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Carbon Removal Technologies

carbon.ycombinator.com

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Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#491

Post by woogiewonka »

matznerd wrote: post #230
btilly wrote: post #59

I would strongly suggest investigating the claims of http://www.innovationconcepts.eu/res/literatuurSchuiling/oli... that after mining, milling, and then being spread in the ocean, olivine rocks weather quickly and take out CO2. The estimated costs of large scale CO2 sequestration this way are surprisingly reasonable, and the technology is already available. Also the various ocean technologies are going to run into t…

I am working on a non-profit that is utilizing Schuiling's research and is actually getting this project done. We are scouting beaches right now for a "wiggle" tank, which is a sort of see-saw like device where we can gather data to affirm the real world dissolution rate. The chemistry, however, is sound that each 1 ton of olivine will sequester 1.25 tons of carbon. By the end of 2019 we hope to have our first olivin…

@matznerd

1. What can the average person do to help you with your mission? 2. Where is the kickstarter? 3. Do you have someone working on marketing already? 4. Is there a way to volunteer without being physically present? Marketing, design, just brainstorming etc... I realize you have a "contact us" button on your website, but could you list more specifically what you are after? 5. Where can we keep track of what you are doing now and what the next step is? 6. What is standing in your way now to get your test project going. Specifically referring to "wiggle tank" and first olivine by 2019. 7. Have you factored in all of the economics of this? Extraction, delivery, dispersion?

Thank you.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#492

Post by andersha »

francisofascii wrote: post #181
ISL wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you'd like to fund trees, one could start buying land and start protecting trees. Spending that money on intensive lobbying and forest advocacy in rapidly-deforesting countries could have an impact, too. The trick, of course, is that neither of these techniques compound for the individual nor a startup. They are pure charity for the planet.

So does anyone know why this isn't happening more? Surely there are plenty of super wealthy tech titans, Hollywood stars, etc. that care about climate change. They could buy up rural land that is suitable for forestry and start planting trees, or prevent deforestation. Even small time donors could make an impact. Land in the US is cheap, right? What am I missing?

It is happening.

The founders of Patagonia and The North Face brands did start conservacion patagonia together. [1]

It is one amazing project. [2]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservaci%C3%B3n_Patag%C3%B3n... 2. http://www.conservacionpatagonica.org/aboutus_oh.htm

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#493

Post by andersha »

theonemind wrote: post #157
GreeniFi wrote: post #2

We already have carbon removal technology. They’re called trees. [Edit] I’m not being facetious. 40% of emissions are as a result of poor land management. We’ll need all the technological help we can get, but if we can’t manage land as carbon stores - not sources, we’re not going to win this race.

I once started thinking through what we would want out of some kind of ideal carbon sequestering device. I thought that for the scale of the problem, they would need to self-replicate, and run on some natural energy source, like solar power. Then, I realized I had just invented the tree.

And animals, ecosystems!

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#494

Post by nanomonkey »

jasonlaramburu wrote: post #201
nanomonkey wrote: post #187

All Power Labs, a company that makes biomass gasifiers, has estimates for the amount of carbon their technology can sequester ( http://www.allpowerlabs.com/carbon ). This appears to be the most viable process forward, as not only can one create a ton of electricity, hot water and air, but also biochar which sequesters carbon in the soil in a beneficial way for an estimated 10k years. (full disclosure, I'm an ex emplo…

Isn't the challenge that biomass gasification systems require fairly pure feedstock (ie cubes of hardwood)? Has anyone succeeded in developing a feedstock-agnostic gasification system?

There are more agnostic systems, like fluidized bed gasifiers, but they generally create tar rich gas, which can gum up an internal combustion engine. That's why external combustion engines (Stirling or Steam) are so desirable as the pistons and internal moving parts don't come in contact with the flame front.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#495

Post by rsa4046 »

btilly wrote: post #426
User23 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> wipe out all shellfish species worldwide Look you raise good points but this is nonsense. The Earth has had far higher CO2 concentrations for geological periods and there’s no fossil record suggesting shellfish all died. This kind of Trumpian rhetoric just hands ammo to the skeptics.

It only seems like nonsense because you're missing an important piece of the science. Acidification is not caused by how much CO2 there is in the water. It is caused by a rapid increase in CO2 levels. We are dumping CO2 in very quickly, and so are acidifying the water. But given time, oceans will mix down the to bottom. At the bottom it will encounter very large stores of calcium carbonate. As that dissolves, it rend…

To piggyback onto this comment, it really is a matter of rates, of chemical kinetics. The current increase in CO2 from fossil fuel burning and related human activities has occurred at a rate that is geologically instantaneous. There is no real precedent for this. CO2 has indeed been higher in the geologic past (e.g., Cretaceous maximum, early Paleozoic prior to vascular plant systems), but these increases are likely tied to very leisurely evolving cycles of plate tectonics and enhanced volcanic CO2 fluxes. Higher pCO2 during these periods produced warmer, wetter climates that drive enhanced rates of silicate weathering. The result? High pCO2, somewhat lower pH, yes, but also higher carbonate alkalinity in seawater as well, which gave rise to higher, not lower, saturation states for marine carbonate minerals, and are associated with higher rates of biomineralization (e.g. Steven Stanley's periods of 'hypercalcification'). So it's really a matter of the balance of rates. "Natural" rates of C oxidation via the slow uplift of buried organic carbon are far slower than what we have produced via fossil fuel burning of coal, hydrocarbons. In this process, silicate weathering acts as an essential thermostat through the feedback to chemical weathering of crustal silicates. This has been understood for quite awhile.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#496

