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The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

bloomberg.com

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Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#61

Post by tux3 »

turbocon wrote: post #59
pengaru wrote: post #12

https://archive.is/bl4XZ It's too bad these DAC systems don't take it a step further kicking the o2 back into the atmosphere while turning the carbon into something physical and industrially valuable like say spools of carbon fiber fabric or graphene/carbon nanotubes.

This is off topic, but does anyone else always get an infinitely reloading captcha for archive[.]is links?

That happens if you use Cloudflare as DNS.

archive.is has a notorious feud with Cloudflare over some technical detail they care about strongly.

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#62

Post by tmorton »

carstenhag wrote: post #60
anon84873628 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems companies (eg Microsoft being the big customer in this example) pay to offset their carbon emissions so they can use that fact for marketing purposes.

Last I read about this topic, it was way more efficient to just buy better ovens for Ruanda and Nigeria [1] instead of trying to capture carbon. Was there any recent technology advancement that changed this? 1: https://www.atmosfair.de/de/save80/ - just an example, there are many ways of reducing co2 emission.

Yes, we need that too.

This happens a lot in climate policy discussions - "what about this other solution?" The answer is always "yes, that too!"

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#63

Post by beretguy »

tux3 wrote: post #61
turbocon wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is off topic, but does anyone else always get an infinitely reloading captcha for archive[.]is links?

That happens if you use Cloudflare as DNS. archive.is has a notorious feud with Cloudflare over some technical detail they care about strongly.

Found some info on that

https://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/135222/why-does-...

Ok, now let’s go back talking about carbon and oxygen.

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#64

Post by jillesvangurp »

kajaktum wrote: post #37

How does carbon capture help? Wouldn't it need to be stored somewhere? What happens if the storage leaks? People say that trees is a bad solution because the carbon is still there. This is even worse than trees. Trees at least looks good.

We're emitting around 40 billion tonnes of CO2 per year on this planet. This removes 1000. We need another 40 million or so of these facilities to take out what we emit. And mind you, what we emit, is still growing, by about 300M tonne per year. So, at best you could say that this slows down this growth by a tiny meaningless percentage.

At this scale, it's a cynical form of green washing that is so futile that it's not even worth talking about. The point of installations like this is to allow polluters to buy off their sins.

The church built a booming business out of allowing people to buy off their sins in the middle ages. It didn't really help but it made people feel good about themselves. This sort of is the modern day equivalent.

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#65

Post by beretguy »

euroderf wrote: post #31
undersuit wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to know this too, the article only let me read two paragraphs. I found a NASA stat that an US average car will emit a metric ton of CO2 in 3 months of use. "The U.S. EPA has found that a typical 22 MPG gas-based car emits about 5 tons of carbon dioxide per year. On average, you emit one ton of CO2 for about every 2,500 miles you drive". CarbonCure(the partner of Heirloom here) agrees with me on the math: "Ca…

Indeed, automation is not just about eliminating the payment of wages, it's also about removing the need to burn dinosaurs shuttling hoominz around. How 'bout if workers at carbon capture facilities are prohibited from driving fossil-fueled cars to work. Maybe they could get e-bikes as a job perk ? It would be on-brand.

Or electric shuttle that would pick them up. And/or company could build cheap/free housing for employees nearby. So many good logical solutions!

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#66

Post by bluejekyll »

I keep thinking about why we’re going through this effort rather that using trees, which can also be harvested for lumber and the sequester that carbon in construction.

My super rough math, from quick Google searches, this unit 1,000 tons per year. A mature tree is estimated to capture 48 pounds per year. That would be about 42,000 trees. At roughly, 100-200 trees per acre. Let’s just say 150, so that’s 280 acres of forest/trees to roughly match to performance of the system. Granted, it’s on much less land, but still.

That doesn’t seem like a lot of land when you consider that large protected parks like Yosemite are 759,620 acres.

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#67

Post by smallerfish »

bluejekyll wrote: post #66

I keep thinking about why we’re going through this effort rather that using trees, which can also be harvested for lumber and the sequester that carbon in construction. My super rough math, from quick Google searches, this unit 1,000 tons per year. A mature tree is estimated to capture 48 pounds per year. That would be about 42,000 trees. At roughly, 100-200 trees per acre. Let’s just say 150, so that’s 280 acres of…

Let's say you jam your trees in at 40 foot spacing (you want large mature trees) - that gives you 27 trees per acre.

Assuming your math is right, and we need 42,000 mature trees per year capturing carbon, that means we need 1,555 newly planted acres of trees _per year_ to match this plant (and, there will be 25-30 years before the first batch to be planted actually matches in terms of capture). So you have a small problem of finding land that isn't already forested, finding labor to plant and maintain your growing forest, and continuing to do the same year after year.

And, bear in mind that this plant is just a rounding error on the problem in terms of capacity, so in reality you need to scale by orders of magnitude.

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#69

Post by xingped »

carstenhag wrote: post #60
anon84873628 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems companies (eg Microsoft being the big customer in this example) pay to offset their carbon emissions so they can use that fact for marketing purposes.

Last I read about this topic, it was way more efficient to just buy better ovens for Ruanda and Nigeria [1] instead of trying to capture carbon. Was there any recent technology advancement that changed this? 1: https://www.atmosfair.de/de/save80/ - just an example, there are many ways of reducing co2 emission.

I'd be hard pressed to find it again, but I remember watching a video years ago talking about the issue of buying new ovens for poor Africans in villages not actually working to reduce carbon as intended because what ended up happening is that they would just use now two stoves, the old one and new one, at the same time instead of tossing the old one and only using the new one. Great in theory and a seemingly easy low-hanging fruit, but may fall apart in practice, unfortunately.

Re: The first commercial carbon-sucking facility in the US opens in California

#70

Post by bluejekyll »

smallerfish wrote: post #67
bluejekyll wrote: post #66

I keep thinking about why we’re going through this effort rather that using trees, which can also be harvested for lumber and the sequester that carbon in construction. My super rough math, from quick Google searches, this unit 1,000 tons per year. A mature tree is estimated to capture 48 pounds per year. That would be about 42,000 trees. At roughly, 100-200 trees per acre. Let’s just say 150, so that’s 280 acres of…

Let's say you jam your trees in at 40 foot spacing (you want large mature trees) - that gives you 27 trees per acre. Assuming your math is right, and we need 42,000 mature trees per year capturing carbon, that means we need 1,555 newly planted acres of trees _per year_ to match this plant (and, there will be 25-30 years before the first batch to be planted actually matches in terms of capture). So you have a small pr…

27 trees per acre is a low number, and based on my own experience with land returned to a forest with decent canopy, the 150 trees per acre is not unreasonable.

That said, even with my estimates you’re correct that this is a lot of land, but I wanted to quickly put it into perspective. We are losing forests all over the planet, and this can also help understand the impact of that.

Also, the labor you mention is probably a wash compared to the construction of this plant.

Edit: as an example, if you ever have a chance, go tour a maple tree farm as a good reference. Now, that said I did just google for maple farm tree density and they estimate 70 per acre.

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