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Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

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Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#111

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

CrazyStat wrote: post #80
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested in a quantitative analysis here. Methane is much worse, but sunlight has broken most of it down after a decade or so. CO2 is comparatively forever. Presumably there's a point where the lines cross and leaking green methane is still a win. I guess it just comes down to where those lines cross and whether we deem that an acceptable goal.

Sunlight breaks methane down into CO2, so I don’t think there’s much of a win there.

But that methane "started" as CO2 in the atmosphere, so after the breakdown happens you're carbon neutral. Carbon capture and storage are still relevant topics, but "stop making the problem worse" is a good start.

If we all switched to still-leaky synthetic methane today, things would continue getting worse only until the atmospheric breakdown rate equalled the leak rate. That's still a decade of things getting worse, but it's possible that the alternatives are even more problematic.

I'm not saying it's the right or wrong path, I haven't done that analysis, I'm just saying that approaches to it could use a bit more pragmatism.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#112

Post by wmf »

tgtweak wrote: post #94
tombert wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You beat me to it, because I was going to say the same thing; wouldn't it only be carbon neutral if you had some means of guaranteeing that there's no leaks? It seems like converting CO2 to methane could actually make things worse...

Even if it all leaks out, you're still back at 0 essentially.

No, because methane is worse than CO2. Anyway, replacing fossil methane with synthetic is strictly better so the leaks are irrelevant.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#113

Post by CrazyStat »

scq wrote: post #91
CrazyStat wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sunlight breaks methane down into CO2, so I don’t think there’s much of a win there.

Of course there is. CO2 and methane are not equally bad, methane is about 100x worse initially. After about 60-70 years the lines cross and the impact of a tonne of methane released is less than a tonne of CO2 released at the same date.

> After about 60-70 years the lines cross

Methane's global warming potential is estimated to be ten times CO2 after 500 years [1].

> and the impact of a tonne of methane released is less than a tonne of CO2 released at the same date.

A ton of methane released into the atmosphere breaks down into 2.75 tons of CO2 [2]. There is no possible way that this statement can be true.

[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6..., Table 7.15 (page 1017)

[2] Simple stoichiometry: CH4 (weighing ~16 g/mol) breaks down into CO2 (weighing ~44 g/mol) at a 1:1 ratio. 44/16 is 2.75.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#115

Post by aaronax »

arcanemachiner wrote: post #101
bamboozled wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're converting CO₂ that already exists in the atmosphere, how could it make things worse? Isn't problem making new CO₂ from burning fossil fuels, not converting existing Co2 into other things?

Methane is a 30x stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. So if 4% of the converted methane leaked into the atmosphere, you would be worse off (from a climate heating perspective) than if you had done nothing. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/...

30x strong on what measurement? Per molecule?

How much CO2 is Terraform Industries pulling from the atmosphere to create that 4% of methane that might be leaking?

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#117

Post by tedivm »

willio58 wrote: post #58

While this is impressive to some degree I just today watched Climate Town’s “Natural Gas is Scamming America” ( https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw ) and the entire natural gas industry is tainted beyond belief for me now. It’s not like they were a positive thing in my view before, but on the whole natural gas seems to be just as if not more detrimental than coal for climate change mainly due to how much is leaked out but a…

> but also how much energy it takes to ship natural gas to other countries.

Something like this would reduce the need to transport it to other countries, since you can manufacture it anywhere you want. Right now we're limited to where we can pull fossil fuels out of the ground, which means that it has to be transported from one place to another. That's not the case with atmospheric extraction.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#118

Post by DarmokJalad1701 »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #53
maerF0x0 wrote: post #38

What are some applications where its worth taking the highest grade energy (electricity) and turning it into a lower grade (eg liquid fuels), rather than electrifying the application? Electricity to motion is significantly more efficient per input energy than burning fuel->heat-> gaseous expansion->drive a piston->convert to rotation chain. What am I missing about this?

The only way a technology like this will help get us to carbon zero is using it in places where there is not much hope of replacing electricity. While small elective airplanes have been demonstrated, it doesn't seem like we will be able to build, in the next couple of decades, large electric airplanes that can substantially replace current fuel powered ones. This would require the additional step of converting methan…

You could theoretically run jet engines on directly on methane (liquid or not) - though I am not sure how much work would be required to refit an existing one for this purpose. Methane is already used for running the turbo-pumps in rocket engines like SpaceX's Raptor or Relativity's Aeon-R.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#120

Post by dzhiurgis »

_cenw wrote: post #88
willio58 wrote: post #58

While this is impressive to some degree I just today watched Climate Town’s “Natural Gas is Scamming America” ( https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw ) and the entire natural gas industry is tainted beyond belief for me now. It’s not like they were a positive thing in my view before, but on the whole natural gas seems to be just as if not more detrimental than coal for climate change mainly due to how much is leaked out but a…

Green hydrogen and other "e-fuels" are an attempt to keep the gas industries infrastructure alive and relevant. If you see someone break down the math it makes zero sense, it just sounds nice.

Keeping existing infrastructure is the whole beauty of it. Ships, pipelines, factories, supply chains that you can keep using if/until other technology replaces it.
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