Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

terraformindustries.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 331 posts

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#321

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

CrazyStat wrote: post #291
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was very well explained, thank you. At 11.8 years it seemed like it would be worth considering because the total amount of anthropogenic CH4 would find equilibrium relatively soon, and that would be better, at some point, than continuing to emit new CO2 year after year. But at 80 years... all of that infrastructure that the synthetic methane people are excited to reuse... It'll have been decommissioned by then a…

Not that I’m aware of. Those kinds of decisions are different depending on where you are, too; some places need to worry about conserving fresh water much more than others, for example. I don’t think there’s a meaningful way to reduce everything to a single dimension.

> I don’t think there’s a meaningful way to reduce everything to a single dimension.

Not everything all at once, no. But given just two things, I figure there's a community of experts somewhere (maybe nearby even) that can balance them better than I can. I'd like a better way of somehow tapping into that.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#322

Post by rich_sasha »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #226
rich_sasha wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Natural gas is already stored in enormous quantities, and shipped around the world. Leakage appears to happen mostly in transit, or at poorly maintained installations. My guess is, it's a solvable problem.

> Natural gas is already stored in enormous quantities, and shipped around the world. Leakage appears to happen mostly in transit And if you can make natural gas from solar that means there will be more sources of natural gas and thus less transit. Right?

As others said, it mostly makes sense as seasonal energy storage. You could have these Terraform installations at storage sites, and also gas power plants in the same place.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#323

Post by pydry »

mschuster91 wrote: post #311
pydry wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A link to the three gorges dam wikipedia page says exactly nothing about the potential environmental impact of pumped storage but it does confirm that you are confusing the two technologies.

... which is why I linked to the Three Gorges Dam in the paragraph where I described the issues with dammed storage, and made an entirely separate paragraph describing the issues of pumped storage.

Thats exactly my point. You assumed they share the same environmental characteristics i.e. you're confusing them.

They do not: https://www.energy.gov/eere/water/articles/lower-environment...

(this is the second citation to a relevant scientific study in this thread. the first one was also mine)

This is getting to seem a bit like those screeds I see about wind farms killing all the birds from nuclear, oil and gas people who see it as a threat.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#324

Post by _cenw »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #120
_cenw wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would be - if the math added up. But it mostly ends up being lobby work to lengthen the lifespan of industry investments.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#325

Post by garfieldnate »

1) Does this require that the atmosphere forever stay at the current CO2 concentration, or will it continue to work well if we manage to clean the atmosphere properly?

2) Does this also pave the way for more permanent CO2 cleanup of the atmosphere?

3) Since they have really economical extraction of H2, could they just ramp down the CO2 extraction and instead buy in CO2 emitted from industrial processes? I'm not sure if this is an interesting suggestion or not, since the CO2 goes into the atmosphere either way, but at least we would be getting two usages out of it.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#326

Post by pfdietz »

pbmonster wrote: post #265
pfdietz wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economics of storing hydrogen for long periods is just fine, compared to the economics of storing energy in batteries for long periods.

> compared to the economics of storing energy in batteries for long periods Which doesn't say much, since practically nobody is doing that.

People (particularly nuke bros, including some at MIT) are doing it in their arguments purporting to show 100% renewable grids are not feasible.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#327

Post by joshjob42 »

andrewla wrote: post #32
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…

Other commenters have pointed out that hydrogen may not be feasible, but the other direction -- methanol or higher hydrocarbons, seems way more interesting. Storage and density are orders of magnitude easier, and since we're synthesizing it from atmospheric component we don't have to be concerned with contaminants, especially sulfur compounds, that plague higher hydrocarbon use. Even better in a lot of ways would be…

Methane is pretty directly usable. Generally it costs some additional processing to produce higher hydrocarbons, which may be worth doing. But a system that makes pure methane can be used as the first part of some other, optional, system to make other hydrocarbons from that. You don't need additional equipment and processing facilities, which is important for Terraform Industries because it wants the sytem to be as cheap as possible.

Making methane is the cheapest way to get a transportable, useful output (hydrogen is notoriously difficult to move around, methane is a lot easier, and of course propane etc is a lot easier still).

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#328

Post by avmich »

avmich wrote: post #228
outworlder wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which electric airplanes are you talking about, other than electric demonstrators?

An example of commercially used electric airplane today could be one of this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqF55MjU9jc , Green Flight Academy in Sweden, used to train pilots.

Some more arguments for electric airplanes are here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH4b3sAs-l8 .

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#329

Post by jack_riminton »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #297
jack_riminton wrote: post #235

So how many can we put on Mars and how long would they take to do significant Mars warming?

If it's carbon neutral, it won't warm Mars at all...

Well if methane is more of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, which it is, then it will

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#330

Post by maerF0x0 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #316
maerF0x0 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but why rely on LNG when Nuclear sources could provide so much more energy and geo-political stability, and promising investment in other avenues (eg Thorium based) could make it even moreso?

Nuclear is better in many ways. It's a shame it costs an order of magnitude more than alternatives.

Interesting point,

A quick google suggests both possibilities that solar and nuclear are each cheaper depending on how big of a picture you're looking. (Capital, construction, storage for solar cause nuclear can run at night, storage for 25000 years for the waste etc).

Still, if moving a lot of (potential) heat energy from point to point is the goal, Uranium still seems to be the move compared to so many tankers of LNG -- just to burn it. Nuclear plants put off a ton of waste heat energy, and it can be at a very high temperature too (if designed and desired).

Post reply on HN