why cant we use filter at the point of production and collect them as separate garbage ?
Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
51–60 of 198 posts
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Today at lab scale it is quite high at >$1000 ton. At the 1 million ton per year scale, we expect our process to come in at <$100/ton.
So as long as CO2 certificates are more expensive than your solution, it makes sense to opt for your solution? Do you see any other scenario's where companies will want to use your solution? Is this the cost including storage? Does this use amines as well or is it a different chemical reaction?
Lots of good questions - thanks.
As long as a) the total cost people are willing to pay for CO2 removal gives sufficient margins vs. the cost required to capture it, b) the end-to-end process actually removes substantially more CO2 than it emits, c) the resources allocated to pursue more CO2 removal makes sense vs. other uses (biased, but we think so), and d) the sequestration is done in a well-characterized & verifiable way, we think it makes sense.
Many companies & stakeholders are working right now to define in what contexts CO2 removal makes sense for them. We have LOIs from multiple companies who want access to our CO2 removal capacity as soon as it becomes available.
The CO2 captured from our process could be used for any number of applications if there is an economic/policy reason to pursue it. Fuels, fertilizers, and many other materials can use CO2 as a feedstock, and many startups are actively working on this problem from different angles. Startups are injecting atmospheric CO2 into concrete with great success. There is no reason we couldn't adjust our business model to divert CO2 captured with our process to these applications.
Our Can't comment on what chemistry we use, but amines are effective at capturing CO2 and have been used industrially for that purpose for decades.
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#53I want to be excited about this, but it's capturing CO2 as CO2 gas, not sequestering CO2 in a form that keeps it out of the atmosphere. If you pay a lot of money in process and power to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere or out of exhaust gases and then use it in chemical processes other than ones which sink the carbon into long lasting solid, liquid, or oceanic absorption form you're just burning money and power to make…
Could we put them into pods and throw them at Mars so we start dumping Co2 on Mars for Musk's Mars Mushroom Mart! too grow.
Could? Yes. It'd probably be the most expensive way to get rid of CO2, though.
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#54I think you are completely mistaken in your endeavor. Please plant trees and care for the soil, since your scheme will never do anything for biodiversity. You are just trying to cut us all off from the source of life.
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#55I think you are completely mistaken in your endeavor. Please plant trees and care for the soil, since your scheme will never do anything for biodiversity. You are just trying to cut us all off from the source of life.
So, what are YOU doing for biodiversity ganzuul?
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#56I want to be excited about this, but it's capturing CO2 as CO2 gas, not sequestering CO2 in a form that keeps it out of the atmosphere. If you pay a lot of money in process and power to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere or out of exhaust gases and then use it in chemical processes other than ones which sink the carbon into long lasting solid, liquid, or oceanic absorption form you're just burning money and power to make…
> We're still a long way from pulling off the sequestration that's actually needed at the scale that's needed.
How so? The simple fact that natural gas and oil still exists, when it comes from 100 million year old biomass, proves beyond a shadow of doubt that geological sequestration holds its integrity at geological timescales.
We have also been injecting CO2 at a rate of 1 million tonnes per year at the Sleipner field in the North Sea since 1996, and extensive 3D timelapse seismography shows the CO2 is permanently trapped.
Think about that - we have been demonstrating CO2 storage at scale since before the launch of the first Palm Pilot.
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#57As you mentioned, I'd love to see the carbon that's captured from the air turned into something valuable like building materials. Or do something wild and have a worldwide monument building contest where captured carbon is used to make incredible sculptures and artworks. Injecting it underground is just turning waste into waste, which depends entirely on regulatory controls to become sustainable; though of course, de…
Right now we're focused on getting our capture/removal process working at scale, but we are keeping a close eye on the use cases since that is a big part of the conversation. There are many great teams working on the usage problem right now & are excited to see where they take things.
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#58As you mentioned, I'd love to see the carbon that's captured from the air turned into something valuable like building materials. Or do something wild and have a worldwide monument building contest where captured carbon is used to make incredible sculptures and artworks. Injecting it underground is just turning waste into waste, which depends entirely on regulatory controls to become sustainable; though of course, de…
> Or do something wild and have a worldwide monument building contest where captured carbon is used to make incredible sculptures and artworks.
I wondered about the scale here. In 2020 we emitted 34.81 billion tons of CO2 from fossil fuels[1]. Now that's much more than what I can lift, or even imagine. So let's say we want to build Pyramid of Giza sized monuments out of that. The Pyramid of Giza weigh about 5.75 million tons[2].
That means that if we want to soak all the yearly emission into monuments we need to find place for about 6000 Pyramid of Giza sized ones. That's a lot of monuments to go around. And then next year we repeat again. I'm not sure this will scale.
> Injecting it underground is just turning waste into waste, [...]
Yes? That's where the carbon was stored for hundreds of millions of years and it was fine there until one day humans figured out a way to get it out and spread it into the atmosphere. The problem is not that we have a moral objection to CO2 on principle. The problem is that it's screwing up the atmosphere.
1: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions 2: https://weightofstuff.com/how-much-does-the-pyramid-of-giza-...
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huge amounts of CO2 can be injected into Saline Aquifers https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015WR01... Capturing CO2 from a power plant, biofuel factory, oil refinery, petrochemical plant or other point source and disposing of it underground is a developed technology. Very little of that is happening because the financial incentives aren't there and the financial incentives that do exist go to carbo…
Thats only 6,250 gallons of water.. less than a single 10K water truck you've seen everywhere. THe question is how many tons does this plan to produce over what period?
If you want to delay the impact of climate change by 1 year by sequestering one year of of CO2 added to the environment through saline sequestration, that's about 40 billion 10K water trucks worth of storage, or about 40 Lake Tahoes turned into saline storage ponds, and you need to add that much storage capacity every year just to keep atmospheric CO2 from getting worse than it is (you're not yet to the scale of reducing atmospheric CO2 at this rate). The oceans have enough volume for this, but most other containers are too small to be meaningful.
Re: Launch HN: AirMyne (YC W22) – Capturing CO2 from air at industrial scale
#60Have you looked into technology to turn CO2 into a solid? Like here: https://www.thechemicalengineer.com/news/turning-co2-into-so... Also could the process be adapted to use sources of waste heat like from nuclear power, solar or geothermal?
We are exploring a number of conversion pathways, but our right now our focus is on capture, removal, and sequestration underground.
The process could potentially use waste heat & that is something we are thinking about as we think about plant design, potential locations, and partners.