What are the use cases of CO2 appart for making my Coke fizz?
You can combine it with H2 to produce synthetic fuels. Not ideal but could reduce fossil fuel use and hence new CO2 released.
Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
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Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
#22This solves only part of the problem: it captures CO2 and can release it later. But you still need to figure out what to do with this CO2, how to turn it into something useful.
The answer is obvious: create a cryptocurrency-based economy where countries and citizens are incentivized to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and ship it into space in exchange for crypto.
/s
One of the subplots from the excellent Delta-V series by Daniel Suarez.
Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
#23The thing people don't think about with regards to CO2 capture is that you have to get the atmosphere in order to capture CO2 from it. You essentially have to suck the entire atmosphere into these carbon capture facilities. Using something like this to capture carbon from an exhaust pipe might be viable, but scrubbing CO2 out of the atmosphere is not even remotely viable. There's just too much air out there.
You can actually capture CO2 from sea water thereby reducing ocean acidification and improving its capability to continue as our planets biggest CO2 sink.
Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
#24What are the use cases of CO2 appart for making my Coke fizz?
Off the top of my head, CO2 can be used as a solvent for dry cleaning, it can extract THC from cannabis, and can also be used as a refrigerant.
Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
#25This solves only part of the problem: it captures CO2 and can release it later. But you still need to figure out what to do with this CO2, how to turn it into something useful.
Stable storage would be limestone. To bring it down to pre-industrial levels it would mean that each person on earth would get a cube of 5 meters a side.
IDK, build houses out of limestone like we have been doing for ages.
Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
#26Economics rules everything. How much does this cost vs simply planting trees, when the value of harvesting the trees is included? Since tree farms are generally profitable, and wood is expensive, it seems this method is likely to be economically less efficient.
The problem is you cannot plant enough trees around the globe to offset our CO2 emissions. Also, a forest only absorbs CO2 while alive. Once it dies, it emits CO2 too. You would need to permanently store the wood somewhere (submerging in water, etc). Recent article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/28/africa-f...
One little appreciated fact is that trees also respirate CO2 when they are cracking their stored sugars produced via photosynthesis. So they don’t sequester all of the CO2 that they consume.
Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
#27Economics rules everything. How much does this cost vs simply planting trees, when the value of harvesting the trees is included? Since tree farms are generally profitable, and wood is expensive, it seems this method is likely to be economically less efficient.
The problem is you cannot plant enough trees around the globe to offset our CO2 emissions. Also, a forest only absorbs CO2 while alive. Once it dies, it emits CO2 too. You would need to permanently store the wood somewhere (submerging in water, etc). Recent article: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/nov/28/africa-f...
Biochar seems like a good option
Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
#28Economics rules everything. How much does this cost vs simply planting trees, when the value of harvesting the trees is included? Since tree farms are generally profitable, and wood is expensive, it seems this method is likely to be economically less efficient.
I agree. Plants are not very efficient (1% or 2%) but they include packaging the CO2 in a stable form. You can store the grain or wood for long periods of times. In this case, it looks like they get CO2 as a gas. It's cheaper because you don't have to use energy to undo the burning, but it's difficult to store for a long time. (I'm not sure if someone tried to make a fake underground bog in abandoned mine. Just fill…
Take a look at "wood vault".
'Wood vaulting': A simple climate solution you’ve probably never heard of | Grist https://share.google/lS8xnMGEd1pMzlNg2
Economically not attractive but apparently very efficient in locking up CO2.
Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
#29The thing people don't think about with regards to CO2 capture is that you have to get the atmosphere in order to capture CO2 from it. You essentially have to suck the entire atmosphere into these carbon capture facilities. Using something like this to capture carbon from an exhaust pipe might be viable, but scrubbing CO2 out of the atmosphere is not even remotely viable. There's just too much air out there.
You can actually capture CO2 from sea water thereby reducing ocean acidification and improving its capability to continue as our planets biggest CO2 sink.
there's also lots of water to wash then.
The problem is the same, the relative concentration of oxygen in air is less than 0.05% (~450pars per million). In water much less.
Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
#30The thing people don't think about with regards to CO2 capture is that you have to get the atmosphere in order to capture CO2 from it. You essentially have to suck the entire atmosphere into these carbon capture facilities. Using something like this to capture carbon from an exhaust pipe might be viable, but scrubbing CO2 out of the atmosphere is not even remotely viable. There's just too much air out there.
You can actually capture CO2 from sea water thereby reducing ocean acidification and improving its capability to continue as our planets biggest CO2 sink.
Well here's the thing - there's quite a lot of water out there too.
How long and how many terawatts of power do you think it'll take to suck a significant fraction of the earth's seawater through a capture facility?