Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 96 posts

Re: Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

#61

Post by hinkley »

lvs wrote: post #48
ghostbust555 wrote: post #32

How are you saying this is carbon negative? Don't get me wrong the process is impressive and very cool, but the marketing around it just feels scammy. -5kg of carbon per m2? How? The lignin based binder absorbs more carbon from the air after it is placed into the road? I may be misreading but it seems like these numbers are based on the amount of carbon in the lignin itself (i.e. since it isn't burned which would be…

This was my first reaction as well. I think the subtext is that the byproduct is currently being burned as a fuel source, which is common for things like sawdust in mills. So there's one aspect of this calculation that could be waaay off. If the mills that would have burned this byproduct in a boiler are selling it instead, they'll need another energy source for their boilers! If that energy source is a fossil fuel i…

Taken to the other extreme, as the value of sawdust goes up the incentive to reduce sawdust goes down, decreasing the number of board feet per tree, increasing trees cut for lumber.

If you find a better use for sawdust, great. But if you could invent a new saw blade with a smaller kerf, you’d be helping more.

Re: Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

#62

Post by bradfa »

This is neat! For your "SkyRoads" idea, as an alternative to satellite imagery (which I imagine is quite expensive for high resolution), have you considered partnering with the municipalities who are your customers to outfit their snowplows or garbage trucks with sensors to evaluate the road surface conditions? Since snowplows and garbage trucks have to regularly transit pretty much every public road in many parts of the world, it could be a great way to collect data over time. Plus, if you can make an app for hardware these vehicles already carry (or which can easily and cheaply be added to the vehicles) this might also appeal to your municipal customers even if they don't buy your road resurfacing product/service/etc.

Re: Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

#63

Post by throwawaylinux »

hinkley wrote: post #60
throwawaylinux wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't think something that reduces net carbon in the atmosphere is carbon negative, then you're just making up your own definitions of things. Why waste everyone else's time? Seems like a hell of way to go about life.

No, you’re making up things. You think you’re asking if we think a net negative is a net negative, but that’s not what you asked. Not even close. Making something takes energy, as you will recall if you weren’t asleep that entire semester in physics class. If the bit at the end cancels out some of the problems created earlier, you still have some of the problems created earlier.

No that's just your reading comprehension problem.

Re: Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

#64

Post by Dan42 »

How well does this handle several freeze-thaw cycles per year?

The carbon aspect is great, but I love how this attempts to address the unstable ground problem. Here in Quebec due to cheaply made road foundation and harsh freeze-thaw cycles, at this time of the year the roads have almost more potholes than... road.

Re: Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

#65

Post by hansarne »

Dan42 wrote: post #64

How well does this handle several freeze-thaw cycles per year? The carbon aspect is great, but I love how this attempts to address the unstable ground problem. Here in Quebec due to cheaply made road foundation and harsh freeze-thaw cycles, at this time of the year the roads have almost more potholes than... road.

Thank you for this Question! In Norway, where we have stabilized more than 2,5 mill sqm of road, this is the problem we solve the most. Our Lignin is very strong, and more dynamic than our competitors binders, which means it doesn't crack in freeze-thaw cycles like other binders can. And as we crush rocks and get an even mass to mix the lignin into, we get a very good road to handle such cycles. And the pothole-problems almost don't exist.

Re: Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

#66

Post by libertine »

shafyy wrote: post #57
ghostbust555 wrote: post #32

How are you saying this is carbon negative? Don't get me wrong the process is impressive and very cool, but the marketing around it just feels scammy. -5kg of carbon per m2? How? The lignin based binder absorbs more carbon from the air after it is placed into the road? I may be misreading but it seems like these numbers are based on the amount of carbon in the lignin itself (i.e. since it isn't burned which would be…

I agree. Stop using empty marketing words like "carbon negative". Your product seems good enough that you don't need to resort to this. I'm sure there's a definition out there of carbon negative that means what you say it means, but if we're being honest carbon negative means that doing more of something reduces the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. You can't claim that not burning lignin is carbon negative since t…

I don't agree with you.

If the product of the whole operation ends up with less carbon in the atmosphere, then it is in fact removing carbon. Plus they aren't using binders that contribute to more carbon to the atmosphere.

Now, we can be extremely strict in this definition and unless a company actually produces 0 carbon and is still extracting it from the atmosphere would be the ones who could claim they are "carbon negative", but then I guess not even CO2 extractors could claim that because they still need to be built and consume power.

I don't think that will get us anywhere. By that logic not even trees are "carbon negative".

