Removing CO2 From the Air Efficiently 487
Canadian scientists have created a device that efficiently removes CO2 from the atmosphere. "The proposed air capture system differs from existing carbon capture and storage technology ... while CCS involves installing equipment at, say, a coal-fired power plant to capture CO2 produced during the coal-burning process, ... air capture machines will be able to literally remove the CO2 present in ambient air everywhere. [The team used] ... a custom-built tower to capture CO2 directly from the air while requiring less than 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity per tonne of carbon dioxide."
Natural device? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't we have a device that removes CO2 from the air? I thought they were called "trees."
Is it effective? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is it effective? (Score:2, Insightful)
I assume that this device would be used with clean renewable energy sources to remove CO2 we've already pumped into the atmosphere. So, you'd run this thing at night when energy prices are low (around 1-2 cents/kwH) to help bring the atmosphere back into balance (and of course, you must be using wind or some other non-fossil fuel for electicty, duh).
A couple of these machines by themselves won't do much, but hundreds of thousands of them powered by coastal wind farms or solar farms in the desert could definitely reverse some of the damage we've done (in conjunction with moving from coal to nuclear for base load power; electrification of transportation; etc).
Re:Natural device? (Score:4, Insightful)
They won't be making a pile of cash out of trees.
Can't resist:
1) Identify a possible source of trouble
2) Invent a fix, no matter how convoluted it is
3) Patent it and market it
4) Profit
Just wonder how much do we have to wait for a fart capture device (cow farts are actually a major source of trouble)
Probably Not, IMHO (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes.
It will always take more energy to convert from one form of energy to another; the trick is using 'free' energy with minimal impact for a catalyst and accepting that the return is always marginalized. We also get diminishing returns on our attempts to make more efficient systems... the energy to create the systems climbs as the returns on said systems becomes less. Just gotta' accept that part of the game, 'cause you can't not play.
Re:Natural device? (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't we have a device that removes CO2 from the air? I thought they were called "trees."
Yes, but when the trees eventually die they are decomposed and release the CO2 into the air again (or in the case of biofuel, they release it into the air again when burned). It is a carbon-neutral system, both when left alone and when used as a fuel.
I imagine an approach like this would be considerably less efficient than, say, putting CCS devices on coal plants. If it "costs" 100 kWh / tonne of CO2 at a normal location, you'd most likely get better efficiency if this was done where the air concentration of CO2 was high. Such as.. at the top of a coal-plant chimney where the CO2 concentration is going to be a great deal higher than the average concentration in the atmosphere.
If they want to remove CO2... (Score:5, Insightful)
Goto where the farmers are burning down the rain forests, teach/give/train them how to plant high yield crops and stop them from clear cutting/burning them down. And shock...you'll get somewhere.
Sometimes the most obvious solutions are sitting in front of their faces.
Space missions (Score:4, Insightful)
expedient and efficient removal of CO2 at atmospheric concentrations could have profound implications in space.
Currently, CO2 is scrubbed using lithium salts, which are not only heavy, but also caustic, and have a limited service life before requiring replacement.
A purely electric, and solid state device capable of continuous operation would allow for superior space vehicle designs which could theoretically operate much longer than currently available ones.
If they discover a way to electronically reduce the carbon dioxide into elemental carbon, things will be even more interesting.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Natural Gas Processing Plants? (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably because that gas was coming out anyway, as the wells are tapped for the oil in them. The only thing the natural gas plants do is reduce the overall need for the oil (by taking up some of the load) and convert greenhouse gases into weaker greenhouse gases.
Re:Reference point to CO2 emissions (Score:1, Insightful)
You've still got the energy cost of disposing of the CO2, by burying it or whatever. It has to be taken out of the carbon cycle completely.
Re:Caution (Score:3, Insightful)
1) CO2 does cause heating of the atmosphere. Thats basic physics and is not up for debate.
2) Global warming might not be bad in the long term scheme of things but its bad for the enviroment (and ourselves) as we know it.
3) Given that current natural mechanisms can't cope with the amount of CO2 we're chucking into the atmosphere then its pretty obvious they're inadequate to the needs of clearing up our mess.
Re:Reference point to CO2 emissions (Score:4, Insightful)
Then only way you can take it completely out of the carbon cycle is to blast it into space on a rocket. Carbon, being the fourth most abundant element in the universe, is everywhere on the planet. Fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, are made of fossilized plants and animals. In other words, fossil fuels are just as much part of the carbon cycle as carbon dioxide, plants, limestone, marble, kittens, and methane. Think about how the carbon got into the coal. It's part of a cycle. A very long cycle.
