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Climate Change: Where every storm is Perfect

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Posts

  • TastyfishTastyfish Registered User regular
    edited June 2020
    VishNub wrote: »

    Key word there is virgin (ie. old growth), but forest coverage in general is down about 30% from pre-columbian days. Density is, presumably, down quite a lot more than that.

    I would assume a European map would look pretty similar to that, as well. There’s a lot of area in the UK, France, Germany, Poland, and Russia that used to be forest but isn’t so much anymore.

    Outside those areas, with proper conservation there has been a lot of work done recently in greening the Sahel that could use some help in encouraging and expanding. Dense forests are nice, but converting marginally productive semi-deserts (or tundra even) to moderately productive grasslands and light woodlands might have just as much importance in the long run.

    Over a much, much longer period - large scale farming in Europe is ancient.

    We have more trees now in the UK than we had 1000 years ago.
    Quadruple what it was 100 years ago.

    Tastyfish on
  • PhyphorPhyphor Building Planet Busters Tasting FruitRegistered User regular
    Well if you're not burning coal and oil you're burning wood instead and wood has only 2/3rds the energy density of coal so you need a lot of it

  • ShadowfireShadowfire Vermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered User regular
    Phyphor wrote: »
    Well if you're not burning coal and oil you're burning wood instead and wood has only 2/3rds the energy density of coal so you need a lot of it

    Isn't burning wood somewhat carbon neutral in the long term as long as you're planting trees to replace it? Which any halfway smart logging group would do.

    WiiU: Windrunner ; Guild Wars 2: Shadowfire.3940 ; PSN: Bradcopter
  • ChaosHatChaosHat Hop, hop, hop, HA! Trick of the lightRegistered User regular
    edited June 2020
    My weatherman in the work break room just said this was the 11th consecutive June that was higher than the average, and that it's a rolling average that's updated every year.

    His words after that were "it's not too bad, it's low humidity so it's pretty nice out so enjoy that weather just use sunscreen."

    We're so fucked everyone!

    ChaosHat on
  • PolaritiePolaritie Sleepy Registered User regular
    ChaosHat wrote: »
    My weatherman in the work break room just said this was the 11th consecutive July that was higher than the average, and that it's a rolling average that's updated every year.

    His words after that were "it's not too bad, it's low humidity so it's pretty nice out so enjoy that weather just use sunscreen."

    We're so fucked everyone!

    I mean, easy prediction to make but

    Steam: Polaritie
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  • ChaosHatChaosHat Hop, hop, hop, HA! Trick of the lightRegistered User regular
    Look at me being all a month in the future.

  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    edited June 2020
    Shadowfire wrote: »
    Phyphor wrote: »
    Well if you're not burning coal and oil you're burning wood instead and wood has only 2/3rds the energy density of coal so you need a lot of it

    Isn't burning wood somewhat carbon neutral in the long term as long as you're planting trees to replace it? Which any halfway smart logging group would do.

    It’s better than coal or oil but its a transitional measure at best.

    Your alternatives would be generating electricity with solar and using the wood for building things (which effectively sinks carbon instead of returning it to the atmosphere) or letting it grow as a forest which also sinks carbon.

    Cutting down old growth forests for burning is especially crappy as often it’ll take 75 to 150 years (in an absolute best case scenario) for the forests to regrow to the point they store as much carbon as you release by burning them.

    So its kind of carbon neutral over the long term but not at the time scales that are important right now.

    Jealous Deva on
  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    I watched a video and subsequently read some articles about this company in Canada that is taking carbon capture to the next level. They are using the captured carbon to create fuel. Their process electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzed hydrogen and captured carbon are then reacted to create diesel fuel. The process can be carbon neutral if the plant is powered by renewables. The fuel they produce could be burned for energy to make up for the times when renewables aren't as productive. If done right, the CO2 produced from burning the fuel could be recaptured and turned back into fuel with the same process.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I watched a video and subsequently read some articles about this company in Canada that is taking carbon capture to the next level. They are using the captured carbon to create fuel. Their process electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzed hydrogen and captured carbon are then reacted to create diesel fuel. The process can be carbon neutral if the plant is powered by renewables. The fuel they produce could be burned for energy to make up for the times when renewables aren't as productive. If done right, the CO2 produced from burning the fuel could be recaptured and turned back into fuel with the same process.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

    This isn't really carbon capture, its a way to use the byproducts of carbon capture to store renewable energy. It doesn't really achieve anything that say, just using the renewable energy to reduce burning fuels doesn't. It's cool, but, its more in line with biodiesel than anything else.

    "That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
  • JragghenJragghen Registered User regular
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I watched a video and subsequently read some articles about this company in Canada that is taking carbon capture to the next level. They are using the captured carbon to create fuel. Their process electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzed hydrogen and captured carbon are then reacted to create diesel fuel. The process can be carbon neutral if the plant is powered by renewables. The fuel they produce could be burned for energy to make up for the times when renewables aren't as productive. If done right, the CO2 produced from burning the fuel could be recaptured and turned back into fuel with the same process.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

    This isn't really carbon capture, its a way to use the byproducts of carbon capture to store renewable energy. It doesn't really achieve anything that say, just using the renewable energy to reduce burning fuels doesn't. It's cool, but, its more in line with biodiesel than anything else.

    In the aggregate, any fuel which uses carbon from the atmosphere is preferable to fuel which takes carbon out of the ground. It's not as good as not using carbon at all (and sequestering what we can), but it's still a net positive movement.

    It's not getting us out of the hole, but it's stopping us from digging deeper.

  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    Jragghen wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I watched a video and subsequently read some articles about this company in Canada that is taking carbon capture to the next level. They are using the captured carbon to create fuel. Their process electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzed hydrogen and captured carbon are then reacted to create diesel fuel. The process can be carbon neutral if the plant is powered by renewables. The fuel they produce could be burned for energy to make up for the times when renewables aren't as productive. If done right, the CO2 produced from burning the fuel could be recaptured and turned back into fuel with the same process.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

    This isn't really carbon capture, its a way to use the byproducts of carbon capture to store renewable energy. It doesn't really achieve anything that say, just using the renewable energy to reduce burning fuels doesn't. It's cool, but, its more in line with biodiesel than anything else.

    In the aggregate, any fuel which uses carbon from the atmosphere is preferable to fuel which takes carbon out of the ground. It's not as good as not using carbon at all (and sequestering what we can), but it's still a net positive movement.

    It's not getting us out of the hole, but it's stopping us from digging deeper.

    But biodiesel already does this. If I have a vehicle that can use biodiesel, and a solar panel, it would seem to make more sense to turn some corn stalks into biodiesel and just hook the solar panel up to the grid. I mean, I guess this is a good way to do solar energy storage or something? Or to make wind power something you can subsequently ship to Minnesota in midwinter or whatever, but, it still seems a bit of a niche thing. I guess there are places with far more renewable energy than they can use because of supply vs demand mismatch (Hawaii etc) so perhaps its valuable there.

    "That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
  • DirtmuncherDirtmuncher Registered User regular
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I watched a video and subsequently read some articles about this company in Canada that is taking carbon capture to the next level. They are using the captured carbon to create fuel. Their process electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzed hydrogen and captured carbon are then reacted to create diesel fuel. The process can be carbon neutral if the plant is powered by renewables. The fuel they produce could be burned for energy to make up for the times when renewables aren't as productive. If done right, the CO2 produced from burning the fuel could be recaptured and turned back into fuel with the same process.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

    This isn't really carbon capture, its a way to use the byproducts of carbon capture to store renewable energy. It doesn't really achieve anything that say, just using the renewable energy to reduce burning fuels doesn't. It's cool, but, its more in line with biodiesel than anything else.

    If less volatile hydrocarbons could be created it could be pumped back into the ground or?

    steam_sig.png
  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I watched a video and subsequently read some articles about this company in Canada that is taking carbon capture to the next level. They are using the captured carbon to create fuel. Their process electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzed hydrogen and captured carbon are then reacted to create diesel fuel. The process can be carbon neutral if the plant is powered by renewables. The fuel they produce could be burned for energy to make up for the times when renewables aren't as productive. If done right, the CO2 produced from burning the fuel could be recaptured and turned back into fuel with the same process.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

    This isn't really carbon capture, its a way to use the byproducts of carbon capture to store renewable energy. It doesn't really achieve anything that say, just using the renewable energy to reduce burning fuels doesn't. It's cool, but, its more in line with biodiesel than anything else.

    If less volatile hydrocarbons could be created it could be pumped back into the ground or?

    Yes, but, reacting carbon with hydrogen to make hydrocarbons is nothing new or clever. Thats just a very standard chemistry process thing. Its definately an exothermic reaction which can be self powering.

    edit - IE, getting the carbon back from the air is the hard part! Combining it with hydrogen to make hydrocarbons is easy.

    tbloxham on
    "That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
  • PhyphorPhyphor Building Planet Busters Tasting FruitRegistered User regular
    tbloxham wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I watched a video and subsequently read some articles about this company in Canada that is taking carbon capture to the next level. They are using the captured carbon to create fuel. Their process electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzed hydrogen and captured carbon are then reacted to create diesel fuel. The process can be carbon neutral if the plant is powered by renewables. The fuel they produce could be burned for energy to make up for the times when renewables aren't as productive. If done right, the CO2 produced from burning the fuel could be recaptured and turned back into fuel with the same process.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

    This isn't really carbon capture, its a way to use the byproducts of carbon capture to store renewable energy. It doesn't really achieve anything that say, just using the renewable energy to reduce burning fuels doesn't. It's cool, but, its more in line with biodiesel than anything else.

