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Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

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231–240 of 349 posts

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#231

I am not against doing research in this area, please do, it is interesting and likely has many applications but global CO2 removal isn't one of them. Nothing proposed, including this, is within any orders of magnitude of a viable solution. The only solution we have is put less in the air in the first place. This tech looks interesting for transporting CO2 but that doesn't mean it sequesters it and even if sequestrati…

I'm going to have to disagree in a (hopefully) nuanced way. First, I just ran an end-to-end continent scale simulation of CO2 sequestration for the US, as is. To put it bluntly: there's no way outside of magical pocket sized fusion that will make this work. If you add full ground transportation abatement; full power abatement; and, then, use dedicated thermal sources, then the final cost is ~1 trillion a year. And, that's after all the positive upsides to the economy. There's a bunch of "almost unlimited upside" to be had from not having to move Miami, Houston, etc., but it's too complicated to model. However, just the healthcare implication upsides are roughly parity, disaster included.

But! Notice that abatement doesn't get us to 0. It merely slows the process. The remainder absolutely needs ACC. The output stream needs to be dirt cheap, the thermals need to be 100°C and not 900°C. Those sorts of things would bring ACC down to "hundreds of billions" rather than a trillion.

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#232
post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop writing confident rhetorical takes on about which you know nothing.

You really created an account to post this?

Not just that, he burned a cool username for it. Shame on him!

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#233

I am not against doing research in this area, please do, it is interesting and likely has many applications but global CO2 removal isn't one of them. Nothing proposed, including this, is within any orders of magnitude of a viable solution. The only solution we have is put less in the air in the first place. This tech looks interesting for transporting CO2 but that doesn't mean it sequesters it and even if sequestrati…

Zoidberg is always worth quoting.

“Why not both?”

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#234
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do you think it will only be used as fuel? it can also be used to build things with it

I didn't say fuel. It also rots when used as a building material.

Then you’ve built poorly. That’s not the wood’s fault

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#235
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implicit model in "just emit less" is that human coordination problems are easier than engineering problems. That's historically backwards. We're extremely good at building things. We're terrible at getting everyone to sacrifice simultaneously for diffuse future benefits. Please generalize this!

Covid proved this generalisation is not a truism. USofA was probably the only place that actively resisted the global effort. I think people do want a better world. Greed is not universal. Most countries that grow a middle class find most people prefer to stop work. I.e. there are not that many infinitely greedy humans. And they can be taxed. Despite neocon economic theory, most people aren't selfish. And those that…

COVID didn’t cost anyone anything in terms of improved standard of living. Curbing emissions growth would do that.

People aren’t “greedy,” but my family in Bangladesh absolutely wants to live like my family in America, or at the very least like my family in Canada. They don’t consider that “greedy” and if you tell them it is they’ll laugh at you.

The country’s CO2 emissions per person have increased by a factor of 5x since we left in 1989, consistent with per capita GDP going up by 10x. Even on an efficient development path it’s going to go up another 5x in order to increase the country’s GDP per capita another 10x, which will put it at the level of a poor eastern european country like Hungary or Croatia. That’s the earliest anyone is even going to listen to you about CO2 reduction.

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#236
post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we need to offset the last 3 centuries of coal use is to reverse the process. Plant large amounts of trees, cut them, burn the hydrogen part of them, producing char and reclaiming some energy, then bury the resulting coal back in the abandoned coal mines.

> burn the hydrogen part of them Could you elaborate

I guess Coke.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coke_(fuel)

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#237

I am not against doing research in this area, please do, it is interesting and likely has many applications but global CO2 removal isn't one of them. Nothing proposed, including this, is within any orders of magnitude of a viable solution. The only solution we have is put less in the air in the first place. This tech looks interesting for transporting CO2 but that doesn't mean it sequesters it and even if sequestrati…

Thank you

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#238
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implicit model in "just emit less" is that human coordination problems are easier than engineering problems. That's historically backwards. We're extremely good at building things. We're terrible at getting everyone to sacrifice simultaneously for diffuse future benefits. Please generalize this!

Covid proved this generalisation is not a truism. USofA was probably the only place that actively resisted the global effort. I think people do want a better world. Greed is not universal. Most countries that grow a middle class find most people prefer to stop work. I.e. there are not that many infinitely greedy humans. And they can be taxed. Despite neocon economic theory, most people aren't selfish. And those that…

> USofA was probably the only place that actively resisted the global effort.

Really? China, Indonesia, Iran, South Korea, Italy, UK, Brazil, Tanzania, North Korea, etc.?

Making the COVID response sound like one global cooperative endeavor is some serious retcon'ing.

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#239
The article doesn't mention the energy costs directly. The fluid is good for at most 100 cycles, probably less, to release the captured CO2 requires heating the fluid to 70C, and then you still have the problem of disposing the CO2 in some way. All cost energy.

A given locale has some metric, based on local generation sources, for grams of CO2 emitted per kWh or whatever. How much CO2 is released to capture 1 gram of CO2? If it is close to a gram or more, this is not worth considering. Maybe one day zero-carbon energy sources become so inexpensive we could contemplate wide-scale CO2 capture, but we aren't anywhere close yet.

Re: Efficient method to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

#240

The best carbon capture device is the ocean, and for the last 10 years or so huge amounts of free-floating sargassum seaweed have grown in warm ocean waters around the world. Nobody is certain why the sargassum has appeared in such volume lately, but it's plausible to speculate that increased CO2 in ocean water plays a role. As far as I can see the only remotely efficient way to sequester carbon at scale is to levera…

Alkalinity enhancement of oceans (so it absorbs more carbon) is one carbon capture mechanism.

https://oceanvisions.org/ocean-alkalinity-enhancement/

But in general carbon absorption by oceans leads to acidification and habitat destruction.

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