41–50 of 187 posts
So, for $4.3 trillion dollars / year we can turn the 43 billion tonnes of CO2 we emit per year into oxygen and carbon crust. Which is twice the annual revenue for the global oil industry.
So, for $4.3 trillion dollars / year we can turn the 43 billion tonnes of CO2 we emit per year into oxygen and carbon crust. Which is twice the annual revenue for the global oil industry.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"how the CO2 needs to be delivered": The experiments described in the paper have used pure CO2. The conversion process is unlikely to work directly with air, because it decomposes CO2 into solid carbon partially oxidated and dioxygen. If one of the products of the catalyzed reaction, i.e. oxygen from the air, would be present in a much larger concentration than the input substance (CO2), like in the air, the conversi…
A big issue with renewable energy, particularly solar and wind, is that the power output is variable and an electric grid needs a base load to operate. Now I firmly believe the future here is ultimately space-based solar power collectors. I've seen estimates that a panel in space around Earth can generate ~7 times the power it can on Earth. This is a deep topic but generating power in space for use on Earth isn't as…
How do you get that power back down to Earth where it can be used?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cost of 230kWh is around €30 in Norway (lower during the summer), the CO2 quota price is around €60/ton. Norway is now building pipes to pump CO2 down to the old oil wells. Seems like it starting to get economically profitable to grab CO2 from the air and sell the quota?
> Norway is now building pipes to pump CO2 down to the old oil wells. You should know that injecting old oil wells with CO2 helps them produce more oil. The CO2 becomes carbonic acid under pressure, which then dissolves pores in the rock wider, allowing more oil and gas to escape. Also, it looks pretty doubtful that CO2 will stay in gas wells for a long time. Eventually it'll find some fissure and due to the acidity…
Will this result in an increase in O2 levels? If yes, what risk does that bring?
Even if that weren't the case, the atmosphere is 21% oxygen and 0.04% CO2.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A big issue with renewable energy, particularly solar and wind, is that the power output is variable and an electric grid needs a base load to operate. Now I firmly believe the future here is ultimately space-based solar power collectors. I've seen estimates that a panel in space around Earth can generate ~7 times the power it can on Earth. This is a deep topic but generating power in space for use on Earth isn't as…
> I've seen estimates that a panel in space around Earth can generate ~7 times the power it can on Earth How do you get that power back down to Earth where it can be used?
/jk
Seriously, I'm curious about this too.
Edit: a quick search shows I was close: https://earthsky.org/earth/space-based-solar-energy-power-ge...
So, for $4.3 trillion dollars / year we can turn the 43 billion tonnes of CO2 we emit per year into oxygen and carbon crust. Which is twice the annual revenue for the global oil industry.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"how the CO2 needs to be delivered": The experiments described in the paper have used pure CO2. The conversion process is unlikely to work directly with air, because it decomposes CO2 into solid carbon partially oxidated and dioxygen. If one of the products of the catalyzed reaction, i.e. oxygen from the air, would be present in a much larger concentration than the input substance (CO2), like in the air, the conversi…
A big issue with renewable energy, particularly solar and wind, is that the power output is variable and an electric grid needs a base load to operate. Now I firmly believe the future here is ultimately space-based solar power collectors. I've seen estimates that a panel in space around Earth can generate ~7 times the power it can on Earth. This is a deep topic but generating power in space for use on Earth isn't as…
Cute, but very much off topic. Lets have that discussion on an article about energy generation, not about carbon capture.
So let's do some math. Let's consider natural gas. According to the US government [1], natural gas produced 1.358x10^12 kWh of power and 5.6x10^8 metric tons of CO2 so 1 metric ton of CO2 equates to ~2400 kWh of produced power. This post suggests the energy cost is ~230kWh/ton. This is an important sanity check because it means that (capital costs aside) and if it scales you could technically remain carbon neutral fo…
You have a bug somewhere, I'm not sure where.
Roughly speaking the heat of combustion is proportional to the number of atoms of oxygen in the molecules coming out of the reaction.
So CH4 + 2 O2 = CO2 + 2 H20
If you hypothetically split CH4 first, you get
CH4 + 2 O2 = (C + 2 H2) + 2 O2 = (C + O2) + (2 H2 + O2) = CO2 + 2H20
The first reaction is endothermic, but it absorbs much less heat than the heat produced by the second part of the reaction.
So, you can roughly say that the energy coming from burning CH4 comes half from burning the Carbon and half from burning the Hydrogen.
Now, if you can make the reverse reaction CO2 -> C + O2 with 100% efficiency, then sure, you get to economically burn CH4 with zero emissions. But if that reaction has only 50% efficiency, then all your (energetic) profit has been wiped out.
The article doesn't say what efficiency this envisioned reaction has, but I'd be mightily surprised if it were 50%.
Much better to not burn the Carbon to begin with. That is what methane pyrolysis [1] tries to do.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis#Methane_pyrolysis_fo...