    If less volatile hydrocarbons could be created it could be pumped back into the ground or?

    Yes, but, reacting carbon with hydrogen to make hydrocarbons is nothing new or clever. Thats just a very standard chemistry process thing. Its definately an exothermic reaction which can be self powering.

    edit - IE, getting the carbon back from the air is the hard part! Combining it with hydrogen to make hydrocarbons is easy.

    You do need a fair amount of energy to get from CO2 -> something else though. There's a good reason it's the end step for combustion

  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Jragghen wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I watched a video and subsequently read some articles about this company in Canada that is taking carbon capture to the next level. They are using the captured carbon to create fuel. Their process electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzed hydrogen and captured carbon are then reacted to create diesel fuel. The process can be carbon neutral if the plant is powered by renewables. The fuel they produce could be burned for energy to make up for the times when renewables aren't as productive. If done right, the CO2 produced from burning the fuel could be recaptured and turned back into fuel with the same process.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

    This isn't really carbon capture, its a way to use the byproducts of carbon capture to store renewable energy. It doesn't really achieve anything that say, just using the renewable energy to reduce burning fuels doesn't. It's cool, but, its more in line with biodiesel than anything else.

    In the aggregate, any fuel which uses carbon from the atmosphere is preferable to fuel which takes carbon out of the ground. It's not as good as not using carbon at all (and sequestering what we can), but it's still a net positive movement.

    It's not getting us out of the hole, but it's stopping us from digging deeper.

    But biodiesel already does this. If I have a vehicle that can use biodiesel, and a solar panel, it would seem to make more sense to turn some corn stalks into biodiesel and just hook the solar panel up to the grid. I mean, I guess this is a good way to do solar energy storage or something? Or to make wind power something you can subsequently ship to Minnesota in midwinter or whatever, but, it still seems a bit of a niche thing. I guess there are places with far more renewable energy than they can use because of supply vs demand mismatch (Hawaii etc) so perhaps its valuable there.

    The article I posted is just a brief overview and is pretty old. You should checkout Carbon Engineering's website for the full story.

    The biodiesel process is MUCH MUCH more complicated than your making it out to be. You can't just throw material into a vat and magic up some fuel. You need a LOT of complicated chemistry and biology to turn corn stalks into biodiesel. It requires months of processing to get anything useful out it of. It starts with a long and slow digestion process, followed by cracking, refining and purification. There's a LOT of waste and a lot of expensive consumables just to get a useable product.

    The process this canadian company is using is super simple. It is a simple 3 step process to electrolyze water. Add water, apply electricity, and functionally separate the gases. CO2 can simply be compressed out of regular air. Thermocatalytic hydrogenation of CO2 is a similarly simple process that requires no exotic materials and just runs on thermal energy. The whole process is super simple with existing technology with the only byproducts being water and O2. You can check out the papers I read and the company's website, linked below.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0263876214001282
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13638-9
    https://carbonengineering.com/

    TL:DR You vastly underestimate the complexity of biofuel production and vastly overestimate it's efficiency.

  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Jragghen wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I watched a video and subsequently read some articles about this company in Canada that is taking carbon capture to the next level. They are using the captured carbon to create fuel. Their process electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzed hydrogen and captured carbon are then reacted to create diesel fuel. The process can be carbon neutral if the plant is powered by renewables. The fuel they produce could be burned for energy to make up for the times when renewables aren't as productive. If done right, the CO2 produced from burning the fuel could be recaptured and turned back into fuel with the same process.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

    This isn't really carbon capture, its a way to use the byproducts of carbon capture to store renewable energy. It doesn't really achieve anything that say, just using the renewable energy to reduce burning fuels doesn't. It's cool, but, its more in line with biodiesel than anything else.

    In the aggregate, any fuel which uses carbon from the atmosphere is preferable to fuel which takes carbon out of the ground. It's not as good as not using carbon at all (and sequestering what we can), but it's still a net positive movement.

    It's not getting us out of the hole, but it's stopping us from digging deeper.

    But biodiesel already does this. If I have a vehicle that can use biodiesel, and a solar panel, it would seem to make more sense to turn some corn stalks into biodiesel and just hook the solar panel up to the grid. I mean, I guess this is a good way to do solar energy storage or something? Or to make wind power something you can subsequently ship to Minnesota in midwinter or whatever, but, it still seems a bit of a niche thing. I guess there are places with far more renewable energy than they can use because of supply vs demand mismatch (Hawaii etc) so perhaps its valuable there.

    The article I posted is just a brief overview and is pretty old. You should checkout Carbon Engineering's website for the full story.

    The biodiesel process is MUCH MUCH more complicated than your making it out to be. You can't just throw material into a vat and magic up some fuel. You need a LOT of complicated chemistry and biology to turn corn stalks into biodiesel. It requires months of processing to get anything useful out it of. It starts with a long and slow digestion process, followed by cracking, refining and purification. There's a LOT of waste and a lot of expensive consumables just to get a useable product.

    The process this canadian company is using is super simple. It is a simple 3 step process to electrolyze water. Add water, apply electricity, and functionally separate the gases. CO2 can simply be compressed out of regular air. Thermocatalytic hydrogenation of CO2 is a similarly simple process that requires no exotic materials and just runs on thermal energy. The whole process is super simple with existing technology with the only byproducts being water and O2. You can check out the papers I read and the company's website, linked below.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0263876214001282
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13638-9
    https://carbonengineering.com/

    TL:DR You vastly underestimate the complexity of biofuel production and vastly overestimate it's efficiency.

    I would say that you are underestimating the complexity of carbon dioxide extraction and vastly overestimating its efficiency.

    If I have corn stalks, and an excellent way to turn CO2 into biofuel, why don't I just dry the corn stalks, grind and burn them, capture the CO2 as it produced, and then turn that CO2 into biodiesel? Seems inherently easier than trying to scavenge CO2 from the air.

    "That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    That_Guy wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Jragghen wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I watched a video and subsequently read some articles about this company in Canada that is taking carbon capture to the next level. They are using the captured carbon to create fuel. Their process electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzed hydrogen and captured carbon are then reacted to create diesel fuel. The process can be carbon neutral if the plant is powered by renewables. The fuel they produce could be burned for energy to make up for the times when renewables aren't as productive. If done right, the CO2 produced from burning the fuel could be recaptured and turned back into fuel with the same process.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

    This isn't really carbon capture, its a way to use the byproducts of carbon capture to store renewable energy. It doesn't really achieve anything that say, just using the renewable energy to reduce burning fuels doesn't. It's cool, but, its more in line with biodiesel than anything else.

    In the aggregate, any fuel which uses carbon from the atmosphere is preferable to fuel which takes carbon out of the ground. It's not as good as not using carbon at all (and sequestering what we can), but it's still a net positive movement.

    It's not getting us out of the hole, but it's stopping us from digging deeper.

    But biodiesel already does this. If I have a vehicle that can use biodiesel, and a solar panel, it would seem to make more sense to turn some corn stalks into biodiesel and just hook the solar panel up to the grid. I mean, I guess this is a good way to do solar energy storage or something? Or to make wind power something you can subsequently ship to Minnesota in midwinter or whatever, but, it still seems a bit of a niche thing. I guess there are places with far more renewable energy than they can use because of supply vs demand mismatch (Hawaii etc) so perhaps its valuable there.

    The article I posted is just a brief overview and is pretty old. You should checkout Carbon Engineering's website for the full story.

    The biodiesel process is MUCH MUCH more complicated than your making it out to be. You can't just throw material into a vat and magic up some fuel. You need a LOT of complicated chemistry and biology to turn corn stalks into biodiesel. It requires months of processing to get anything useful out it of. It starts with a long and slow digestion process, followed by cracking, refining and purification. There's a LOT of waste and a lot of expensive consumables just to get a useable product.

    The process this canadian company is using is super simple. It is a simple 3 step process to electrolyze water. Add water, apply electricity, and functionally separate the gases. CO2 can simply be compressed out of regular air. Thermocatalytic hydrogenation of CO2 is a similarly simple process that requires no exotic materials and just runs on thermal energy. The whole process is super simple with existing technology with the only byproducts being water and O2. You can check out the papers I read and the company's website, linked below.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0263876214001282
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13638-9
    https://carbonengineering.com/

    TL:DR You vastly underestimate the complexity of biofuel production and vastly overestimate it's efficiency.

    The problem is that water electrolysis, seperating co2 from air, and thermocatalyic hydrogenation of CO2 are all extremely energy intensive processes, wheras by growing a plant and fermenting it you let the sun and various bacteria and yeasts do all the work for you.

    It may require extra steps to reach industrial levels of efficiency but you can literally build a bioreactor to convert grain products to biofuels in your back yard.

