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

Carbon Removal Technologies

carbon.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 682 posts

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#141

Post by romed »

nostromo wrote: post #124
astrodust wrote: post #90

At the rate we're setting up for a future where the entire ocean blooms, dies, and we're left with nothing. Already jellyfish are taking over. We're killing off so many life forms we're essentially going back in time to the precambrian era. Instead of looking for "quick fixes" like iron seeding, which has just as much a chance of going awry as Australia importing cane toads to deal with their crop insects, let's just…

> let's just curtail CO2 emissions We are though. Most people I talk to don't know that the US peaked CO2 emissions ten years ago and it's been falling every since - in per capita, per GDP, and absolute terms.

But the decline hasn’t been monotonic. There have been several years of the past ten where absolute and per-capita CO2 emissions in the US have increased year-over-year.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#143

Post by crb002 »

GreeniFi wrote: post #2

We already have carbon removal technology. They’re called trees. [Edit] I’m not being facetious. 40% of emissions are as a result of poor land management. We’ll need all the technological help we can get, but if we can’t manage land as carbon stores - not sources, we’re not going to win this race.

This. We need USDA money going to tree genetics for carbon sequestration. Pat Schnabble at ISU would be amazing at this. He has already isolated genes to thicken cell walls. He also has a novel technique of using time-lapse video to isolate lines that maximize solar uptake by cooperating with neighbors on how they grow. Almost all grain productivity in the past 20 years has been on cooperative solar coverage, not per plant yield. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXiV1dTlRSU

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#144

Post by joe_the_user »

gustaf wrote: post #72
GreeniFi wrote: post #2

We already have carbon removal technology. They’re called trees. [Edit] I’m not being facetious. 40% of emissions are as a result of poor land management. We’ll need all the technological help we can get, but if we can’t manage land as carbon stores - not sources, we’re not going to win this race.

This is Gustaf from YC. I wrote the first Carbon Removal RFS. Planting tree is actually a great carbon removal technology. Unfortunately most forest owners in the world don't know or don't have incentive to care the about the carbon impact the forest have on the climate. Biggest reason forests are taken down is to grow cattle for beef. If you are working on a startup to reverse this we'd like to fund it too

Well,

The other thing with trees is that they aren't permanent carbon sinks in the way that coal underground is.

Wood will eventually rot or burn and release it's carbon.

Human beings have taken carbon in the form of hydrocarbons underground and released is into the C02 - O2 cycle in the air. The main way to solve this would seem to be putting it back into the ground. So, reverse coal-mining? Turning wood into charcoal and burying? These seem like necessary counter-parts to simply growing trees.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#145

Post by chimere »

Charm Industrial [1] was recently mentioned on HN, with a novel approach to BECCS using grass to produce carbon-negative hydrogen. Grasses are the highest-yielding biomass per acre and thus the cheapest CO2 removal option. It also helps if you can make a profitable product from that biomass, like Charm is doing with hydrogen.

Not much info online, but we have a weekly climate newsletter [2], or you can ask me (cofounder)

[1] https://www.charmindustrial.com/about/

[2] https://charmindustrial.us18.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=aaf...

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#146

Post by [deleted] »

all_usernames wrote: post #71

I recently heard about Carbon Engineering, a B.C. Canada based firm that is extracting carbon from the atmosphere and making liquid fuel -- they call it "recycled fuel." Apparently it can be used in existing combustion engines. And it is already up and running. Something on the order of 10,000 of these industrial plants could get us carbon neutral rather quickly. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-co…

[deleted]

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#147

Post by romed »

atupis wrote: post #133
mdorazio wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is covered in the "Where We Are Now" section at the bottom that explains BECCS. The issue is really cost - to remove carbon semi-permanently with trees you have to grow a lot of them, and then bury them deep enough that natural decay processes don't just put the carbon back into the environment. Basically you have to do the exact opposite of what we've been doing with coal and oil for over a century.

Why not build houses from trees that will take carbon out 100-200 years from cycle.

Not just houses but any kind of building. There is an architectural movement called Mass Timber where the buildings are not just framed in wood but are virtually solid wood. It actually solves a lot of problems around building cavity thermodynamics, by eliminating the cavities. A large scale mass timber building sequesters a huge amount of carbon.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#148

Post by vkou »

nostromo wrote: post #124
astrodust wrote: post #90

At the rate we're setting up for a future where the entire ocean blooms, dies, and we're left with nothing. Already jellyfish are taking over. We're killing off so many life forms we're essentially going back in time to the precambrian era. Instead of looking for "quick fixes" like iron seeding, which has just as much a chance of going awry as Australia importing cane toads to deal with their crop insects, let's just…

> let's just curtail CO2 emissions We are though. Most people I talk to don't know that the US peaked CO2 emissions ten years ago and it's been falling every since - in per capita, per GDP, and absolute terms.

Just because you've taken the foot off the accelerator, doesn't mean that we're going to stop before we drive off a cliff.

I've yet to see a plan for a transition to a carbon-neutral economy, even on a 30-year timeline.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#149

Post by angel_j »

Energy is needed to separate CO2 into carbon and oxygen. At the individual molecular scale, this can't be much. How many can I separate at once with my hands?

If we invent a device that helps us to physically separate oxygen from carbon, humans and farm animals could do it. It would be like milling grain, or washing clothes.

Idea: create filters which are big enough for carbon to pass through, but not oxygen. Then "squeeze" a bunch of air through, and wipe away the carbon on one side. Like a cheesecloth made of carbon nanotubes...

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#150

Post by crb002 »

Symmetry wrote: post #55
GreeniFi wrote: post #2

We already have carbon removal technology. They’re called trees. [Edit] I’m not being facetious. 40% of emissions are as a result of poor land management. We’ll need all the technological help we can get, but if we can’t manage land as carbon stores - not sources, we’re not going to win this race.

Trees will only absorb 1 watt of hydrocarbon emissions per square meter, on average, even before considering the cost of burying the woods so the carbon isn't released when it rots.

Nuts. Literally. Breed oaks with acorns so dense they are like rocks.
Post reply on HN