What are the environmental effects of the chemical mix? How do you reclaim the chemicals from the cooling water?
Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers
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Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers
#32If you're not injecting the CO2 underground in a stable form, how does this reverse climate change? It sounds like it's simply a cheaper option in some circumstances for sourcing CO2 from the air (compared to traditional solutions by Airgas). Not to take away from your efforts! I think this is a fine improvement to CO2 process needs if you can replace more expensive air extraction techniques, but it doesn't contribut…
I was about to post the same question. I wonder how Airgas gets their CO2.
Most commercial CO2 that is used in the market today is actually produced as a by-product of ethanol production: https://www.attisbiofuels.com/by-products/carbon-dioxide
Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers
#33I love this. I started laughing when I read the description. I laughed because a Harvard physicist (funded by people like Bill Gates) had the same idea to use cooling towers for their DAC project in Carbon Engineering (linked in your post). But as you say, it is still expensive. They are bragging that their design took hundred of man years! And then you two guys come in with the idea that in hindsight seems completel…
Thanks for the tip on ammonia plants! Ammonia is one of the top sources of CO2 sold commercially, second to ethanol plants.
I have nothing but respect for what Carbon Engineering has done. In many ways, they opened people's eyes to what's possible when it comes to direct air carbon capture. The more people doing carbon capture, the better - we have 1T tons of CO2 to capture, and we need as many shots on goal as possible to get there!
Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers
#34Using existing cooling towers to capture atmospheric CO2 seems like a much better idea than using energy to otherwise pump tonnes of air through a process. However, I can't help wonder whether it is better than capturing the exhaust emissions (primarily CO2 and H20) directly from the exhaust gasses, before they are released to the atmosphere.
Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers
#35What are the environmental effects of the chemical mix? How do you reclaim the chemicals from the cooling water?
Unlike many traditional carbon capture chemicals, the one we are using are both non-volatile and stable when they come into contact with air and heat. This means that our chemicals will not float out of the top of a cooling tower with evaporating water and will instead stay in the water.
After carbon capture happens in the cooling tower, we run the stream through a regeneration process to release the captured CO2 and to regenerate the starting carbon capture blend. The water is sent back through the tower, and round and round it goes.
Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers
#36Hey Josh,
I'm a photographer working on a story about American innovation. I just shot you an email through the Noya website.
Hope to be in touch. Best Marco
Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers
#37If you're not injecting the CO2 underground in a stable form, how does this reverse climate change? It sounds like it's simply a cheaper option in some circumstances for sourcing CO2 from the air (compared to traditional solutions by Airgas). Not to take away from your efforts! I think this is a fine improvement to CO2 process needs if you can replace more expensive air extraction techniques, but it doesn't contribut…
Great observation - somewhere between most-to-all of the CO2 that goes into beer, food production, etc ends up back in the atmosphere. Our initial model is the first key step towards the additional solutions we're designing to remove carbon from the atmosphere. The use of CO2 that is sourced from the atmosphere is better from an environmental perspective than the use of CO2 sourced from offshoots of an ethanol plant.…
Yeah it would seem that if someone buys a ton of CO2 from you, then that’s just one more ton some ethanol production facility vents into the air instead of capturing and selling right? Are you saying that your method of producing a ton of CO2 uses less energy than theirs?
Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers
#38I love this. I started laughing when I read the description. I laughed because a Harvard physicist (funded by people like Bill Gates) had the same idea to use cooling towers for their DAC project in Carbon Engineering (linked in your post). But as you say, it is still expensive. They are bragging that their design took hundred of man years! And then you two guys come in with the idea that in hindsight seems completel…
Thanks for the tip on ammonia plants! Ammonia is one of the top sources of CO2 sold commercially, second to ethanol plants. I have nothing but respect for what Carbon Engineering has done. In many ways, they opened people's eyes to what's possible when it comes to direct air carbon capture. The more people doing carbon capture, the better - we have 1T tons of CO2 to capture, and we need as many shots on goal as possi…
I think most process engineers at an ammonia plant would be interested to hear about it because it is an elegant solution. I'd focus any pitch on working with them to make sure your process will not interfere with their process. The people that run these plants are highly incentivized based on run time and they run them at 99.9% type uptimes. They'll think its cool and good for PR as long it they feel like there is no chance to have their plant disrupted or equipment damaged by more corrosive CW.
Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers
#39How does this compare to the most ancient carbon capture tech: Trees ? I know this sounds boring, but a single $M would allow to plant as much trees and they will capture carbon from the atmosphere, without any maintenance, for decades.
To put it plainly: we need more trees.
However, trees cannot get us all the way there. Trees are great for drawing down atmospheric carbon emissions in the short-term, but when trees decompose, they just release that carbon back into the atmosphere. Additionally, the landmass and water needed to sustain all these trees will require another solution to get all of the way to where we need to be with carbon removal.
Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right now jet fuel comes from the ground, so we are actively adding to the atmospheric stock. This gives a way to leave that carbon stored and use what’s in the atmosphere instead. And if they can extract it economically, governments or private actors can pay them to sequester some of the carbon instead.
I'm confused how this project related to jet fuel or displaces the production of oil products in general.
Oh sorry I read things too quickly. There had been a lot of discussions of what to do with things that still require co2 and can’t easily be electrified, jet fuel being the typical case. “Suck it from the sky and use that” has been one common proposal for how to handle those carbon holdouts.
So my brain immediately leapt to that when drafting the comment. But as the OP says same logic applies to any carbon use. If you can use co2 from the sky you don’t need to take it out of sequestration in the ground.