  • MeeqeMeeqe Lord of the pants most fancy Someplace amazingRegistered User regular
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Jragghen wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I watched a video and subsequently read some articles about this company in Canada that is taking carbon capture to the next level. They are using the captured carbon to create fuel. Their process electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzed hydrogen and captured carbon are then reacted to create diesel fuel. The process can be carbon neutral if the plant is powered by renewables. The fuel they produce could be burned for energy to make up for the times when renewables aren't as productive. If done right, the CO2 produced from burning the fuel could be recaptured and turned back into fuel with the same process.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

    This isn't really carbon capture, its a way to use the byproducts of carbon capture to store renewable energy. It doesn't really achieve anything that say, just using the renewable energy to reduce burning fuels doesn't. It's cool, but, its more in line with biodiesel than anything else.

    In the aggregate, any fuel which uses carbon from the atmosphere is preferable to fuel which takes carbon out of the ground. It's not as good as not using carbon at all (and sequestering what we can), but it's still a net positive movement.

    It's not getting us out of the hole, but it's stopping us from digging deeper.

    But biodiesel already does this. If I have a vehicle that can use biodiesel, and a solar panel, it would seem to make more sense to turn some corn stalks into biodiesel and just hook the solar panel up to the grid. I mean, I guess this is a good way to do solar energy storage or something? Or to make wind power something you can subsequently ship to Minnesota in midwinter or whatever, but, it still seems a bit of a niche thing. I guess there are places with far more renewable energy than they can use because of supply vs demand mismatch (Hawaii etc) so perhaps its valuable there.

    The article I posted is just a brief overview and is pretty old. You should checkout Carbon Engineering's website for the full story.

    The biodiesel process is MUCH MUCH more complicated than your making it out to be. You can't just throw material into a vat and magic up some fuel. You need a LOT of complicated chemistry and biology to turn corn stalks into biodiesel. It requires months of processing to get anything useful out it of. It starts with a long and slow digestion process, followed by cracking, refining and purification. There's a LOT of waste and a lot of expensive consumables just to get a useable product.

    The process this canadian company is using is super simple. It is a simple 3 step process to electrolyze water. Add water, apply electricity, and functionally separate the gases. CO2 can simply be compressed out of regular air. Thermocatalytic hydrogenation of CO2 is a similarly simple process that requires no exotic materials and just runs on thermal energy. The whole process is super simple with existing technology with the only byproducts being water and O2. You can check out the papers I read and the company's website, linked below.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0263876214001282
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13638-9
    https://carbonengineering.com/

    TL:DR You vastly underestimate the complexity of biofuel production and vastly overestimate it's efficiency.

    I would say that you are underestimating the complexity of carbon dioxide extraction and vastly overestimating its efficiency.

    If I have corn stalks, and an excellent way to turn CO2 into biofuel, why don't I just dry the corn stalks, grind and burn them, capture the CO2 as it produced, and then turn that CO2 into biodiesel? Seems inherently easier than trying to scavenge CO2 from the air.

    Got any science about why compression is harder? I'm nominally familiar with the atmo CO2 -> hydrocarbon process and it seems super, super simple from an engineering perspective. Whereas the last time I looked it turned out commercial bio-diesel doesn't provide any real benefit over regular extraction because farming the corn takes a pile of fuel itself in order to power the tractors, harvesters, etc.

  • TastyfishTastyfish Registered User regular
    Meeqe wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Jragghen wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I watched a video and subsequently read some articles about this company in Canada that is taking carbon capture to the next level. They are using the captured carbon to create fuel. Their process electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzed hydrogen and captured carbon are then reacted to create diesel fuel. The process can be carbon neutral if the plant is powered by renewables. The fuel they produce could be burned for energy to make up for the times when renewables aren't as productive. If done right, the CO2 produced from burning the fuel could be recaptured and turned back into fuel with the same process.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

    This isn't really carbon capture, its a way to use the byproducts of carbon capture to store renewable energy. It doesn't really achieve anything that say, just using the renewable energy to reduce burning fuels doesn't. It's cool, but, its more in line with biodiesel than anything else.

    In the aggregate, any fuel which uses carbon from the atmosphere is preferable to fuel which takes carbon out of the ground. It's not as good as not using carbon at all (and sequestering what we can), but it's still a net positive movement.

    It's not getting us out of the hole, but it's stopping us from digging deeper.

    But biodiesel already does this. If I have a vehicle that can use biodiesel, and a solar panel, it would seem to make more sense to turn some corn stalks into biodiesel and just hook the solar panel up to the grid. I mean, I guess this is a good way to do solar energy storage or something? Or to make wind power something you can subsequently ship to Minnesota in midwinter or whatever, but, it still seems a bit of a niche thing. I guess there are places with far more renewable energy than they can use because of supply vs demand mismatch (Hawaii etc) so perhaps its valuable there.

    The article I posted is just a brief overview and is pretty old. You should checkout Carbon Engineering's website for the full story.

    The biodiesel process is MUCH MUCH more complicated than your making it out to be. You can't just throw material into a vat and magic up some fuel. You need a LOT of complicated chemistry and biology to turn corn stalks into biodiesel. It requires months of processing to get anything useful out it of. It starts with a long and slow digestion process, followed by cracking, refining and purification. There's a LOT of waste and a lot of expensive consumables just to get a useable product.

    The process this canadian company is using is super simple. It is a simple 3 step process to electrolyze water. Add water, apply electricity, and functionally separate the gases. CO2 can simply be compressed out of regular air. Thermocatalytic hydrogenation of CO2 is a similarly simple process that requires no exotic materials and just runs on thermal energy. The whole process is super simple with existing technology with the only byproducts being water and O2. You can check out the papers I read and the company's website, linked below.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0263876214001282
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13638-9
    https://carbonengineering.com/

    TL:DR You vastly underestimate the complexity of biofuel production and vastly overestimate it's efficiency.

    I would say that you are underestimating the complexity of carbon dioxide extraction and vastly overestimating its efficiency.

    If I have corn stalks, and an excellent way to turn CO2 into biofuel, why don't I just dry the corn stalks, grind and burn them, capture the CO2 as it produced, and then turn that CO2 into biodiesel? Seems inherently easier than trying to scavenge CO2 from the air.

    Got any science about why compression is harder? I'm nominally familiar with the atmo CO2 -> hydrocarbon process and it seems super, super simple from an engineering perspective. Whereas the last time I looked it turned out commercial bio-diesel doesn't provide any real benefit over regular extraction because farming the corn takes a pile of fuel itself in order to power the tractors, harvesters, etc.

    Farming seems an ideal place to go electric too, as someone completely clueless. Massive torque from electric motors and vehicles that aren't often used continuously.

  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    Tastyfish wrote: »
    Meeqe wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Jragghen wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I watched a video and subsequently read some articles about this company in Canada that is taking carbon capture to the next level. They are using the captured carbon to create fuel. Their process electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzed hydrogen and captured carbon are then reacted to create diesel fuel. The process can be carbon neutral if the plant is powered by renewables. The fuel they produce could be burned for energy to make up for the times when renewables aren't as productive. If done right, the CO2 produced from burning the fuel could be recaptured and turned back into fuel with the same process.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

    This isn't really carbon capture, its a way to use the byproducts of carbon capture to store renewable energy. It doesn't really achieve anything that say, just using the renewable energy to reduce burning fuels doesn't. It's cool, but, its more in line with biodiesel than anything else.

    In the aggregate, any fuel which uses carbon from the atmosphere is preferable to fuel which takes carbon out of the ground. It's not as good as not using carbon at all (and sequestering what we can), but it's still a net positive movement.

    It's not getting us out of the hole, but it's stopping us from digging deeper.

    But biodiesel already does this. If I have a vehicle that can use biodiesel, and a solar panel, it would seem to make more sense to turn some corn stalks into biodiesel and just hook the solar panel up to the grid. I mean, I guess this is a good way to do solar energy storage or something? Or to make wind power something you can subsequently ship to Minnesota in midwinter or whatever, but, it still seems a bit of a niche thing. I guess there are places with far more renewable energy than they can use because of supply vs demand mismatch (Hawaii etc) so perhaps its valuable there.

    The article I posted is just a brief overview and is pretty old. You should checkout Carbon Engineering's website for the full story.

    The biodiesel process is MUCH MUCH more complicated than your making it out to be. You can't just throw material into a vat and magic up some fuel. You need a LOT of complicated chemistry and biology to turn corn stalks into biodiesel. It requires months of processing to get anything useful out it of. It starts with a long and slow digestion process, followed by cracking, refining and purification. There's a LOT of waste and a lot of expensive consumables just to get a useable product.

    The process this canadian company is using is super simple. It is a simple 3 step process to electrolyze water. Add water, apply electricity, and functionally separate the gases. CO2 can simply be compressed out of regular air. Thermocatalytic hydrogenation of CO2 is a similarly simple process that requires no exotic materials and just runs on thermal energy. The whole process is super simple with existing technology with the only byproducts being water and O2. You can check out the papers I read and the company's website, linked below.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0263876214001282
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13638-9
    https://carbonengineering.com/

    TL:DR You vastly underestimate the complexity of biofuel production and vastly overestimate it's efficiency.

    I would say that you are underestimating the complexity of carbon dioxide extraction and vastly overestimating its efficiency.

