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

Gallium helps convert CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen

mining.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 187 posts

Re: Gallium helps convert CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen

#161

Post by merb »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #100
evgen wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only reason [Gallium] is relatively inexpensive is that there is limited demand for the minuscule quantities that are currently produced. It is possible that we might be able to find more if we actively start looking for it? This would not be the first time that what was once a waste product becomes valuable once we know how to use it. Regarding gallium itself, its presence as basically waste product in bauxite…

Gallium is found everywhere, it doesn't make sense to actively search for it because it doesn't concentrate anywhere. That's the whole problem. There is little that distinguishes bauxite ore from my backyard in terms of the amount of gallium that can be extracted. The advantage of extracting it from certain ore waste streams is two-fold even though they don't contain much gallium. First, the chemical processing cost…

wouldn't it also increase tailings thus we would just change our pollution problem from co2 to toxic mining waste? I mean aren't tailings from bauxite highly toxic?

Re: Gallium helps convert CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen

#162

Post by malermeister »

joe_the_user wrote: post #126
malermeister wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a classic case of victim blaming. You and I didn't "keep up demand" because we wanted to, we "kept up demand" because it was the only option available to heat our homes. It's not our fault the industry didn't provide us with alternatives.

Whether you blame the fossil fuel industry or not, they don't have the cure to their destruction in their back pocket or something. Even if you seized all the stocks and bonds of the fossil fuel industry, you wouldn't have the money required to solve this problem and you wouldn't have a plan to solve the problem. It's not our fault the industry didn't provide us with alternatives. It's not really the job of a given i…

They might not have the cure in their back pocket, but they sure hid evidence of the consequences of their actions for decades. [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...

Re: Gallium helps convert CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen

#163

Post by krrrh »

bitwize wrote: post #128
jandrewrogers wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gallium cannot be produced at scale because it does not form concentrated ores in nature. It cannot be usefully mined directly. The only reason it is relatively inexpensive is that there is limited demand for the minuscule quantities that are currently produced. Gallium is currently supplied by reprocessing the waste from other convenient metal ores to extract the traces of gallium. Even if we maximized gallium extra…

Yeah, basically there's only one solution to the CO2 problem that's also the solution with the least political will to push it through: deindustrialization. Everything else relies on miracles and/or unobtainium.

The level of industrialization that we’ve reached in the present moment is a key contributor to falling birth rates, and what will soon be a stable and shrinking human population, a process already achieved in advanced nations and one we shouldn’t get in the way of in the places where it still has some time to go.

De-industrialization would result in growing population and an even more massive increase in the conversion of wildlands to food production.

Re: Gallium helps convert CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen

#164

Post by malermeister »

throwawayboise wrote: post #134
malermeister wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the problem is "real", it will be too late for solutions. We need to do something right now. Besides, I'd argue the problem is starting to be "real" right now. California, Australia, Siberia and Greece were on fire this year, Germany had historic floods and the East Coast keeps getting devastated by hurricanes. I also disagree with the tactic of shifting responsibility to the individual to avoid doing anything w…

You're not wrong, but I'm being realistic about human nature. People are not going support heavy regulations that make their lives more difficult and expensive, if they are working 5 or 6 days a week to pay bills and support a family. Some theoretical problem 20 years from now is not high on their list of concerns.

Might this be an indicator that democracy is no longer fit for our times and we need an authoritarian technocracy to save ourselves? Maybe the Chinese are onto something there? Their system obviously has flaws, but they do get to make unpopular changes for the common good while Congress does nothing of the sort...

Re: Gallium helps convert CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen

#165

Post by atleta »

joe_the_user wrote: post #122
mcdonje wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, a robust carbon tax.

A carbon tax is essentially going to hit the average person hard. Moreover, the average person has a lot of driving they have to do, tax or not. And plenty of rich people could ignore the tax and keep driving. And the political impact would be angry people ready to listen climate deniers. What's needed is a plan to eventually give everyone an electric car or some choice, any choice, that lets them do their daily busi…

> A carbon tax is essentially going to hit the average person hard.

Well, that's the very point. (And it was even why the carbon tax was mentioned in response to the GP comment.) Unless you make CO2 emissions (CO2 emitting behaviour) expensive for the members of the society (you can say, the average person) they (we) won't stop doing these.

Yes, a lot of people feel they have to drive a lot. But they probably don't. They can just afford it and thus they've organized their lives around being able to drive a lot.

Now if all these behaviours and activities would become very expensive then the market would come up with cheaper substitutes. Yes, people would have to change too but it wouldn't mean that everyone would just stop what they are doing and thus their lives would somehow grind to a halt. (E.g. can't drive to work any more doesn't have to mean can't work any more.) Carbon tax will also make carbon based energy production expensive which means that the alternatives will immediately seem cheaper and there will be a lot of incentive in deployment and development. Nuclear plants (fission plants, fusion ones don't seem anywhere near) will become attractive again and probably cheaper and more robust as well.

