Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas • Hacker News Board

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#131

Post by rhelz » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 10:25 PM UTC

alexb_ wrote: post #23

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…

> They claim a breakthrough in converting hydrogen to natural gas, but natural gas is by far the cheapest source of H2. Are you serious? Water is right there!

> Are you serious?

yes :-) Think about it: why did Saturn V use hydrogen and oxygen? Because burning hydrogen produces more energy by weight than any other chemical reaction.

If putting hydrogen and oxygen together releases the most energy, then splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen would also take the most energy. Any other chemical reaction which yielded H2 would take less energy.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#132

Post by cool_dude85 » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 10:40 PM UTC

api wrote: post #95

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...

Methane has a much shorter atmospheric half life than CO2-- years as opposed to millennia. It does end up getting oxidized into CO2 and H2O, just not nearly as quickly as when it's burned. Leaks would happen to a small degree, but since a leak represents money drifting away there's a strong incentive to fix them. Methane leaks of any size are fairly easy to detect. There's been an effort to put up satellites for this…

>Leaks would happen to a small degree, but since a leak represents money drifting away there's a strong incentive to fix them.

This is true of existing natural gas infrastructure, and yet...

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#133

Post by realreality » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 10:43 PM UTC

BWStearns wrote: post #128

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?

Atmospheric methane oxidizes into CO2 and water vapor. Then the CO2 hangs around for much longer...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane#Natural_si...

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#134

Post by konschubert » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 10:45 PM UTC

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.

It doesn’t matter. This isn’t driven by consumer choice, it’s driven by production cost.

At least that’s the idea.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#135

Post by stephen_g » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 10:46 PM UTC

BWStearns wrote: post #128

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?

No, that’s the problem. The GWPs usually quoted are over 20 years (GWP 81.2) and 100 years (27.9), but over 500 years it’s still around a GWP of 8.

Depends on your definition of a ‘long time’ but it’s not like it reaches the low single digits even after 500 years…

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#136

Post by cqqxo4zV46cp » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 10:58 PM UTC

julienchastang wrote: post #104

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 resourc…

“Like our machines, our website looks awful on a phone.”

Someone could’ve spent literally 5 minutes making this look reasonable on the world’s most popular web browsing device form facto, whilst still retaining the site’s retro virtue signalling aesthetic, AND it wouldn’t have taken away from their ‘core mission’ or whatever.

If you don’t care, don’t have a website at all.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#137

Post by beachy » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 11:05 PM UTC

julienchastang wrote: post #104

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 resourc…

I particularly love this:

> Are you an excellent recruiter? We get a lot of inbounds. To help us qualify your ability to match our needs, please send us your strongest candidate, a singular champion, as an exemplar of your talent hunting skill.

After a lifetime of doing HR software this sparks thoughts about a scoreboard/ranking system for agencies with exactly this kind of "you've got one chance - don't blow it" scenario. Maybe once you've provided 5 great candidates you're allowed a dud or two.

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#138

Post by mojomark » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 11:07 PM UTC

aaronax wrote: post #115

arcanemachiner wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

>>...on what measurement?

By CO2 equivalence in the context of greenhouse gas potential [1]. And, the 30X factor is only valid if you look over scales of atmospheric persistence of 100yrs. If you look at scales of 10years (the amount of time methane persists, the GHG potential strength a over 80X.

Liquid (Cryogenic) natural gas tankers and storage emit "boiloff" gas. Some of this can be burned in the 'dual fuel' propulsion engines when combined with a small amount of diesel "pilot" fuel, but not all and I'm uncertain at what quantity. Even engines that burn NG gave methane "leak by" that escapes into the atmosphere. It's not great, and no, nobody is enforcing containment via satellites at the LNG shipping level (despite a comment to the company trary above).

Hydrogen production is a much better option for dense energy storage option.

1.) https://climatechangeconnection.org/emissions/co2-equivalent...

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#139

Post by dullcrisp » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 11:09 PM UTC

cqqxo4zV46cp wrote: post #136

julienchastang wrote: post #104

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 resourc…

“Like our machines, our website looks awful on a phone.” Someone could’ve spent literally 5 minutes making this look reasonable on the world’s most popular web browsing device form facto, whilst still retaining the site’s retro virtue signalling aesthetic, AND it wouldn’t have taken away from their ‘core mission’ or whatever. If you don’t care, don’t have a website at all.

Who left you in charge?

Re: Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas

#140

Post by pydry » Wed, Apr 03, 2024, 11:11 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #123

tgtweak wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wi…

Batteries are good at smoothing out daily or even weekly variations but do not make any sense whatsoever for seasonal power storage.

It's ridiculously cost ineffective to charge a battery in July only to discharge it in December.

60% roundtrip is cost effective if you're synthesizing when the sun is blazing and the wind is blowing hard and burning it when wind, solar and batteries have all tapped out.

Thats especially so if the equipment has low capex which it seems like this does. Unlike batteries that makes it cost effective to overbuild and idle it most of the year.