    If I have corn stalks, and an excellent way to turn CO2 into biofuel, why don't I just dry the corn stalks, grind and burn them, capture the CO2 as it produced, and then turn that CO2 into biodiesel? Seems inherently easier than trying to scavenge CO2 from the air.

    Got any science about why compression is harder? I'm nominally familiar with the atmo CO2 -> hydrocarbon process and it seems super, super simple from an engineering perspective. Whereas the last time I looked it turned out commercial bio-diesel doesn't provide any real benefit over regular extraction because farming the corn takes a pile of fuel itself in order to power the tractors, harvesters, etc.

    Farming seems an ideal place to go electric too, as someone completely clueless. Massive torque from electric motors and vehicles that aren't often used continuously.

    There's a lot more to consider than just the energy consumed by machinery. There's also all the chemicals that are needed to fortify the soil and protect the crop from pests. There are more chemicals that are required to kick off the digestion process. More chemicals are needed to turn the digested material into liquid fuel. The challenge with biofuel is one of materials and right now the materials are costly and many can't be carbon neutral. Just one example here are the enzymes or microorganisms required for anaerobic digestion. Another is the cobalt needed to remove sulphur from the biofuel.

    On the other hand, carbon capture and thermocatalytic hydrogenation of CO2 are engineering challenges. You don't need any exotic processes or materials to get a pure fuel out of the process. We just need a lot of cheap energy and better machinery. The cheap energy can come from newables and the machinery is getting more refined every year. Given the current situation with carbon taxes in Canada, the CO2 to fuel process is economically viable. Biofuel still isn't. The only reason e85 is even viable in the US is the massive subsidies on corn production and that sort of fuel isn't made from chaff. It's made from food crops that could otherwise go to the starving masses.

    Edit: Another factor is land area. You can set up a carbon capture fuel production facility on a fraction of the land required to produce a similar amount of biofuel. Land that you could put solar and wind generating capacity on.

    That_Guy on
  • tbloxhamtbloxham Registered User regular
    Meeqe wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Jragghen wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I watched a video and subsequently read some articles about this company in Canada that is taking carbon capture to the next level. They are using the captured carbon to create fuel. Their process electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzed hydrogen and captured carbon are then reacted to create diesel fuel. The process can be carbon neutral if the plant is powered by renewables. The fuel they produce could be burned for energy to make up for the times when renewables aren't as productive. If done right, the CO2 produced from burning the fuel could be recaptured and turned back into fuel with the same process.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

    This isn't really carbon capture, its a way to use the byproducts of carbon capture to store renewable energy. It doesn't really achieve anything that say, just using the renewable energy to reduce burning fuels doesn't. It's cool, but, its more in line with biodiesel than anything else.

    In the aggregate, any fuel which uses carbon from the atmosphere is preferable to fuel which takes carbon out of the ground. It's not as good as not using carbon at all (and sequestering what we can), but it's still a net positive movement.

    It's not getting us out of the hole, but it's stopping us from digging deeper.

    But biodiesel already does this. If I have a vehicle that can use biodiesel, and a solar panel, it would seem to make more sense to turn some corn stalks into biodiesel and just hook the solar panel up to the grid. I mean, I guess this is a good way to do solar energy storage or something? Or to make wind power something you can subsequently ship to Minnesota in midwinter or whatever, but, it still seems a bit of a niche thing. I guess there are places with far more renewable energy than they can use because of supply vs demand mismatch (Hawaii etc) so perhaps its valuable there.

    The article I posted is just a brief overview and is pretty old. You should checkout Carbon Engineering's website for the full story.

    The biodiesel process is MUCH MUCH more complicated than your making it out to be. You can't just throw material into a vat and magic up some fuel. You need a LOT of complicated chemistry and biology to turn corn stalks into biodiesel. It requires months of processing to get anything useful out it of. It starts with a long and slow digestion process, followed by cracking, refining and purification. There's a LOT of waste and a lot of expensive consumables just to get a useable product.

    The process this canadian company is using is super simple. It is a simple 3 step process to electrolyze water. Add water, apply electricity, and functionally separate the gases. CO2 can simply be compressed out of regular air. Thermocatalytic hydrogenation of CO2 is a similarly simple process that requires no exotic materials and just runs on thermal energy. The whole process is super simple with existing technology with the only byproducts being water and O2. You can check out the papers I read and the company's website, linked below.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0263876214001282
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13638-9
    https://carbonengineering.com/

    TL:DR You vastly underestimate the complexity of biofuel production and vastly overestimate it's efficiency.

    I would say that you are underestimating the complexity of carbon dioxide extraction and vastly overestimating its efficiency.

    If I have corn stalks, and an excellent way to turn CO2 into biofuel, why don't I just dry the corn stalks, grind and burn them, capture the CO2 as it produced, and then turn that CO2 into biodiesel? Seems inherently easier than trying to scavenge CO2 from the air.

    Got any science about why compression is harder? I'm nominally familiar with the atmo CO2 -> hydrocarbon process and it seems super, super simple from an engineering perspective. Whereas the last time I looked it turned out commercial bio-diesel doesn't provide any real benefit over regular extraction because farming the corn takes a pile of fuel itself in order to power the tractors, harvesters, etc.

    Pumping and compressing gases takes a ridiculous amount of energy. Air compressors are very inefficient (like 10%), as compressed gases get incredibly hot as you compress them, and lose that heat to the environment.

    "That is cool" - Abraham Lincoln
  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Meeqe wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Jragghen wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I watched a video and subsequently read some articles about this company in Canada that is taking carbon capture to the next level. They are using the captured carbon to create fuel. Their process electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzed hydrogen and captured carbon are then reacted to create diesel fuel. The process can be carbon neutral if the plant is powered by renewables. The fuel they produce could be burned for energy to make up for the times when renewables aren't as productive. If done right, the CO2 produced from burning the fuel could be recaptured and turned back into fuel with the same process.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

    This isn't really carbon capture, its a way to use the byproducts of carbon capture to store renewable energy. It doesn't really achieve anything that say, just using the renewable energy to reduce burning fuels doesn't. It's cool, but, its more in line with biodiesel than anything else.

    In the aggregate, any fuel which uses carbon from the atmosphere is preferable to fuel which takes carbon out of the ground. It's not as good as not using carbon at all (and sequestering what we can), but it's still a net positive movement.

    It's not getting us out of the hole, but it's stopping us from digging deeper.

    But biodiesel already does this. If I have a vehicle that can use biodiesel, and a solar panel, it would seem to make more sense to turn some corn stalks into biodiesel and just hook the solar panel up to the grid. I mean, I guess this is a good way to do solar energy storage or something? Or to make wind power something you can subsequently ship to Minnesota in midwinter or whatever, but, it still seems a bit of a niche thing. I guess there are places with far more renewable energy than they can use because of supply vs demand mismatch (Hawaii etc) so perhaps its valuable there.

    The article I posted is just a brief overview and is pretty old. You should checkout Carbon Engineering's website for the full story.

    The biodiesel process is MUCH MUCH more complicated than your making it out to be. You can't just throw material into a vat and magic up some fuel. You need a LOT of complicated chemistry and biology to turn corn stalks into biodiesel. It requires months of processing to get anything useful out it of. It starts with a long and slow digestion process, followed by cracking, refining and purification. There's a LOT of waste and a lot of expensive consumables just to get a useable product.

    The process this canadian company is using is super simple. It is a simple 3 step process to electrolyze water. Add water, apply electricity, and functionally separate the gases. CO2 can simply be compressed out of regular air. Thermocatalytic hydrogenation of CO2 is a similarly simple process that requires no exotic materials and just runs on thermal energy. The whole process is super simple with existing technology with the only byproducts being water and O2. You can check out the papers I read and the company's website, linked below.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0263876214001282
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13638-9
    https://carbonengineering.com/

    TL:DR You vastly underestimate the complexity of biofuel production and vastly overestimate it's efficiency.

    I would say that you are underestimating the complexity of carbon dioxide extraction and vastly overestimating its efficiency.

    If I have corn stalks, and an excellent way to turn CO2 into biofuel, why don't I just dry the corn stalks, grind and burn them, capture the CO2 as it produced, and then turn that CO2 into biodiesel? Seems inherently easier than trying to scavenge CO2 from the air.

    Got any science about why compression is harder? I'm nominally familiar with the atmo CO2 -> hydrocarbon process and it seems super, super simple from an engineering perspective. Whereas the last time I looked it turned out commercial bio-diesel doesn't provide any real benefit over regular extraction because farming the corn takes a pile of fuel itself in order to power the tractors, harvesters, etc.

    Pumping and compressing gases takes a ridiculous amount of energy. Air compressors are very inefficient (like 10%), as compressed gases get incredibly hot as you compress them, and lose that heat to the environment.

    I'll go ahead and ask a again. Do you have anything resembling scholarly evidence to back this up?

    Electric motors, weather they are powering air pumps or electric cars are a lot more efficient then you are indicating. Heatsinks are a thing and you can totally turn around and harvest that heat to power the hydrogenation process. And you keep dancing around my assertion that we need clean, cheap renewable energy to power the process. Furthermore if we can create super efficient pumps to power air conditioners and refrigerators, we can make them to pump regular air.