Nobody's claiming it's not hard. The claim is that it is the better solution. The other one is running into a very nasty future where food is expensive, water is tight and hundreds of millions of people will want to come to live to your country (unless you are one of thse who will have to migrate).

Re: Gallium helps convert CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen

#166

Post by perl4ever »

bitwize wrote: post #128
jandrewrogers wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gallium cannot be produced at scale because it does not form concentrated ores in nature. It cannot be usefully mined directly. The only reason it is relatively inexpensive is that there is limited demand for the minuscule quantities that are currently produced. Gallium is currently supplied by reprocessing the waste from other convenient metal ores to extract the traces of gallium. Even if we maximized gallium extra…

Yeah, basically there's only one solution to the CO2 problem that's also the solution with the least political will to push it through: deindustrialization. Everything else relies on miracles and/or unobtainium.

If you consider fission power to be unacceptable.

I'm not advocating it, but it is the off-the-shelf option that would supply all power without CO2 emissions. No miracles or unobtanium needed.

Not converting everything is a choice, and so is producing nuclear waste.

Re: Gallium helps convert CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen

#167

Post by zarzavat »

andy_ppp wrote: post #156
exporectomy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication of that is that we should accept climate change, is that what you're saying? Deindustrialization would probably be worse than climate change so it's likely not an option. In case you want deindustrialization, can you estimate it consequences in terms of deaths caused or some other important metric so we can compare it to climate change?

I think we could do the following; local seasonal food farmed as naturally as possible. It’s likely to still use some carbon, but doing this would massively reduce what’s used today. Tax meat production heavily. Tax air travel heavily and these taxes should increase exponentially per journey per person. Stop shipping goods half way around the world… make the things you need locally. Improve the grid and invest in pla…

This is the conventional wisdom, but as you mention it's not politically possible. It would be hard for one country to enact all of these changes, let alone all the world's countries.

There is an alternative path and that is radical renewable energy production. Many of the things you mention are not intrinsically harmful, they are only harmful because of the dependency on fossil fuels. For example, shipping things around the world is not intrinsically harmful, it is only harmful because it today requires fossil fuels.

From this perspective the actual problem is a shortage of renewable energy. If we build vastly more renewable energy capacity then we can make fossil fuels economically unviable. Since that is a problem of money rather than politics it is much more viable as a solution.

Re: Gallium helps convert CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen

#168

Post by macinjosh »

rtpg wrote: post #63
hcurtiss wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would pay that debt for past emissions, and what price should they pay?

Perhaps society as a whole should just try to solve these problems. This is the tarpit of market-based solutions: debating endlessly about who bears costs, instead of just doing collective things collectively. And if you do have markets, every middleman and their dog will demand their slice of the pie.

I will not be part of your collective.

Re: Gallium helps convert CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen

#169

Post by redprince »

merb wrote: post #161
jandrewrogers wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gallium is found everywhere, it doesn't make sense to actively search for it because it doesn't concentrate anywhere. That's the whole problem. There is little that distinguishes bauxite ore from my backyard in terms of the amount of gallium that can be extracted. The advantage of extracting it from certain ore waste streams is two-fold even though they don't contain much gallium. First, the chemical processing cost…

wouldn't it also increase tailings thus we would just change our pollution problem from co2 to toxic mining waste? I mean aren't tailings from bauxite highly toxic?

The tailings from the Bayer process for extracting aluminium oxide from bauxite aren't toxic. The remains ("red mud") have an elevated pH from the residual sodium hydroxide used in the extraction of the ore but that's about it. There's a lot of it though and that sheer amount makes it a bit of an environmental problem as Red Mud has limited industrial use and much of it will be dumped / stored somewhere.

Re: Gallium helps convert CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen

#170

Post by redprince »

alkonaut wrote: post #145
credit_guy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good point. But there are two problems with that claim. One is about an order a magnitude, the other about a sign. The first one: if you burn 1kg of pure Carbon, you get 3.67 kg of CO2 and 32.8 MegaJoules [1], which is the same as 32800 kJ or, 32800/3600 kWh. That's 9.11 kWh for each 3.67 kg of CO2, or 2.4848 kWh/kg. That's quite close to 2500 kWh/ton. They are claiming it takes them 230 kWh/ton to reverse this react…

> They are claiming it takes them 230 kWh/ton to reverse this reaction. I don’t think that’s a claim in the article. If the carbon product was pure in the sense it could be burned again then it wouldn’t work out. But that’s not claimed. It’s not reduced to carbon!

To quote the article:

"The reactions break the carbon dioxide into oxygen gas, as well as carbonaceous sheets which ‘float’ to the surface of the container due to differences in density and can therefore be easily extracted."

and

"According to the research team, the process showed 92% efficiency in converting a tonne of CO2, using just 230kWh of energy."

Post reply on HN