In the end it's a matter of perspective, because what we're actually doing most of the time is offsetting/moving carbon around, and there's nothing wrong with that.

If it's captured from the air by a chemical process, or stored underground, or if it simply is stored in a byproduct that's reused and never reaches the atmosphere, it's all the same.

Re: Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

#67

Post by tomsyouruncle »

haakonzen wrote: post #35
snewman wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP says the lignin is "a waste product from the paper industry" and "majority of lignin is burnt". So it sounds like: currently, grow tree (pulling carbon from the atmosphere), process for paper industry, burn the resulting lignin, carbon returns to atmosphere. With this process: grow tree, process for paper industry, embed lignin in road material. If the lignin remains in the road more-or-less permanently (I asked a…

Yes exactly, that's how we think about it. We are using nature's own capture machine, trees... thanks for this clear explanation :)

Maybe the concern others are expressing here can be thought of as the risk of double counting of carbon.

If I run an industrial plant that's currently fuelled by burning waste lignin from the paper industry, and I decide to stop that and install some solar panels instead, it seems reasonable for me to claim that change is carbon negative (i.e. I've reduced carbon emissions).

Now if CarbonCrusher comes along and buys the lignin I no longer need, uses it to build a road, and claims the same carbon saving as I did, we end up double counting.

Which of us is wrong?

Re: Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

#68

Post by nonameiguess »

bradfa wrote: post #62

This is neat! For your "SkyRoads" idea, as an alternative to satellite imagery (which I imagine is quite expensive for high resolution), have you considered partnering with the municipalities who are your customers to outfit their snowplows or garbage trucks with sensors to evaluate the road surface conditions? Since snowplows and garbage trucks have to regularly transit pretty much every public road in many parts of…

I noticed after purchase my new car warns me of uneven road surfaces looming ahead. As far as I know, it does this by crowd-sourcing from other vehicle owners that have opted into allowing their vehicles to collect this information and send it back to the automaker, which then distributes it to all the other cars. Given this could potentially use every vehicle on the road for data collection instead of just plows and garbage trucks, I'd say the better approach would be for governments to compel automakers to share the road condition data they collect, not necessarily with other automakers, but at least with the governments that have to maintain the roads.

Re: Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

#69

Post by bob29 »

libertine wrote: post #66
shafyy wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Stop using empty marketing words like "carbon negative". Your product seems good enough that you don't need to resort to this. I'm sure there's a definition out there of carbon negative that means what you say it means, but if we're being honest carbon negative means that doing more of something reduces the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. You can't claim that not burning lignin is carbon negative since t…

I don't agree with you. If the product of the whole operation ends up with less carbon in the atmosphere, then it is in fact removing carbon. Plus they aren't using binders that contribute to more carbon to the atmosphere. Now, we can be extremely strict in this definition and unless a company actually produces 0 carbon and is still extracting it from the atmosphere would be the ones who could claim they are "carbon…

There is essentially no way this operation ends up with less carbon in the atmosphere.

It is very hard to do anything with biomass at industrial scale without emitting more carbon than the biomass itself contains.

Even look at biomass to energy, by the time harvest, transport, and process a tree for use to "offset" fossil fuel combustion, it's hard to say thats carbon negative.

Now you harvest the biomass, put it through some chemical engineering process to make a binder product, put this binder product in the hopper of some massive diesel powered behemoth machine that chews up, binds, and compacts and remakes roads. This obviously consumes a LOT of energy.

Is it a cool company? Yes, making effective nontoxic product out of another industries byproduct, to be used in something thats been foundational to human society for 1000s of years, roads, is maybe the neatest new company I've heard about in a long time.

Does it emit less carbon than some other ways of repaving roads? probably.

Is it carbon negative by ANY definition? OBVIOUSLY not (or I will eat my hat and throw an egg on my face.)

I'm honestly confused why there's ANY claim of being carbon negative, let alone it being front and center, when the underlying product can totally stand on its own??

Re: Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

#70

Post by hansarne »

dymk wrote: post #54
lvs wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the current use of the byproduct is not just flaring it off pointlessly as waste. The byproduct is being burned as a fuel, which in that usage is already (nearly) neutral. If an alternative fuel has to be used instead, that fuel is more than likely going to be natural gas or coal.

Do you have a source that the binder is currently being used as a fuel source? I'm missing where that's implied by the OP.

It's correct that lignin is used as a fuel, here's one source of it. ~98 is burnt. "currently most of the lignin produced from paper industry is burned as low-value fuel to generate electricity and heat (Luo and Abu-Omar, 2017) and only less than 2% is used for producing specialty chemicals ..." https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09266...
Post reply on HN