  • eMoandereMoander Registered User regular
    Holy crap, there's a ton of armchair quarterbacking with zero backup and massive oversimplification and misinformation in the last few posts. As someone working in this industry for the last decade, its honestly physically painful for me to read the crap being spewed on this page, so apologies in advance for long response.

    First thing all of you have to step back and consider: if something is 'easy', then why isn't it being broadly deployed and commercialized? If it's easy to make money, someone would have done it already. So /spoiler alert/ neither biodiesel (as defined above, I'll clarify) nor direct carbon capture are anywhere near economic viability currently.

    The term biodiesel being thrown around is being used incorrectly. Virtually all commercial biodiesel is just esterified fatty acids, ie you take vegetable oil and react it with methanol to block the acid group which gives it bulk physical properties more in line with diesel than vegetable oil. This process is cheap and efficient, especially when you used waste cooking oil etc. Actually fermenting sugars to biodiesel is inefficient and expensive. The primary fermentation derived biofuel is ethanol which is comparatively efficient from a fermentation process and has been scaled up all over the midwest. However, it is really only cost competitive with gasoline when you include government subsidies like the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), and also then only from sugar (whether mainly corn syrup in the US, or sugarcane derivatives imported from Brazil). Fermentation from non-sugar biomass (ie corn stover, switchgrass, etc) is ridiculously far from viable. The RFS had credits built into it from day 1 for the production of second-generation cellulosic ethanol and biofuels, which have basically never been used because even with the credits the process is far too inefficient. DuPont made a big deal of opening a cellulosic ethanol plant in Iowa about 5 years ago, and quietly shut it all down a couple years later when it was clearly nonviable. There have been multiple companies which made a big push for fermentation (or algae) to diesel (Solazyme, Aurora, LS9, etc) and they are all pretty much gone at this point.

    On the magic of hydrogen plus carbon to diesel, and the challenge being 'just engineering', the details are similarly important. Firstly, there seems to be some confusion on the substrate. These guys aren't working on carbon black, they are using CO2, which is the lowest energy form of carbon, so there is a massive thermodynamic hole to dig your way out of. Concentration out of air is theoretically simple, but as noted energy intensive and progresses exponentially in relation to actual concentration. Again, this is thermodynamics going from a high entropy (dilute) state to a low entropy (concentrated) state. Generally this is done with zeolites or other binding surfaces that have high affinity for CO2 to pull it out of the atmosphere. This is relatively easy! However, in order to do anything with the CO2, you then need to get it off the zeolite which takes exactly as much energy as you put into the binding in the first place. So the more efficient and effective your binding agent, the more energy you have to put in to complete the cycle. The real killer in this reaction is the hydrogen though. Every one of these 'green' companies will talk about how clean and available water electrolysis is to get hydrogen, but the real secret is that electrolysis is not scalable at any level and has efficiencies in the single digit percent, so any kind of commercial hydrogen is derived from steam reforming of methane, which is dirt cheap in the US. Steam reforming of methane is CH4 + 2H2O -> 4H2 + CO2, so guess what you're making exactly as much CO2 on the hydrogen production as you are capturing on the other end. Finally, you don't just mix H2 and CO2 and hydrocarbons miraculously appear. Even getting the reaction going requires 500+ deg C, and requires proper catalysts which are generally precious metals, and it is definitely not exothermic so requires an outside source of heat to keep things moving. On top of that, the primary product in most cases is just going to be methane which is a remarkably stable form of carbon, and forming carbon-carbon bonds (let alone multiple bonds to get you into the C18+ range for diesel) is not trivial at all, leading to low yields, increasing overall cost. The high temperatures and low yield, heterogeneous products means this type of reaction is only economical at massive scale, and when I say massive we are talking tens of billions of dollars per facility. A good example is the Shell Pearl facility https://www.shell.com/about-us/major-projects/pearl-gtl.html (which uses natural gas as the feedstock which doesn't even have the issues of the CO2 capture). This project cost over $18 billion US dollars, and they are looking at scaling it up further as it still isn't as profitable as they would like.

    If you want a couple of references, you can Google for technoeconomic analyses of various processes. A few examples:
    Models for direct air capture economics
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652619307772
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261919306385

    A model of your integrated GTL+electrolysis model
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261918301260

    High level summary of the above: its way too expensive to make money today, but assuming some really cool technology improvements that may happen in 20 years, it could totally work! Oh also, we shouldn't make fuel because its too cheap, so try to focus on higher-value functional hydrocarbons.

    Not to exclude the biofuel side, but here's a good article on the history of renewable fuels in the US:
    https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43325.pdf
    The total renewable fuel statutory target consists of both conventional biofuel and advanced
    biofuel. Since 2014, the total renewable fuel statutory target has not been met, with the advanced
    biofuel portion falling below the statutory target by a relatively large margin since 2015. Going
    forward, it appears unlikely that the United States will meet the total renewable fuel target as
    outlined in statute.

    Hint: the 'advanced biofuels' are the cellulosic and non-sugar by-products that have been referred to here as relatively simple to make, and literally have never even been close to economically viable. I think Amyris was quoted at one point at selling fermented biodiesel at $9/L (this is from memory, so might be a little off) so that is $36/gal... for diesel derived from Brazilian sugar in Brazil which is pretty much the cheapest possible source on the planet.

    Xbox: Travesty 0214 Switch: 3304-2356-9421 Honkai Star Rail: 600322115 Battlenet: Travesty #1822
  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    Meeqe wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    Jragghen wrote: »
    tbloxham wrote: »
    That_Guy wrote: »
    I watched a video and subsequently read some articles about this company in Canada that is taking carbon capture to the next level. They are using the captured carbon to create fuel. Their process electrolyzes water into hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzed hydrogen and captured carbon are then reacted to create diesel fuel. The process can be carbon neutral if the plant is powered by renewables. The fuel they produce could be burned for energy to make up for the times when renewables aren't as productive. If done right, the CO2 produced from burning the fuel could be recaptured and turned back into fuel with the same process.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/06/carbon-engineering-liquid-fuel-carbon-capture-neutral-science/

    This isn't really carbon capture, its a way to use the byproducts of carbon capture to store renewable energy. It doesn't really achieve anything that say, just using the renewable energy to reduce burning fuels doesn't. It's cool, but, its more in line with biodiesel than anything else.

    In the aggregate, any fuel which uses carbon from the atmosphere is preferable to fuel which takes carbon out of the ground. It's not as good as not using carbon at all (and sequestering what we can), but it's still a net positive movement.

    It's not getting us out of the hole, but it's stopping us from digging deeper.

    But biodiesel already does this. If I have a vehicle that can use biodiesel, and a solar panel, it would seem to make more sense to turn some corn stalks into biodiesel and just hook the solar panel up to the grid. I mean, I guess this is a good way to do solar energy storage or something? Or to make wind power something you can subsequently ship to Minnesota in midwinter or whatever, but, it still seems a bit of a niche thing. I guess there are places with far more renewable energy than they can use because of supply vs demand mismatch (Hawaii etc) so perhaps its valuable there.

    The article I posted is just a brief overview and is pretty old. You should checkout Carbon Engineering's website for the full story.

    The biodiesel process is MUCH MUCH more complicated than your making it out to be. You can't just throw material into a vat and magic up some fuel. You need a LOT of complicated chemistry and biology to turn corn stalks into biodiesel. It requires months of processing to get anything useful out it of. It starts with a long and slow digestion process, followed by cracking, refining and purification. There's a LOT of waste and a lot of expensive consumables just to get a useable product.

    The process this canadian company is using is super simple. It is a simple 3 step process to electrolyze water. Add water, apply electricity, and functionally separate the gases. CO2 can simply be compressed out of regular air. Thermocatalytic hydrogenation of CO2 is a similarly simple process that requires no exotic materials and just runs on thermal energy. The whole process is super simple with existing technology with the only byproducts being water and O2. You can check out the papers I read and the company's website, linked below.

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0263876214001282
    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13638-9
    https://carbonengineering.com/

    TL:DR You vastly underestimate the complexity of biofuel production and vastly overestimate it's efficiency.

    I would say that you are underestimating the complexity of carbon dioxide extraction and vastly overestimating its efficiency.

    If I have corn stalks, and an excellent way to turn CO2 into biofuel, why don't I just dry the corn stalks, grind and burn them, capture the CO2 as it produced, and then turn that CO2 into biodiesel? Seems inherently easier than trying to scavenge CO2 from the air.

    Got any science about why compression is harder? I'm nominally familiar with the atmo CO2 -> hydrocarbon process and it seems super, super simple from an engineering perspective. Whereas the last time I looked it turned out commercial bio-diesel doesn't provide any real benefit over regular extraction because farming the corn takes a pile of fuel itself in order to power the tractors, harvesters, etc.

    Because co2 is at like 400 ppm. So you need to process 2500 liters of air to make one liter of co2 uncompressed. A gallon of gas or diesel produces about 20 pounds of co2 when burned and 20 lbs of co2 is about 4860 liters of co2. So in order to make a gallon of gas via compression out of average air you need to filter 12.125 million liters of air. About 12,125 cubic meters.

