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

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

#71

Post by civilized »

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 :)

Why is lignin burnt today?

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

#72

Post by civilized »

hansarne wrote: post #70
dymk wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I wonder what makes it a low value fuel. If it has a lot of carbon per energy released, it may be better to bury it than burn it.

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

#73

Post by anamax »

tomsyouruncle wrote: post #67
haakonzen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're switching contexts.

When you switched from burning lignin to solar, you reduced your carbon usage.

However, what happened to the lignin that you stopped using?

If it was burned somewhere else, the total carbon usage remained the same even though you changed your usage.

If it was stockpiled and is now decomposing over three years, the carbon usage was time-shifted and will be back where it was in three years. (However, total carbon usage will be reduced the first and second year.)

This is supposedly a usage of lignin that results in no release, so it actually is carbon-negative (assuming that the processing doesn't use more carbon), regardless of what other folks think that they did. That said, it's probably actually just time-shifted, albeit on a long time-scale.

Note that both coal and diamonds are actually time-shifted carbon usage, on the scale of millions of years.

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

#74

Post by ghostbust555 »

anamax wrote: post #73
tomsyouruncle wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're switching contexts. When you switched from burning lignin to solar, you reduced your carbon usage. However, what happened to the lignin that you stopped using? If it was burned somewhere else, the total carbon usage remained the same even though you changed your usage. If it was stockpiled and is now decomposing over three years, the carbon usage was time-shifted and will be back where it was in three years. (…

This is exactly my point (the after 3 years if it decomposed you are just time shifting) which is why I asked how long the roads take to decompose and what they translate into. Sooner or later that lignon in the road will become C02. But is that in 10 years? 100? If its time shifting it only by 15 years or so then its NOT reducing the total carbon to the atmosphere, just temporarily storing it. No different than putting the lignin in a warehouse for 15 years before burning it. So to call that carbon negative is just... bad math at best.

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

#75

Post by ghostbust555 »

testrun wrote: post #53
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.

This is how we lose the war against global warming. The process here is simple: 1. Tree captures carbon 2. Carbon gets buried in a road. Simple. For warming we can use electricity generated by wind, solar, tides etc. Do not move the goalposts.

3. Carbon in lignon road is released as it decays over time.

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

#76

Post by ghostbust555 »

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 :)

My problem is that a) the lignin will decay into C02 (what is the time frame on this? if its hundreds of years then maybe there is some merit here) but b) this implies that if a paper mill wanted to claim to be "carbon negative" they could simply build a warehouse and store lignin for a while before burning it. Furthermore, it implies that if I wanted to claim to be 1 million kgs carbon negative I can simply make a threat of starting a forest fire. If I then DON'T burn the forest I now can say I personally removed 1 million kgs of C02 from the atmosphere.

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

#77

Post by el_oni »

civilized wrote: post #71
haakonzen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why is lignin burnt today?

Its a complex highly aromatic (in the chemistry sense) large molecule that there is active research in trying to convert to useful chemical products.

However it's quite difficult to break its bonds in ways that yield useful compounds. And until there is a viable way of upcycling it, burning it for energy is what they do

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

#78

Post by tomsyouruncle »

anamax wrote: post #73
tomsyouruncle wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You're switching contexts. When you switched from burning lignin to solar, you reduced your carbon usage. However, what happened to the lignin that you stopped using? If it was burned somewhere else, the total carbon usage remained the same even though you changed your usage. If it was stockpiled and is now decomposing over three years, the carbon usage was time-shifted and will be back where it was in three years. (…

> When you switched from burning lignin to solar, you reduced your carbon usage. However, what happened to the lignin that you stopped using?

In my scenario, CarbonCruncher bought the lignin I stopped using and made a road out of it. Crucially, in doing so they claim to have a negative carbon impact because they'd trapped that carbon in the ground. But I already claimed that impact when I stopped buying and burning it myself and switched to a zero-emission energy source.

So my (genuine) question remains: we can't _both_ claim the benefit, so who's right?

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

#79

Post by bradfa »

nonameiguess wrote: post #68
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…

That's interesting! I fear the privacy crowd wouldn't be huge fans of this idea, so doing it just on municipal vehicles might be easier as a first step. But definitely, collecting data from things which are already driving around in general is a great idea!

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

#80

Post by hinkley »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #63
hinkley wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're having a petri dish problem. Taken out of an environment, a lot of experiments and math look very good. It's interesting, might even be new knowledge, but it's not applicable.

That giant machine in their PR materials didn't just appear out of nowhere. It doesn't run on rainbows. It has a considerable embodied carbon footprint. It has an operational footprint, and a transportation footprint. It assuredly produces lots of pm2.5 and not just from the tailpipe.

Undoubtedly less that the process it replaces, but negative is an extraordinary claim, and I don't see any extraordinary evidence here.

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