Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale • Hacker News Board

Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale

#131

Post by ncmncm » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 9:08 PM UTC

pvarangot wrote: post #125

ncmncm wrote: post #119

It should be much more cost-effective to float wind turbines to pump surface water to benthic depths. Then, the whole ocean is your CO2 collection surface. You might also pump water from (lesser) depths to the surface to distribute over coral reefs to relieve both heat and pH. (Picture a line of these some miles seaward, all up and down the Great Barrier Reef.) The wind turbine nacelle could be substantially cheaper…

I think the problem with that approach is that it would be harder to establish a regulatory framework were you can get "I sequestered CO2 credits" if your pumps are out in the ocean and pumping the CO2 into deeper waters. The capturing facilities inland are easier to audit and regulate. So yeah maybe it's better for the planet but since it's harder to regulate it would be tricky to get funding to build that if the po…

Pumped water volume and pH are easy to measure, precisely identifying how much CO2 is being sequestered. These could be reported continuously via satellite link.

It doesn't cost any less to keep a wind turbine and pump still than to leave it running, so there will be no incentive to cheat.

Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale

#132

Post by markcyffka » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 9:20 PM UTC

Hi HN, we need to sign off for a bit & get back to building.

So grateful for your questions & engagement.

Be well & cheers - Mark & Sudip

Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale

#133

Post by gridspy » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 9:21 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #119

It should be much more cost-effective to float wind turbines to pump surface water to benthic depths. Then, the whole ocean is your CO2 collection surface. You might also pump water from (lesser) depths to the surface to distribute over coral reefs to relieve both heat and pH. (Picture a line of these some miles seaward, all up and down the Great Barrier Reef.) The wind turbine nacelle could be substantially cheaper…

Sounds like it would also directly cool surface water, by replacing it with very cold deep water.

That cooling would directly reduce current average earth temperatures, in addition to the CO2 impact on long term heating / cooling.

Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale

#134

Post by ElevenLathe » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 9:24 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #131

pvarangot wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem with that approach is that it would be harder to establish a regulatory framework were you can get "I sequestered CO2 credits" if your pumps are out in the ocean and pumping the CO2 into deeper waters. The capturing facilities inland are easier to audit and regulate. So yeah maybe it's better for the planet but since it's harder to regulate it would be tricky to get funding to build that if the po…

Pumped water volume and pH are easy to measure, precisely identifying how much CO2 is being sequestered. These could be reported continuously via satellite link. It doesn't cost any less to keep a wind turbine and pump still than to leave it running, so there will be no incentive to cheat.

I don't know anything specifically about wind turbine maintenance, but if its anything like everything else I know about, it probably does cost more to have 99% uptime than it does to have 80% uptime.

Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale

#135

Post by vagabund » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 9:40 PM UTC

As I understand it, the most efficient, scalable, and long-term effective climate solution remains olivine carbonation as proposed by efforts like Project Vesta [0]. I take the point that any and all solutions should be explored at this time of critical importance, but there's a risk that sexier, more high tech approaches gain disproportionate momentum for reasons separate from the science. Is there an obvious explanation for why this or other geoengineering schemes haven't taken a leading role either in the discourse or implementation of carbon capture and sequestration?

[0] https://www.vesta.earth/

Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale

#136

Post by sokoloff » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 9:45 PM UTC

dokein wrote: post #43

InvaderFizz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is typically only sequestering the carbon for 20-50 years. In the end, the house is torn down, or the furniture burned. Very little lasts for more then a century, and basically nothing lasts for more than a millennia. Deep underground sequestration is the only viable strategy if your goal is total CO2 reduction in the atmosphere.

What if you develop an animal that eats the plants, and then when they die they are buried, such that after the decomposition process all that's left is a fossil? I don't see how that could go wrong unless someone digs up the fossils later on for use as a fuel, but that seems like such a ridiculous an unlikely scenario ha ha ha!

When the animal eats the carbon (as a food source), it combines the carbon with oxygen and exhales...

Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale

#137

Post by carapace » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 9:59 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #45

yodon wrote: post #35

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…

Could we put them into pods and throw them at Mars so we start dumping Co2 on Mars for Musk's Mars Mushroom Mart! too grow.

Lovelock (of the Gaia Hypothesis) had the bright idea to put all the CFCs onto all the old ICBMs and launch them at Mars to kick start the greenhouse effect there.

Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale

#138

Post by usrusr » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 10:03 PM UTC

markcyffka wrote: post #128

usrusr wrote: post #127

Why bother with 400ppm when there are so many, well, "burning sites" untapped? The intuitive counter-argument is that long term there shouldn't be any "burning sites" left and that capturing all burning sites would only ever get us to zero but not to negative emissions, but that's not true when you include burning sites that run on biological sources. Let plants deal with the 400ppm problem, use those plants as fuel,…

Thanks for the question, copying from an earlier comment which touches on similar point -- "Great question. We'd love to capture point-source CO2 from factory flue gas where it is orders of magnitude more concentrated (often >10%) than in air (~400ppm). And fundamentally, there is no reason our process cannot be applied for this type of CO2 capture. For now, we are choosing to focus on air for 2 reasons: 1) Market. E…

Ah, ok.

"We try to tackle the crazy problem because if we can almost do that we should be quite good at the reasonable ones" sounds like a communication problem unnecessarily attached to the physical one.

Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale

#139

Post by Kirinius » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 10:14 PM UTC

gridspy wrote: post #133

ncmncm wrote: post #119

It should be much more cost-effective to float wind turbines to pump surface water to benthic depths. Then, the whole ocean is your CO2 collection surface. You might also pump water from (lesser) depths to the surface to distribute over coral reefs to relieve both heat and pH. (Picture a line of these some miles seaward, all up and down the Great Barrier Reef.) The wind turbine nacelle could be substantially cheaper…

Sounds like it would also directly cool surface water, by replacing it with very cold deep water. That cooling would directly reduce current average earth temperatures, in addition to the CO2 impact on long term heating / cooling.

Not sure in which measure this "cooling" (of oceans only) would have any impact on other parameters of global climate, but that's a project I'd be eager to work on anyways.

Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale

#140

Post by mNovak » Thu, Mar 17, 2022, 10:18 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #119

It should be much more cost-effective to float wind turbines to pump surface water to benthic depths. Then, the whole ocean is your CO2 collection surface. You might also pump water from (lesser) depths to the surface to distribute over coral reefs to relieve both heat and pH. (Picture a line of these some miles seaward, all up and down the Great Barrier Reef.) The wind turbine nacelle could be substantially cheaper…

Not to derail the OP discussion; but, how does one go about pumping water to great depths? That sounds like it would require immense energy to do on any large scale. Also thinking of the maintenance on the presumably narrow vertical pipe going miles(?) below the ocean.