    Which isn’t a huge amount unless you want to filter out an appreciable amount of co2/make a reasonable amount of diesel. Filtering a cubic kilometer of air, if you get all the carbon out and have no overlapping currents reducing the amount of co2 in the local air, gives you about 82 gallons of diesel. LA is about 1300 sq KM so if you filtered all of the air in LA up to a height of 1 KM you get 104k gallons about 10-20 tanker trucks worth.

    Now I won’t say this doesn’t have value. Because getting transportable energy at net zero carbon is good. But carbon filtering is not easy and has land limits just like planting trees do. Iirc it was said that 40k of some new carbon capture plant was going to get us to net zero. In order to do that each plant would need to filter(perfectly) 38,000 gallons worth of gas out of the atmosphere each day (5.1 b metric tonnes of co2 x 2200 to lbs /40,000 for plants / 20 lbs Co2 in a gallon of gas /365 for days in a year) so they would each have to filter all the air in LA every 3 days without reducing local density.

    Now this goes down in higher density areas but more or less you have issues with overlapping things. You cannot just put more plants in LA as that will quickly become a low density area.

    Goumindong on
    wbBv3fj.png
  • Void SlayerVoid Slayer Very Suspicious Registered User regular
    It sounds like the main problem is that the size of what is needed to tackle the problem is too great. We will basically need a second global industrial infrastructure to counter and reverse the existing one, which will be a massive expense.

    Speaking of energy, is there a non fuel solid carbon form that could be produced that is closer in energy to CO2? It seems like that would be more efficent to create, then bury, if one is going to start making thousands of carbon sequestration plants aroind the globe.

    He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    eMoander wrote: »
    Holy crap, there's a ton of armchair quarterbacking with zero backup and massive oversimplification and misinformation in the last few posts. As someone working in this industry for the last decade, its honestly physically painful for me to read the crap being spewed on this page, so apologies in advance for long response.

    First thing all of you have to step back and consider: if something is 'easy', then why isn't it being broadly deployed and commercialized? If it's easy to make money, someone would have done it already. So /spoiler alert/ neither biodiesel (as defined above, I'll clarify) nor direct carbon capture are anywhere near economic viability currently.

    The term biodiesel being thrown around is being used incorrectly. Virtually all commercial biodiesel is just esterified fatty acids, ie you take vegetable oil and react it with methanol to block the acid group which gives it bulk physical properties more in line with diesel than vegetable oil. This process is cheap and efficient, especially when you used waste cooking oil etc. Actually fermenting sugars to biodiesel is inefficient and expensive. The primary fermentation derived biofuel is ethanol which is comparatively efficient from a fermentation process and has been scaled up all over the midwest. However, it is really only cost competitive with gasoline when you include government subsidies like the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), and also then only from sugar (whether mainly corn syrup in the US, or sugarcane derivatives imported from Brazil). Fermentation from non-sugar biomass (ie corn stover, switchgrass, etc) is ridiculously far from viable. The RFS had credits built into it from day 1 for the production of second-generation cellulosic ethanol and biofuels, which have basically never been used because even with the credits the process is far too inefficient. DuPont made a big deal of opening a cellulosic ethanol plant in Iowa about 5 years ago, and quietly shut it all down a couple years later when it was clearly nonviable. There have been multiple companies which made a big push for fermentation (or algae) to diesel (Solazyme, Aurora, LS9, etc) and they are all pretty much gone at this point.

    On the magic of hydrogen plus carbon to diesel, and the challenge being 'just engineering', the details are similarly important. Firstly, there seems to be some confusion on the substrate. These guys aren't working on carbon black, they are using CO2, which is the lowest energy form of carbon, so there is a massive thermodynamic hole to dig your way out of. Concentration out of air is theoretically simple, but as noted energy intensive and progresses exponentially in relation to actual concentration. Again, this is thermodynamics going from a high entropy (dilute) state to a low entropy (concentrated) state. Generally this is done with zeolites or other binding surfaces that have high affinity for CO2 to pull it out of the atmosphere. This is relatively easy! However, in order to do anything with the CO2, you then need to get it off the zeolite which takes exactly as much energy as you put into the binding in the first place. So the more efficient and effective your binding agent, the more energy you have to put in to complete the cycle. The real killer in this reaction is the hydrogen though. Every one of these 'green' companies will talk about how clean and available water electrolysis is to get hydrogen, but the real secret is that electrolysis is not scalable at any level and has efficiencies in the single digit percent, so any kind of commercial hydrogen is derived from steam reforming of methane, which is dirt cheap in the US. Steam reforming of methane is CH4 + 2H2O -> 4H2 + CO2, so guess what you're making exactly as much CO2 on the hydrogen production as you are capturing on the other end. Finally, you don't just mix H2 and CO2 and hydrocarbons miraculously appear. Even getting the reaction going requires 500+ deg C, and requires proper catalysts which are generally precious metals, and it is definitely not exothermic so requires an outside source of heat to keep things moving. On top of that, the primary product in most cases is just going to be methane which is a remarkably stable form of carbon, and forming carbon-carbon bonds (let alone multiple bonds to get you into the C18+ range for diesel) is not trivial at all, leading to low yields, increasing overall cost. The high temperatures and low yield, heterogeneous products means this type of reaction is only economical at massive scale, and when I say massive we are talking tens of billions of dollars per facility. A good example is the Shell Pearl facility https://www.shell.com/about-us/major-projects/pearl-gtl.html (which uses natural gas as the feedstock which doesn't even have the issues of the CO2 capture). This project cost over $18 billion US dollars, and they are looking at scaling it up further as it still isn't as profitable as they would like.

    If you want a couple of references, you can Google for technoeconomic analyses of various processes. A few examples:
    Models for direct air capture economics
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652619307772
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261919306385

    A model of your integrated GTL+electrolysis model
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261918301260

    High level summary of the above: its way too expensive to make money today, but assuming some really cool technology improvements that may happen in 20 years, it could totally work! Oh also, we shouldn't make fuel because its too cheap, so try to focus on higher-value functional hydrocarbons.

    Not to exclude the biofuel side, but here's a good article on the history of renewable fuels in the US:
    https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43325.pdf
    The total renewable fuel statutory target consists of both conventional biofuel and advanced
    biofuel. Since 2014, the total renewable fuel statutory target has not been met, with the advanced
    biofuel portion falling below the statutory target by a relatively large margin since 2015. Going
    forward, it appears unlikely that the United States will meet the total renewable fuel target as
    outlined in statute.

    Hint: the 'advanced biofuels' are the cellulosic and non-sugar by-products that have been referred to here as relatively simple to make, and literally have never even been close to economically viable. I think Amyris was quoted at one point at selling fermented biodiesel at $9/L (this is from memory, so might be a little off) so that is $36/gal... for diesel derived from Brazilian sugar in Brazil which is pretty much the cheapest possible source on the planet.

    Any note on why exactly fermented biofuel (not talking about anything fancy, just sugar and starch derived ethanol and relatives) is not viable? It’s hardly a complex industrial process (basically just a whiskey distillery except you don’t have to worry about making sure its safe for human consumption or tastes good). Is it just a matter of high input costs and competition from cheap crude?

    Jealous Deva on
  • eMoandereMoander Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    eMoander wrote: »
    Holy crap, there's a ton of armchair quarterbacking with zero backup and massive oversimplification and misinformation in the last few posts. As someone working in this industry for the last decade, its honestly physically painful for me to read the crap being spewed on this page, so apologies in advance for long response.

    First thing all of you have to step back and consider: if something is 'easy', then why isn't it being broadly deployed and commercialized? If it's easy to make money, someone would have done it already. So /spoiler alert/ neither biodiesel (as defined above, I'll clarify) nor direct carbon capture are anywhere near economic viability currently.

    The term biodiesel being thrown around is being used incorrectly. Virtually all commercial biodiesel is just esterified fatty acids, ie you take vegetable oil and react it with methanol to block the acid group which gives it bulk physical properties more in line with diesel than vegetable oil. This process is cheap and efficient, especially when you used waste cooking oil etc. Actually fermenting sugars to biodiesel is inefficient and expensive. The primary fermentation derived biofuel is ethanol which is comparatively efficient from a fermentation process and has been scaled up all over the midwest. However, it is really only cost competitive with gasoline when you include government subsidies like the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), and also then only from sugar (whether mainly corn syrup in the US, or sugarcane derivatives imported from Brazil). Fermentation from non-sugar biomass (ie corn stover, switchgrass, etc) is ridiculously far from viable. The RFS had credits built into it from day 1 for the production of second-generation cellulosic ethanol and biofuels, which have basically never been used because even with the credits the process is far too inefficient. DuPont made a big deal of opening a cellulosic ethanol plant in Iowa about 5 years ago, and quietly shut it all down a couple years later when it was clearly nonviable. There have been multiple companies which made a big push for fermentation (or algae) to diesel (Solazyme, Aurora, LS9, etc) and they are all pretty much gone at this point.

