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Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

terraformindustries.wordpress.com

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Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#101

Post by arcanemachiner »

bamboozled wrote: post #93
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...

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/...

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#102

Post by slashnode »

bamboozled wrote: post #93
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...

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?

I think the point is that methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, so if leaked, the net greenhouse impact is greater than that of the original CO2 that went into the process

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#103

Post by rhelz »

pfdietz wrote: post #63
jfengel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Water is right there, but the hydrogen is really closely bound to the oxygen, and extremely hard to get out. It's considerably easier to get H2 out of methane. Unfortunately, that process also yields CO2, so it's not helping the greenhouse gas situation. Hydrogen proponents suggest a route where we start with "blue hydrogen" from natural gas. Then, when we've got a good H2 infrastructure going and a lot of excess ele…

There is this really dumb internet meme, that hydrogen is just there as a plot by the fossil fuel industry to keep selling fossil fuels. What this ignores is that hydrogen must still be made even in a post-fossil fuel economy. It's not optional. Production of ammonia requires hydrogen, and without ammonia-derived nitrogen fertilizer billions of people will starve. About half the nitrogen atoms in your body came from…

100% of anything doesn't really go away. We still use horse-drawn vehicles for some purposes. But we didn't have to get rid of 100% of the horse-drawn vehicles to get rid of the mountains of horse shit which used to accumulate on city streets.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#104

Post by julienchastang »

Their minimalist website is awesome: https://terraformindustries.com/ complete with plain text chemical equations.

"Why does our website look like this? At TI we believe we can change the world by displacing fossil hydrocarbon production at global scale. Like our website, our machines are simple so we can build millions of them as quickly as possible. Our website embodies our cultural commitment to allocating resources where they solve the most important problems."

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#106

Post by NewJazz »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #69
rbliss wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But if the main problem with industry is that it leaks then maybe you do still have to reinvent it.

Seriously, how do you know whether the supply chain is truly using one process to synthesize, vs. Adding/cutting with extracted fuel.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#107

Post by marcosdumay »

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?

If you are talking about thermodynamics, chemical energy is exactly of the same grade as electricity.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#108

Post by bamboozled »

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/...

Ok thanks.

Well we're super fucked then because I've read that all the freaking / coal seam gas infra leaks million of tons of methane every year.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#109

Post by rich_sasha »

kartoffelmos wrote: post #37

How will this address methane leakage, which is a substantial source of athmospheric greenhouse gas emissions? Converting Co2 to methane is not carbon neutral if/when leaked...

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.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#110

Post by joking »

bamboozled wrote: post #93
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...

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?

Because methane is worse than co2 as a greenhouse gas
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