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Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

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Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#191

Post by aaronblohowiak »

pfdietz wrote: post #31
mikeatlas wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their claim is that this method is still yet cheaper than drilling/fracking.

The cost of natural gas on the Henry Hub is somewhere around $300/ton. A ton of natural gas requires 2.75 tons of CO2, so the cost of CO2 capture has to be well below $110/ton (and that ignores the cost of the hydrogen and the equipment for doing the methane synthesis.) They must be assuming large increases in natural gas prices or large CO2 taxes. I think it will be much easier to get the price/BTU of H2 down below…

I went to double-check your math and I don't see $300/ton on Henry hub.. the units are a little weird as it looks like the price is per million btu which is... 50 pounds? of lng, so to get the per-ton price we take the Henry hub price and multiply by 40 (2000 pounds per ton divided by 50 pounds per million btu)? with a 52-week high of 3.63, this would get to $177 per ton, which seems short of your $300/ton? Anyway, I ask because id love to learn where I went wrong with the math (my result makes your point stronger, not contradicts it...)

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#192

Post by boringg »

shawndrost wrote: post #61
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?

Electricity (during sunlight hours) is not the highest grade of energy. California threw away ~32TWh of electricity last year, with renewables at only 19% penetration. You can't give power away at noon in April; this fact is a significant barrier to building new solar. (See "Learning is not enough" and other academic research on that topic.) We also use fossil fuels as feedstocks for fertilizers and plastics, so ther…

So the argument is take excess solar power turn it into a fuel for use at another time. It's another take on energy storage.

Question for me is how do you make the business model work. Is it a bet that lower cost to produce or bank that carbon tax on traditional fuels makes it more cost competitive? Or in your case is it that downstream users are looking to clean up their supply chain so will look into a contract for that benefit?

To your point everything can't be electricity or alternatively fuels have different use cases. And it's certainly important to have a diversity of power sources especially as fuel has different attributes then electricity.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#193

Post by wolfram74 »

zdragnar wrote: post #148
daedrdev wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It converts to more CO2, and is also worse than CO2 during the short time

Which is irrelevant if the input carbon was atmosphere sourced anyway.

no, it isn't. Over the course of a few decades, a kilogram of methane has the greenhouse impact of ~50 kilograms of CO2 because of the different absorption modes methane has that CO2 doesn't. If terraform leaks more than a few percent of their product into the atmosphere from carelessness (who cares about tracking such a low value commodity?) Then this is worse than just leaving the CO2 in the atmosphere. I really wish they'd address this fact more. Some possibilities:

-The hydrogen half is still a great way to make hydrogen for industrial processes

-The methane can be used on site of production for organic chem feedstocks

-Many new rockets are using methane as their fuel, using it at point of origin instead of transporting through leaky pipelines and trucks.

Any analysis along these lines would be reassuring that this isn't going to be a net-negative, climate wise.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#194

Post by jvanderbot »

carbonguy wrote: post #15

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 electric…

This all strikes me as a nice opening to an apocalypse movie. Pulling CO2 and upgrading to methane - wouldn't that amplify GHG effects?

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#195

Post by Moto7451 »

ajross wrote: post #142
Moto7451 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solvable, probably. Has oversight and a commitment to fix the issue? Not yet. https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw?si=zbr_fr5TDK2EHT72 (Topical and recent take from a favorite YouTube channel of mine) The industry provided (self reported) estimates of linkage is a little over 1%. The realistic value is over 2% and is at the point that coal and natural gas are likely equally bad for the environment given our current infrastru…

> Carbon neutral is a useful feature but doesn’t solve that problem. Uh... yes it does? A fossil-fuel free fuel production process that loses 2% to the atmosphere is still fifty times lower-impact (when considering output energy -- obviously production costs are different) than one that pulls 100% out of the ground.

See the video I linked or the other commenters with references that Methane is a higher contributor to global warming than CO2 by 30x. It’s not about the carbon removed, it’s about the methane leaked.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#196

Post by Moto7451 »

imbusy111 wrote: post #126
Moto7451 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solvable, probably. Has oversight and a commitment to fix the issue? Not yet. https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw?si=zbr_fr5TDK2EHT72 (Topical and recent take from a favorite YouTube channel of mine) The industry provided (self reported) estimates of linkage is a little over 1%. The realistic value is over 2% and is at the point that coal and natural gas are likely equally bad for the environment given our current infrastru…

We have a bunch of new methane monitoring satellites, so it is very observable and enforceable.

I agree we can do it. It just has to be done. Aka give the EPA some teeth and require actual monitoring and enforcement rather than a self reported fantasy.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#197

Post by aldonius »

pfdietz wrote: post #187
outworlder wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why not just use hydrogen directly and skip the inefficiency and cost of direct air capture of CO2 and of making methane? Because hydrogen sucks. Specifically, storing it sucks. You'll either compress or liquefy. That costs energy. It leaks and embrittles containers. One of the best ways of storing it in a stable manner is to combine with carbon atoms. Voila, natural gas.

You repeat some of the anti-hydrogen memes. Hydrogen is actually quite storable, certainly much more easily stored than energy in batteries. The cost of underground storage caverns for hydrogen is two orders of magnitude cheaper than the cost of batteries storing the same energy.

That's great, but how do I take one of these underground caverns around with me? :P

More seriously, I'm sure hydrogen will make a valuable contribution to the stationary grid-level energy storage situation. I'm not convinced about other applications.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#198

Post by ajross »

Moto7451 wrote: post #195
ajross wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Carbon neutral is a useful feature but doesn’t solve that problem. Uh... yes it does? A fossil-fuel free fuel production process that loses 2% to the atmosphere is still fifty times lower-impact (when considering output energy -- obviously production costs are different) than one that pulls 100% out of the ground.

See the video I linked or the other commenters with references that Methane is a higher contributor to global warming than CO2 by 30x. It’s not about the carbon removed, it’s about the methane leaked.

Even granting that number (and the 2% loss above), Terraform still wins. It's just math, sorry.

I mean, sure: this might be bad on balance. But it's starting from a position of overwhelming assumed advantage. You need to come to the table with analysis actually showing it's bad, and all you have is "it's only about twice as good and not 50x better".

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#199

Post by throwaway_5753 »

carbonguy wrote: post #15

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 electric…

What is going on with the section numbering in that blog and infographic? Super interested in the content I can't focus when we start with section 7 then jump to 9 then 13 then back to 8.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#200

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

CrazyStat wrote: post #113
scq wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/down…

Wow that table is over my head, I spent a fair bit of time trying to unwind the acronyms but I gave up.

Can you help me understand how a gas with a lifetime of 11.8 years is having a different impact on the climate at 500 years than it did at say... 11.8 years? That's 488.2 years of being in the same state as where it started prior to the carbon capture that made the CH4.

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