    On the magic of hydrogen plus carbon to diesel, and the challenge being 'just engineering', the details are similarly important. Firstly, there seems to be some confusion on the substrate. These guys aren't working on carbon black, they are using CO2, which is the lowest energy form of carbon, so there is a massive thermodynamic hole to dig your way out of. Concentration out of air is theoretically simple, but as noted energy intensive and progresses exponentially in relation to actual concentration. Again, this is thermodynamics going from a high entropy (dilute) state to a low entropy (concentrated) state. Generally this is done with zeolites or other binding surfaces that have high affinity for CO2 to pull it out of the atmosphere. This is relatively easy! However, in order to do anything with the CO2, you then need to get it off the zeolite which takes exactly as much energy as you put into the binding in the first place. So the more efficient and effective your binding agent, the more energy you have to put in to complete the cycle. The real killer in this reaction is the hydrogen though. Every one of these 'green' companies will talk about how clean and available water electrolysis is to get hydrogen, but the real secret is that electrolysis is not scalable at any level and has efficiencies in the single digit percent, so any kind of commercial hydrogen is derived from steam reforming of methane, which is dirt cheap in the US. Steam reforming of methane is CH4 + 2H2O -> 4H2 + CO2, so guess what you're making exactly as much CO2 on the hydrogen production as you are capturing on the other end. Finally, you don't just mix H2 and CO2 and hydrocarbons miraculously appear. Even getting the reaction going requires 500+ deg C, and requires proper catalysts which are generally precious metals, and it is definitely not exothermic so requires an outside source of heat to keep things moving. On top of that, the primary product in most cases is just going to be methane which is a remarkably stable form of carbon, and forming carbon-carbon bonds (let alone multiple bonds to get you into the C18+ range for diesel) is not trivial at all, leading to low yields, increasing overall cost. The high temperatures and low yield, heterogeneous products means this type of reaction is only economical at massive scale, and when I say massive we are talking tens of billions of dollars per facility. A good example is the Shell Pearl facility https://www.shell.com/about-us/major-projects/pearl-gtl.html (which uses natural gas as the feedstock which doesn't even have the issues of the CO2 capture). This project cost over $18 billion US dollars, and they are looking at scaling it up further as it still isn't as profitable as they would like.

    If you want a couple of references, you can Google for technoeconomic analyses of various processes. A few examples:
    Models for direct air capture economics
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652619307772
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261919306385

    A model of your integrated GTL+electrolysis model
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0306261918301260

    High level summary of the above: its way too expensive to make money today, but assuming some really cool technology improvements that may happen in 20 years, it could totally work! Oh also, we shouldn't make fuel because its too cheap, so try to focus on higher-value functional hydrocarbons.

    Not to exclude the biofuel side, but here's a good article on the history of renewable fuels in the US:
    https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43325.pdf
    The total renewable fuel statutory target consists of both conventional biofuel and advanced
    biofuel. Since 2014, the total renewable fuel statutory target has not been met, with the advanced
    biofuel portion falling below the statutory target by a relatively large margin since 2015. Going
    forward, it appears unlikely that the United States will meet the total renewable fuel target as
    outlined in statute.

    Hint: the 'advanced biofuels' are the cellulosic and non-sugar by-products that have been referred to here as relatively simple to make, and literally have never even been close to economically viable. I think Amyris was quoted at one point at selling fermented biodiesel at $9/L (this is from memory, so might be a little off) so that is $36/gal... for diesel derived from Brazilian sugar in Brazil which is pretty much the cheapest possible source on the planet.

    Any note on why exactly fermented biofuel (not talking about anything fancy, just sugar and starch derived ethanol and relatives) is not viable? It’s hardly a complex industrial process (basically just a whiskey distillery except you don’t have to worry about making sure its safe for human consumption or tastes good). Is it just a matter of high input costs and competition from cheap crude?

    Primarily high costs relative to gasoline, but there are a few details. Fuel ethanol is significantly lower energy density than gasoline (26.8 vs 46.4 MJ/kg or 18.4 vs 34.2 MJ/L) so your mileage per gallon* is going to be roughly half even if cost to produce was identical. Ethanol is also significantly more hydrophilic (water-soluble) than gasoline so you end up with the fuel sucking moisture out of the air, which leads to corrosion of engine parts and especially pipelines which are not designed to be exposed to water. In the US, what you end up with is blending with gasoline (again driven more by the RFS subsidies than anything else; interestingly the RFS subsidies are actually targeted at the blender, rather than the ethanol producers, which leads to some unique market dynamics). At 15% ethanol (labeled E15 in the US) you have a product that is slightly lower energy than normal gasoline, but not so much that a consumer would generally notice it, and the corrosion effects are minimal. US also sells an 85% ethanol blend (E85) in some places, but this requires a specially modified engine to be able to avoid the corrosion issues. The fuel ethanol industry has been pushing for years to make the anti-corrosion standard into all new engines which would allow them to sell a lot more ethanol, but as it adds cost to the car, understandably the car manufacturers have been pushing back.

    As with all things, the primary cost driver of making ethanol is driven by the feedstock, which in this case is sugar. In the US, usually this comes from corn, which is why you see places like Iowa with the vast majority of the large-scale ethanol plants. The short answer is that sugar is relatively expensive compared to crude oil, so fuel ethanol in the US has not historically ever been cheaper than gasoline. Interestingly enough, the price of sugar is actually pretty well correlated with oil, as fuel for transportation etc is one of the major cost drivers, so its not likely this is going to change in the future.

    Note the above is US-specific. It's worse in the EU and Asia, as there aren't any cheap sources of sugar floating around (sugar beets in some areas of the EU work well, but its a pretty small volume relative to the market) so most of the feedstock needs to be imported which also increases cost. However, Brazil is the notable exception. Brazil is awash in dirt-cheap sugarcane and molasses and has mandated that ethanol be blended into their gasoline since the '90s. Most cars in Brazil actually run on pure ethanol now (E100) and pure gasoline is essentially illegal. Wikipedia has a good summary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil#:~:text=Most automobiles in Brazil run,gasoline have been gaining popularity.

    So Brazil is really the exception that proves the rule. Ethanol is a viable fuel if you can get the costs low enough and make the necessary investments in infrastructure, but as of today there is really only one place in the world where it actually makes economic sense (without subsidies).


    *apologies for swapping between units all willy-nilly, not trying to be confusing just trying to put it into terms that will be relatable

    Edit:
    Apologies, I wrote all of that and then realized I didn't actually put any numbers in for real prices. Again, this is US-based, but you can see historical prices for the raw materials (not the price paid by consumers at the pump, which will be misleading because it has all the subsidies, taxes, etc built in; and consumers don't actually buy the raw ethanol anyways) here:
    Ethanol: https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/ethanol-price
    Gasoline: https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/rbob-gasoline

    Obviously when we talk commodities the prices fluctuate over time, but generally you can see that they track together and the price of ethanol is usually ~10-20% higher than gasoline on a /volume/ basis. Given the difference in energy content I referenced above, this actually puts it at about 2x more expensive than the gasoline on a use basis.

    eMoander on
    Xbox: Travesty 0214 Switch: 3304-2356-9421 Honkai Star Rail: 600322115 Battlenet: Travesty #1822
  • MeeqeMeeqe Lord of the pants most fancy Someplace amazingRegistered User regular
    Thank you all for the follow-up on the price points, very much appreciated!

  • eMoandereMoander Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    It sounds like the main problem is that the size of what is needed to tackle the problem is too great. We will basically need a second global industrial infrastructure to counter and reverse the existing one, which will be a massive expense.

    Speaking of energy, is there a non fuel solid carbon form that could be produced that is closer in energy to CO2? It seems like that would be more efficent to create, then bury, if one is going to start making thousands of carbon sequestration plants aroind the globe.

    Unfortunately, not really. CO2 is basically the lowest energy state of carbon which is why its so stable and sticks around so long. Amusingly enough, there are several really long-lived forms of carbon that we make in the millions of tons per year already: plastics. The poor environmental footprint and low biodegradeability make things like polyethylene an ideal form of carbon sequestration. I've actually gotten pushback from climate investors on some projects I was trying to initiate on plastic recycling because it would put that carbon back into circulation! If we're taking a real narrow view, sinking a bunch of plastic items into the depths of the ocean is a great way to do carbon sequestration. What we're missing though is a way to cost-effectively go from CO2 to the plastic, because currently its all fossil-derived carbon.*

    One thing that might be getting some traction is injecting CO2 into concrete: https://www.carboncure.com/. It seems like it actually has some benefits with regard to improving the strength of the final product, so the cost can be justified without a specific carbon price. I'm not sold on the full life cycle analysis, as it still requires a concentrated source of CO2 which of course takes energy and transportation, but in terms of a useful thing to do with the CO2 it seems promising (other than the obvious answer of just plant some more trees).

    *It is technically feasible to make bio-polyethylene. Coke did this a couple years ago with their plant bottle; you basically just dehydrate fuel grade bio-ethanol to ethylene, and then polymerize the ethylene like normal. Again, it all comes down to cost, and they were able to write it off as basically part of the advertising/marketing budget rather than truly putting it on the bottom line.
    https://www.coca-colacompany.com/news/coca-cola-expands-access-to-plantbottle-ip
    Side note, only like 30% of the mass of the 'plant bottle' is actually plant based since they made it out of PET, where the terephthalate is a big percent of the mass, but that's just because straight PE resins are crap at holding beverages.

    eMoander on
    Xbox: Travesty 0214 Switch: 3304-2356-9421 Honkai Star Rail: 600322115 Battlenet: Travesty #1822
  • CalicaCalica Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    @eMoander, when you say the problems come down to cost, is that cost as in money (meaning we have the means to solve the problem, but not the will) or cost as in energy?

    edit: also, is a material (materials, really) that can adequately replace plastic in all of its vital applications, but without the environmental problems of disposing of and/or recycling plastic, a possibility? I think a lot about plastic waste, especially microplastics, and how plastic is in everything and there's currently no good substitute for it (or the substitutes don't scale).