Post by marcell »

giarc wrote: post #485

Is anyone aware of measures of public acceptance of carbon removal vs carbon reduction (emit less)? My thoughts are that people may be more willing to invest in carbon removal as it allows them to continue to live their same life. They see it as "I can continue to pollute since we can just remove the CO2." Similar to how some people may view eating and dieting... "I can eat bad now, I'll just go on a diet later."

I think all the carbon removal solutions assume some sort of carbon tax for them to be viable. Otherwise carbon removal is a process with some cost and zero benefit for the individual.

So to answer your question, the popularity of carbon removal will probably be about the same as the popularity of a carbon tax.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#497

Post by Tharkun »

benchaney wrote: post #139
philipkglass wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To stay below 2 degrees of warming via CO2 curtailment alone, serious curtailment would have had to start a generation ago. I wish that we had acted with urgency then, but we didn't. Now we need curtailment and active interventions.

Agreed. Many environmentalists like to argue that curtailment is the “proper” way to handle global warming. If the situation is half as dire as they are claiming it is, then that is simply not good enough.

Here's the thing. Environmentalists have been warning about climate change for generations now. Calling for replacements for fossil fuel and for drastic cuts in emmissions and consumption. Basically nobody acted. And now the situation is becoming dire. Suddenly curtailmennt is off the table because it's no longer enough? It's never even been tried or seriously considered. Pretty much no developed country is on track for reducing CO2 emmissions by a large enough fraction. And yet, somehow, we're now expecting those self same countries to become proficient at geo engineering on a scale massive enough to revert climate change? It's a farce.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#498

Post by semi-extrinsic »

philipkglass wrote: post #474
sopooneo wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say that coal consumption has already peaked in the USA, how do you know that? What is to say that next year we won't be using more coal per day than we are now?

Coal consumption for power in 2017 was 36% lower than in 2008: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=36812 Coal consumption in 2018 is on track for a 4% decline below 2017: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/report/coal.php That same short-term outlook predicts a further 5% drop in 2019 over 2018. It is at least physically possible that the US could consume more coal in 2019 than in 2018, though only a sucke…

Renewable energy saw a ~30% growth from 2008 to 2017, but in percentage points of the total energy consumption, that's only a 5%-point increase. The remaining 30%-point reduction in coal consumption was covered primarily by increased natural gas usage.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#499

Post by DuskStar »

peterlk wrote: post #407
all_usernames wrote: post #71

I recently heard about Carbon Engineering, a B.C. Canada based firm that is extracting carbon from the atmosphere and making liquid fuel -- they call it "recycled fuel." Apparently it can be used in existing combustion engines. And it is already up and running. Something on the order of 10,000 of these industrial plants could get us carbon neutral rather quickly. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-co…

> Carbon Engineering's fuel costs about 25 per cent more than gasoline made from oil Seriously?! If this is actually true, sign me up. I will absolutely pay a 25% fuel tax to make the world a better place and also not have to give oil companies more money

Yeah, if that's the case - if we can make petroleum products from CO2 and power for only a 25% premium (hell, a 100% premium) over current prices, that's incredible. That's not (just) an environmental breakthrough, it's a MASSIVE geopolitical change. All of a sudden, the pricing power of oil exporting countries disappears - there's an infinitely scalable replacement waiting in the wings. Hell, can you imagine how much the US Navy would pay to produce jet fuel on board carriers (nuclear power!) and eliminate a need for underway replenishment?

And for that reason I really have to assume that it's standard science reporting, and some wires have been crossed along the way.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#500

Post by semi-extrinsic »

joe_the_user wrote: post #395
philipkglass wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the active countermeasures contemplated, like ocean fertilization and accelerated olivine weathering, also tackle acidification if they work at scale. Solar radiation management does nothing to fix acidification though it can possibly interrupt feedback loops that would make acidification even worse. I agree that many technologies for replacing fossil usage have now achieved or are close to economic superiori…

The problem is that while solar energy may have already achieved superiority over the net cost of finding, drilling-off and extracting hydrocarbons, solar energy is not going achieve superiority over hydrocarbons people already have . The cost of already found oil is just the cost of pumping it out of the ground and with easy fields, no energy source is going to beat that (the cheapest Saudi cost less $10/barrel to p…

My hope is that newly-built or soon-to-be-built O&G production sites will be converted to have CO2 capture and just export electricity or hydrogen. We have all the tech, it's just that someone needs to force O&G operators to do it.

Operators, by the way, love this concept. It means they can continue production basically forever, if they want. But there's a big economic disadvantage in being the first mover, which is why we need government regulations forcing it.

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