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Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

terraformindustries.wordpress.com

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Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#11

Post by rbliss »

Really exciting for Terraform to hit this mark. Hopefully true, and not an April 1st joke. Casey Handmer (founder) is a pretty interesting guy. He also helped with the initial analysis of the crackle on the Vesuvius challenge scrolls that contributed to the breakthrough of reading the first passages from the scrolls. See https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/08/05/reading-ancien...

Highly recommend checking out more articles on the Terraform Industries blog and Casey's personal blog.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#14

Post by pfdietz »

One can make natural gas from CO2 captured from air and with hydrogen electrolysed form water. But then one has to ask: why not just use hydrogen directly and skip the inefficiency and cost of direct air capture of CO2 and of making methane? If one is dead set on making a carbon-containing synfuel, why methane and not something more storable, like methanol or higher hydrocarbons? Or, why not use the hydrogen to deoxygenate biomass (including waste biomass like paper) instead of laboriously collecting completely oxidized CO2 from air?

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#15

Post by carbonguy »

As a "carbon industry" observer, this is pretty exciting news. I've had my eye on Terraform Industries for a while and love what they're doing; they're one of the few groups that actually seem to understand the implications of what it will take to shift to a carbon-neutral economy, and their core insight about the economics of atmospheric fuel synthesis is one of those "obvious when you hear it" ideas: solar electricity is trending ever-cheaper, so rather than trying to maximize efficiency in an expensive piece of kit you can make cheap 'inefficient' equipment and get lower overall costs, which in turn unlocks scale.

Their recent post on "Terraformer Environmental Calculus" is a great read, if you are interested in this space: https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/2024/02/06/terrafo...

Congratulations to the team!

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#16

Post by papercrane »

pfdietz wrote: post #14

One can make natural gas from CO2 captured from air and with hydrogen electrolysed form water. But then one has to ask: why not just use hydrogen directly and skip the inefficiency and cost of direct air capture of CO2 and of making methane? If one is dead set on making a carbon-containing synfuel, why methane and not something more storable, like methanol or higher hydrocarbons? Or, why not use the hydrogen to deoxy…

My guess is that the answer is taking advantage of existing NG infrastructure.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#17

Post by carbonguy »

pfdietz wrote: post #14

One can make natural gas from CO2 captured from air and with hydrogen electrolysed form water. But then one has to ask: why not just use hydrogen directly and skip the inefficiency and cost of direct air capture of CO2 and of making methane? If one is dead set on making a carbon-containing synfuel, why methane and not something more storable, like methanol or higher hydrocarbons? Or, why not use the hydrogen to deoxy…

> why not just use hydrogen directly and skip the inefficiency and cost of direct air capture of CO2 and of making methane?

Broadly speaking, one key reason is that we've already got the infrastructure in place for using methane (and other hydrocarbons) whereas we do not have this for hydrogen.

Another point is that this really isn't an either-or proposition: if people want hydrogen, then the Terraform electrolyzer can in principle provide it.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#18

Post by sollewitt »

pfdietz wrote: post #14

One can make natural gas from CO2 captured from air and with hydrogen electrolysed form water. But then one has to ask: why not just use hydrogen directly and skip the inefficiency and cost of direct air capture of CO2 and of making methane? If one is dead set on making a carbon-containing synfuel, why methane and not something more storable, like methanol or higher hydrocarbons? Or, why not use the hydrogen to deoxy…

I would guess because natural gas has hundreds of years of us handling it, and we already have a lot of things from power generators to domestic driers that consume it.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#19

Post by rhelz »

Fraking has made natural gas so cheap, I can't see these being used for anything but virtue signaling. They claim a breakthrough in converting hydrogen to natural gas, but natural gas is by far the cheapest source of H2.

And, given that methane is 80 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than CO2 is, is it really a good idea to be manufacturing it? Inevitably there would be leakage, and it wouldn't take much to leak enough gas to more than compensate for any C02 sucked out of the air.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#20

Post by rbliss »

pfdietz wrote: post #14

One can make natural gas from CO2 captured from air and with hydrogen electrolysed form water. But then one has to ask: why not just use hydrogen directly and skip the inefficiency and cost of direct air capture of CO2 and of making methane? If one is dead set on making a carbon-containing synfuel, why methane and not something more storable, like methanol or higher hydrocarbons? Or, why not use the hydrogen to deoxy…

Another point others haven't made, which Terraform Industries points out: that using solar to make Natural Gas is going to be the cheapest form of natural gas production.

You can effectively short circuit the existing fossil fuel industry and pull the hydrocarbons from the air instead of the ground to stay carbon neutral. No need to re-invent industry.

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