    Calica on
  • HappylilElfHappylilElf Registered User regular
    Also @eMoander thank you for these posts. I genuinely appreciate it when people who know things are willing to share their knowledge and lay things out on a topic.

  • eMoandereMoander Registered User regular
    Calica wrote: »
    @eMoander, when you say the problems come down to cost, is that cost as in money (meaning we have the means to solve the problem, but not the will) or cost as in energy?

    edit: also, is a material (materials, really) that can adequately replace plastic in all of its vital applications, but without the environmental problems of disposing of and/or recycling plastic, a possibility? I think a lot about plastic waste, especially microplastics, and how plastic is in everything and there's currently no good substitute for it (or the substitutes don't scale).

    Not sure how you're differentiating the two; energy is an input to most processes which has a dollar cost associated with it, so an energy-intensive process will almost always be an expensive process. Almost anything is /possible/ in the sense that I can turn one thing into another, just in most cases it makes no sense to do it because it is inefficient relative to other alternatives. Take fusion energy for example. We know it works at large scale (ie the sun), but as you scale it down the energy requirements to keep it running exceed the energy output from the reaction. With today's technology, we can run a fusion reactor all day long, it will just consume 2 MW/hr for every 1 MW/hr it produces (just making up numbers, don't quote me). Given current prices, that means we are spending $274 to output $137 of electricity, so unless the government or someone similar is willing to pay me the difference in subsidies, then there is no reason to do actually do it and if my goal is just keeping my lights on then I would be better off burning natural gas. Solar and wind are good counter-examples, which started off very expensive relative to traditional power plants, but over time the technology has improved and costs have come down to be competitive, and now we see these types of power being deployed everywhere. So there is definitely a case for government subsidizing early technologies to allow them to scale/improve to the point that they can compete on an equal footing in the marketplace. However, there are real thermodynamic barriers to the CO2 capture story (as discussed above), and these things are referred to as the laws of thermodynamics for a reason so they aren't necessarily just going to follow a Moore's law curve by throwing money at them.

    On the second point, again this feels counter-intuitive, but from a climate perspective, that microplastic is a great thing! Every bit of microplastic is a bit of carbon that cannot go into the atmosphere for 10,000 years. As soon as you start talking about reusing/recycling/degrading that plastic you have to think about where the carbon is going to end up. Now personally I feel like the ocean environment is pretty important generally, so the fact that we are currently projecting that there will be more plastic in the ocean by weight than fish by 2050 doesn't feel like an overall win. Landfilling has its own problems, but it's still probably a lot safer and more stable than the people trying to pump CO2 into deep shale or similar.

    Xbox: Travesty 0214 Switch: 3304-2356-9421 Honkai Star Rail: 600322115 Battlenet: Travesty #1822
  • eMoandereMoander Registered User regular
    Also @eMoander thank you for these posts. I genuinely appreciate it when people who know things are willing to share their knowledge and lay things out on a topic.

    Thanks! I usually lurk here to see the news and try to get a broader view of opinions and such, but I'm always afraid of dominating the conversation and shutting down discussion (which honestly seems to have happened over the last couple of days, so apologies for that).

    On a side note, I'm actually just finalizing a financing to start a new climate-related venture in the next couple of weeks. Still stealth mode, but hopefully there will be something to report by the end of the year!

    Xbox: Travesty 0214 Switch: 3304-2356-9421 Honkai Star Rail: 600322115 Battlenet: Travesty #1822
  • JragghenJragghen Registered User regular
    eMoander wrote: »
    Also @eMoander thank you for these posts. I genuinely appreciate it when people who know things are willing to share their knowledge and lay things out on a topic.

    Thanks! I usually lurk here to see the news and try to get a broader view of opinions and such, but I'm always afraid of dominating the conversation and shutting down discussion (which honestly seems to have happened over the last couple of days, so apologies for that).

    On a side note, I'm actually just finalizing a financing to start a new climate-related venture in the next couple of weeks. Still stealth mode, but hopefully there will be something to report by the end of the year!

    Nah, this thread, I think, causes existential dread among forumers more than most and so if we have nothing to say of import, there's less conversation so it can drop off the page and we can avoid having it thrust in our faces for a few days :/

  • VishNubVishNub Registered User regular
    edited July 2020
    Long term storage of a carbonate like CaCO3, that was both stable and scalable would avoid the energy penalty of reducing the carbon, but there aren't that many elements available in sufficient quantity to make that practical, I think.

    VishNub on
  • MayabirdMayabird Pecking at the keyboardRegistered User regular
    VishNub wrote: »
    Long term storage of a carbonate like CaCO3, that was both stable and scalable would avoid the energy penalty of reducing the carbon, but there aren't that many elements available in sufficient quantity to make that practical, I think.

    Saw this proposal about spreading basalt dust over farmland as a combination fertilizer and carbon sink. Something like that (probably combined with working char into the soil for additional carbon storage)?
    eMoander wrote: »
    On a side note, I'm actually just finalizing a financing to start a new climate-related venture in the next couple of weeks. Still stealth mode, but hopefully there will be something to report by the end of the year!

    How much financing are you needing? No specifics are needed, just an order of magnitude idea. Is it anything where those of us in a state of existential doom could pitch in substantially?

  • eMoandereMoander Registered User regular
    eMoander wrote: »
    On a side note, I'm actually just finalizing a financing to start a new climate-related venture in the next couple of weeks. Still stealth mode, but hopefully there will be something to report by the end of the year!

    How much financing are you needing? No specifics are needed, just an order of magnitude idea. Is it anything where those of us in a state of existential doom could pitch in substantially? [/quote]

    Definitely appreciate the offer and sentiment, but its beyond what most individuals would be looking at, and the headaches of raising money from non-accredited investors isn't generally worth it regardless. These are big problems, so its hard to do anything small with a credible story. Swing for the fences, go big or go home, etc etc.

    Xbox: Travesty 0214 Switch: 3304-2356-9421 Honkai Star Rail: 600322115 Battlenet: Travesty #1822
  • CalicaCalica Registered User regular
    eMoander wrote: »
    Calica wrote: »
    @eMoander, when you say the problems come down to cost, is that cost as in money (meaning we have the means to solve the problem, but not the will) or cost as in energy?

    edit: also, is a material (materials, really) that can adequately replace plastic in all of its vital applications, but without the environmental problems of disposing of and/or recycling plastic, a possibility? I think a lot about plastic waste, especially microplastics, and how plastic is in everything and there's currently no good substitute for it (or the substitutes don't scale).

    Not sure how you're differentiating the two; energy is an input to most processes which has a dollar cost associated with it, so an energy-intensive process will almost always be an expensive process. Almost anything is /possible/ in the sense that I can turn one thing into another, just in most cases it makes no sense to do it because it is inefficient relative to other alternatives. Take fusion energy for example. We know it works at large scale (ie the sun), but as you scale it down the energy requirements to keep it running exceed the energy output from the reaction. With today's technology, we can run a fusion reactor all day long, it will just consume 2 MW/hr for every 1 MW/hr it produces (just making up numbers, don't quote me). Given current prices, that means we are spending $274 to output $137 of electricity, so unless the government or someone similar is willing to pay me the difference in subsidies, then there is no reason to do actually do it and if my goal is just keeping my lights on then I would be better off burning natural gas. Solar and wind are good counter-examples, which started off very expensive relative to traditional power plants, but over time the technology has improved and costs have come down to be competitive, and now we see these types of power being deployed everywhere. So there is definitely a case for government subsidizing early technologies to allow them to scale/improve to the point that they can compete on an equal footing in the marketplace. However, there are real thermodynamic barriers to the CO2 capture story (as discussed above), and these things are referred to as the laws of thermodynamics for a reason so they aren't necessarily just going to follow a Moore's law curve by throwing money at them.

    On the second point, again this feels counter-intuitive, but from a climate perspective, that microplastic is a great thing! Every bit of microplastic is a bit of carbon that cannot go into the atmosphere for 10,000 years. As soon as you start talking about reusing/recycling/degrading that plastic you have to think about where the carbon is going to end up. Now personally I feel like the ocean environment is pretty important generally, so the fact that we are currently projecting that there will be more plastic in the ocean by weight than fish by 2050 doesn't feel like an overall win. Landfilling has its own problems, but it's still probably a lot safer and more stable than the people trying to pump CO2 into deep shale or similar.

    Trying to tease out whether a thing is hard to do because capitalism doesn't incentivise long-term thinking (e.g., lowering emissions), or because said thing is physically impossible to do with current technology (e.g., net-positive fusion power).

  • enlightenedbumenlightenedbum Registered User regular
    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/12/climate/oil-fracking-bankruptcy-methane-executive-pay.html

    1) Oil and gas companies are failing at a prodigious rate
    2) Just before they declare bankruptcy they pay their executives massive bonuses
    3) They abandon their wells without capping them, which then leak methane
    4) That last is against the god damn law

    Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
This discussion has been closed.