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Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

terraformindustries.wordpress.com

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Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#121

Post by Moto7451 »

rich_sasha wrote: post #109
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.

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 infrastructure.

Carbon neutral is a useful feature but doesn’t solve that problem.

I will say I am a fan of carbon neutral methane in place of the efforts to move to hydrogen combustion (this is a thing) and hydrogen for fuel cells since there isn’t a commercially viable carbon neutral version of that yet.

Making existing methane infrastructure cleaner and less leaky is better, in my mind, in the path to solar/wind/nuclear electrification than trying to capture the emissions of coal or retool petroleum infrastructure into hydrogen.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#123

Post by mschuster91 »

tgtweak wrote: post #81
joe_the_user wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks good. I wish their headline was "natural gas from solar power" 'cause many things labeled "carbon neutral" wind-up being conventional petrochemicals plus some worthless "offsets" baloney.

In theory you can use any power source - hydroelectric, geothermal, nuclear, wind - but the benefit to solar is that you can fully utilize it when the sun is shining and store the output (compressed natural gas) for storage, transportation and use off-hours. You could also technically use this as a grid-battery, taking in excess grid energy when it is cheap and converting it into natural gas that can be run back thro…

> You could also technically use this as a grid-battery, taking in excess grid energy when it is cheap and converting it into natural gas that can be run back through a gas peaking plant that spins up to meet peak demand.

The loss in such a cycle is abysmal, alone from thermal loss (not to mention the loss during compression and decompression) - even straight fuel cells are at 60% round-trip, compared to batteries with >>90% efficiency.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#124

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

NewJazz wrote: post #106
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On the demand side, I imagine you'd be drawing fuel gas from a rig that's like, in your neighborhood, being powered by the solar panels on your roof. So you'd probably notice if there were tanker trucks showing up to fill it.

On the supply side, you could use things like methane sniffing satellites (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00600-z) to find cases of extraction and tax (at first) or arrest (eventually) those participating in it.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#125

Post by pstrateman »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #116
pstrateman wrote: post #114

Did I miss it or does this not actually say what the cost of methane priced by them is? I see H2, DC power, and CO2 DAC, costs but no total.

Their whitepaper uses $10/kcf.

I assume the whitepaper missed details of production that they have since had to account for.

I'm quite curious what their cost is today.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#126

Post by imbusy111 »

Moto7451 wrote: post #121
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.

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.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#127

Post by rhelz »

mikeatlas wrote: post #25
rhelz wrote: post #19

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…

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

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

They claim the green way to go is converting hydrogen into methane....check out the link for a company claiming the green way to go is converting methane to hydrogen:

https://www.pnnl.gov/news-media/new-clean-energy-process-con...

I rather suspect that taking an energy detour through methane either way is a red herring. I mean....the OP says that their whole process is powered by solar energy. So they are presupposing that solar energy is going to be WAAAYYYY cheaper than methane. Why not just use the solar power directly?

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#128

Post by BWStearns »

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...

Doesn't methane get reacted away in a relatively short (≈years) period of time?

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#129

Post by timerol »

spenczar5 wrote: post #50
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?

You’re missing density of storage. Gasoline and natural gas are in the region of 50 MJ/kg, while batteries are more like 10MJ/kg or lower. That 5x factor is what stops us from having electric airplanes.

10 MJ/kg is way overstated for batteries. Current Li-ion is around 1 MJ/kg (278 Wh/kg)
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