What are the environmental and economioc costs of producing 1 tonne of substrate? It seems a glaring hole in your post.
Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
181–190 of 198 posts
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to derail the OP discussion; but, how does one go about pumping water to great depths? That sounds like it would require immense energy to do on any large scale. Also thinking of the maintenance on the presumably narrow vertical pipe going miles(?) below the ocean.
Hmm, off the top of my head I think that it takes as much energy to pump water down a 1-foot tube as it would for a 1000-foot tube. It's like rotating a long loop of chain on a pulley, but in three dimensions. One liter of water goes down the tube, one liter of water comes up around the tube. Both sides weigh equal amounts so there's no net force. Of course, overcoming inertia to get the water moving and keeping it m…
> Both sides weigh equal amounts so there's no net force.
Water at 40m depth has a different pressure than at the surface level. Pumping at the surface and releasing at depth will have significant water pressure difference.
(A quick Google later). At 40m, it's 5atm or roughly 75psi pressure.
(Another quick Google). Oil pipelines run at a higher order of magnitude as that, so it's doable but would return energy, increasing as you go deeper.
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the problem with that approach is that it would be harder to establish a regulatory framework were you can get "I sequestered CO2 credits" if your pumps are out in the ocean and pumping the CO2 into deeper waters. The capturing facilities inland are easier to audit and regulate. So yeah maybe it's better for the planet but since it's harder to regulate it would be tricky to get funding to build that if the po…
Pumped water volume and pH are easy to measure, precisely identifying how much CO2 is being sequestered. These could be reported continuously via satellite link. It doesn't cost any less to keep a wind turbine and pump still than to leave it running, so there will be no incentive to cheat.
I was not thinking it was a technological challenge, I was more concerned about how useless governments in general are at regulating stuff that happens in the sea. There's no civil arm of the government that runs around in boats inspecting and certifying stuff.
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm, off the top of my head I think that it takes as much energy to pump water down a 1-foot tube as it would for a 1000-foot tube. It's like rotating a long loop of chain on a pulley, but in three dimensions. One liter of water goes down the tube, one liter of water comes up around the tube. Both sides weigh equal amounts so there's no net force. Of course, overcoming inertia to get the water moving and keeping it m…
> Both sides weigh equal amounts so there's no net force. Water at 40m depth has a different pressure than at the surface level. Pumping at the surface and releasing at depth will have significant water pressure difference. (A quick Google later). At 40m, it's 5atm or roughly 75psi pressure. (Another quick Google). Oil pipelines run at a higher order of magnitude as that, so it's doable but would return energy, incre…
Gravity takes care of the pressures. If you put a long pipe vertically in the water, with its bottom open and its top sticking up a couple meters on top, and then put some water into the top of it, what happens to the water column inside?
You do not need to get the water at the surface to 10, or 100, or 1000 atm. You just need a long pipe that goes all the way to the bottom.
Likewise for transporting water upward.
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thats only 6,250 gallons of water.. less than a single 10K water truck you've seen everywhere. THe question is how many tons does this plan to produce over what period?
If you want to delay the impact of climate change by 1 year by sequestering one year of of CO2 added to the environment through saline sequestration, that's about 40 billion 10K water trucks worth of storage, or about 40 Lake Tahoes turned into saline storage ponds, and you need to add that much storage capacity every year just to keep atmospheric CO2 from getting worse than it is (you're not yet to the scale of redu…
Hopefully this will help people realize it will be a lot more impactful to reduce GHG emissions as a priority rather than focusing on trying to capture and store the growing output. Yes both can help, but first stop the bleeding.
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#186The numbers seem to indicate some challenges. This is just back of the envelope and this isn't my field so I may be misinterpreting the data, but it looks like extracting 1 million tons of CO2 per year has the following costs (at lab scale values): * > 1 Billion dollars * > 5 Million MWhr Assuming 200 Kg/MWhr of CO2 emissions produced by electrical generation (I believe the average carbon intensity in the USA is over…
If you're setting this up at enough scale to matter, you're going to need more power than is available today anyway. As long as you're building new, it would make sense to build renewable or nuclear.
Yes, but wouldn’t it be better to simply replace dirty power generation with this new renewable electricity rather than expending all of the renewable power on this hypothetical CO2 extraction facility. At some point, I suppose, the overall carbon footprint of our world’s electrical generation will come down to the point where CO2 extraction will be a net win. Right now it’s not clear to me.
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s hopeless. Feel so powerless.
Why? There are ~8 billion humans to get stuff done — it’s not all on your shoulders. Even if only 1% of the world both can and will fix it, it’s still in the realm of stuff that can be fixed.
and zero fictitious dollars to fund such motivation to fix.
Only dollars too fund(sustain) suppression....
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Could? Yes. It'd probably be the most expensive way to get rid of CO2, though. So? I in this context that is a plus not a minus!
How is that a plus? If it's more expensive it means you're pulling less CO2 out of the atmosphere than if had gone with a cheaper method.
WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU CONCERNED WITH EXPENSE RATHER THAN SURVIVAL?
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Serious question.
-- musk. (and ppl like Thiel cooncerned with eternal life (Rocks, Roths, etc)....
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thats only 6,250 gallons of water.. less than a single 10K water truck you've seen everywhere. THe question is how many tons does this plan to produce over what period?
If you want to delay the impact of climate change by 1 year by sequestering one year of of CO2 added to the environment through saline sequestration, that's about 40 billion 10K water trucks worth of storage, or about 40 Lake Tahoes turned into saline storage ponds, and you need to add that much storage capacity every year just to keep atmospheric CO2 from getting worse than it is (you're not yet to the scale of redu…
K, I would like to pose the following Q
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What ~~would be the balance btwn the effort for climate change, vs,~~
What the heck are we doing?
We keep talk of CO2 offsets, and Sequestering...
WE FUCKING NEVER SPEAK OF PROCESS OPTIMIAZATION WHICH REDUCE CO2 T BEGIN WITH??? !!!
Band-aid much bitch. WTF?!
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could we put them into pods and throw them at Mars so we start dumping Co2 on Mars for Musk's Mars Mushroom Mart! too grow.
The rocket you use to sling them at Mars will produce orders of magnitude more CO2 than it could carry to Mars. And this is completely ignoring the CO2 cost of building the rocket.
Remember the slingshot company?
THAT is a viable reason for them