Live data from Hacker News

Direct air capture: our technology to capture CO₂

climeworks.com

61–70 of 168 posts

Re: Direct air capture: our technology to capture CO₂

#61
post #59

Climate scientist David Ho has a good thread on CDR: https://mastodon.world/@davidho/109511745525784891 It's hard for people to visualize removing tons or billions of tons of #carbon #dioxide (CO₂). I propose we talked about CO₂ #removal (CDR) like a #time #machine (e.g., this machine will take us back 5 minutes). For example: Q: How far back in time does planting 100 million #trees take us? A: If one mature tree tak…

My friend runs this amazing ASCII website which also happens to be the news feed for their Carbon-capture-to-fuel devices.

Like top comment suggests, it doesn't make sense to just capture, you have to get off carbon positive processes entirely.

This company aims to do both, effectively.

https://terraformindustries.com/

Re: Direct air capture: our technology to capture CO₂

#62
post #3

"Our plants require less land than other techniques. E.g., on a land area of 0.42 acres, our Orca plant can remove 4,000 tons of CO₂ from the air every year, which is almost 1,000 times more effective than trees. The same land would host around 220 trees with an estimated capacity of 22kg each" How much land, in solar panels for example, is required to power this? Also what's the carbon waste that this generates? Is…

A better use of CO2 is generating fuel, I suggest.

https://terraformindustries.com/

Re: Direct air capture: our technology to capture CO₂

#63
post #59

Climate scientist David Ho has a good thread on CDR: https://mastodon.world/@davidho/109511745525784891 It's hard for people to visualize removing tons or billions of tons of #carbon #dioxide (CO₂). I propose we talked about CO₂ #removal (CDR) like a #time #machine (e.g., this machine will take us back 5 minutes). For example: Q: How far back in time does planting 100 million #trees take us? A: If one mature tree tak…

The numbers don't look right, they would imply human CO2 generation of over 100 million tons per day.

Re: Direct air capture: our technology to capture CO₂

#64
post #3

"Our plants require less land than other techniques. E.g., on a land area of 0.42 acres, our Orca plant can remove 4,000 tons of CO₂ from the air every year, which is almost 1,000 times more effective than trees. The same land would host around 220 trees with an estimated capacity of 22kg each" How much land, in solar panels for example, is required to power this? Also what's the carbon waste that this generates? Is…

1000 kWh/ton (found it on google): 166 kW/ton in a sunny place: 1000 square meters/ton in a sunny place: 4 million square meters = ~1000 acres of PV to power. One unit. Yeah, that’s going to happen. /s “We’re too ashamed of our energy requirements to post them on our page and are well aware they’re dooming this technology until cold fusion comes out” is what I read between the lines on their fluff page.

1000 kWh/ton to sequester, and how many tons per kWh to generate?

EDIT: Apparently, one ton of CO2 is released by 1000 kWh of electricity:

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11

So you have a coal plant generating energy and emitting CO2 just for this factory next to it to capture all that CO2 again. Seems more efficient to just not run the coal factory.

It seems like this idea will be worthwhile when the last coal factory closes.

Re: Direct air capture: our technology to capture CO₂

#65
post #59

Climate scientist David Ho has a good thread on CDR: https://mastodon.world/@davidho/109511745525784891 It's hard for people to visualize removing tons or billions of tons of #carbon #dioxide (CO₂). I propose we talked about CO₂ #removal (CDR) like a #time #machine (e.g., this machine will take us back 5 minutes). For example: Q: How far back in time does planting 100 million #trees take us? A: If one mature tree tak…

The numbers don't look right, they would imply human CO2 generation of over 100 million tons per day.

That's 14kg per human per day. Seems about right.

Re: Direct air capture: our technology to capture CO₂

#66
post #59

Climate scientist David Ho has a good thread on CDR: https://mastodon.world/@davidho/109511745525784891 It's hard for people to visualize removing tons or billions of tons of #carbon #dioxide (CO₂). I propose we talked about CO₂ #removal (CDR) like a #time #machine (e.g., this machine will take us back 5 minutes). For example: Q: How far back in time does planting 100 million #trees take us? A: If one mature tree tak…

The numbers don't look right, they would imply human CO2 generation of over 100 million tons per day.

Humans emit about 35 billion tons a year according to the reports which comes out to emit 100 million tons per day.

Re: Direct air capture: our technology to capture CO₂

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing ALL the CO2 in the atmosphere would be 1-2% the partial pressure of O2 in the atmosphere (barometric pressure where you live swings more than that). Of all the concerns, this one’s low on the list.

The justification for these things is that the oxygen is being converted to CO2 faster than CO2 is being reduced back to oxygen. So if you capture CO2 at a high rate eventually this would lead to you capturing all of the oxygen.

We’ll run out of CO2 through the natural version of this process (weathering) long before the O2 encounters this problem. At that point all the plants die, still with plenty of O2 in the air.

In other words, it’s the carbon content that’s more endangered over the next billion years than the oxygen.

The problem with this technology isn’t side effects like this, it’s prohibitive power requirements.

Re: Direct air capture: our technology to capture CO₂

#68

Explain like I’m 5: Why is this better than just growing trees and then cutting them down and burying them so the co2 never gets back into the atmosphere?

Its not, but we are slowly becoming desperate and rich ppl feel like they have to have a plan B in case Earth becomes unhabitable.

Re: Direct air capture: our technology to capture CO₂

#70

Every time I see technology like this, I wonder why there so much effort and publicity in capturing carbon from thin air, but no one seems to be interested in capturing carbon directly out of exhaust pipe?

If you have any practical idea for either, please let us know.
Post reply on HN