming you started from just dirt. If that forest ever burns, it's all back in the atmosphere again.
Maybe this is a naive question: but why not bury plants? We got into this mess by digging up long-buried plants, so why not literally reverse the process? With intentional effort, maybe this could be a viable solution? (Probably not -- but I'm curious why.)
Do you have any policy regarding collaboration with the fossil fuel industry? (I'm asking because most past carbon capture projects are actually enhanced oil recovery projects, and the accounting they do for co2 avoided is... sometimes really creative. From what I'm aware Climeworks is not directly collaborating with the fossil fuel industry and does not do EOR, which I think is why they have a relatively good reputa…
At our early stage, we are focused on developing our capture technology & thinking carefully how to best partner with folks who can do sequestration.
The fossil fuel companies know how to compress & inject gases underground at huge industrial scale. They, as well as the oilfield services companies that support them, have expertise that is difficult to access otherwise: they know how to build & monitor wells, find & characterize saline aquifers & other geologic formations where CO2 can be stored, and so on. Coming from our industrial background, we know that their expertise in these areas is not something we want to categorically ignore. Applications with the EPA for Class VI (non-EOR) wells are in the pipeline process around the US, and similar injection-only wells are being built/planned in other parts of the world and we are keeping a close eye on those developments. In addition, mineralization is a possible path too.
I wish we could give a clearer answer. No doubt it's a complex question & we are thinking about it carefully in our planning.
I hope it won't be from fossil fuels.
This sounds very similar to how Verdox[0] is approaching the problem. What sets your approach apart?
>We have developed a process to bring air in contact with a base substrate that captures CO2 molecules while letting N2 and O2 molecules pass through. After energy is applied, CO2 is desorbed from the substrate for downstream treatment and compression. This sounds very similar to how Verdox[0] is approaching the problem. What sets your approach apart? [0] https://verdox.com/
I want to be excited about this, but it's capturing CO2 as CO2 gas, not sequestering CO2 in a form that keeps it out of the atmosphere. If you pay a lot of money in process and power to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere or out of exhaust gases and then use it in chemical processes other than ones which sink the carbon into long lasting solid, liquid, or oceanic absorption form you're just burning money and power to make…
CO2 stored underground, at huge expense? What could possibly go wrong with that?