Re:Natural device? (Score:4, Insightful)
I call bullshit on this one. As long as plants need carbon to build their bodies, they will be CO2 absorbers, at least until they die and decompose.
Re:Natural device? (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously: Trees are just a carbon sink. Accordingly, when trees rot, the carbon will be set free again.
Having a "machine" remove the excess carbon formerly bound to dessert ground from air would help us compensate the loss of trees through forest burning and chopping as well as the carbon set free by burning oil. However, I would not know what machine is sustainable, effective and efficient in this way yet.
Re:Natural device? (Score:3, Insightful)
Human's are fascinated with Rube Goldberg-type machines. It would be even better if there were balls rolling around an endless track as part of the process...
You mean it might contain bearings?
Magic? (Score:2, Insightful)
Great (Score:3, Insightful)
We have found the excuse we need to continue polluting the air. Way to go, humanity!
Re:Natural device? (Score:2, Insightful)
But when trees die most of that carbon that they have stored up gets put right back into the air as CO2 not all of it... but the majority. Forests aren't great long-term Carbon sinks.
Re:Natural device? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think oceans also do a pretty good job at that. And at the end of the chain you even get more fish (which is, to a certain extent, fixed carbon).
Re:Natural device? (Score:5, Insightful)
Cant we just grow up now and realise we have to
be moderate in our consumption of the planets resources instead of trying to trick our way out ?
I don't think you understand human nature. Your solution requires changing a significant percentage of the population's behavior - I don't give it much chance of success.
Re:Natural device? (Score:1, Insightful)
Cant we just grow up now and realise we have to be moderate in our consumption of the planets resources instead of trying to trick our way out ?
Tell people they're going to have to make sacrifices and they'll stone you; tell them you have a magic bullet (lubricated with snake oil) and they'll worship you.
Re:Natural device? (Score:4, Insightful)
But that isn't the point. You can use the wood for making stuff and so it hangs around as paper or a table for years. It all eventually goes back of course but if we were to use more paper and less plastic, you'd be storing a lot of it temporarily and the amount stored in "the system" would be higher.
Re:Natural device? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Natural device? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is impossible for a device like this to be cost efficient in the present. It is unknown if it is cost efficient in the long run. Here's what I mean (caveat: I'm focusing wholly on economics here, not politics):
These devices require a fixed cost to produce (in terms of materials not available for other machines, labor not available for other activities, cost of required associated infrastructure, etc.) and a recurring cost to operate (energy not available for other things, maintenance labor and parts not available for other activities, transportation of reclaimed CO2 to other locations, etc.). They do not, however, produce an immediately obvious economic benefit. By that I mean the creation and operation of this device does not make it easier to perform some other activity - unless that the CO2 produced by this device is less expensive than current methods of industrial CO2 production. It is not really even clear that there is a future benefit to this device.
Now, I agree that reducing atmospheric CO2 will have an effect on average temperature. What I am not convinced of is the relative impact of climate change on world economic activity compared to other factors such as sheer population, politics, and other non-technical factors. But the fundamental unanswerable except in hindsight question is this: for each ton of CO2 removed per year from the atmosphere, what is the labor/material savings (if any) in the future, and does the rate of return on the "investment" of the CO2 reduction activities make this worthwhile? Put another way: Say today it takes me 1 hour to do activity X. If I spend 1+C hours on reducing CO2, will it then take me 1-q hours to perform activity X from that point onward so I have a good return on my investment? If the answer is no, then the "reduction" activity is a waste of resources from an economic standpoint.
(By the way, there is no such thing as free/open source hardware - you can have free and open designs, but the hardware itself will always have an associated cost.)
Re:CO2 is good (Score:5, Insightful)
A warmer planet is good.
Good for who? Norway? Or West Africa?
A warmer climate leads to more arable land and longer growing seasons.
Depends on where you are. If your plants are temperature limited in a temperate climate, maybe. If they're already in a warm climate, maybe not. And don't forget precipitation. When rain belts get shifted around, a lot of people end up unhappy.
CO2 is good - it is the world's best fertilizer.
This has got to be the most oversold benefit of CO2. CO2 fertilization helps, up to a point, if you have C3 photosynthesizers; C4 plants don't benefit. But direct manipulation FACE experiments show that this effect quickly saturates, and CO2 is often not the rate-limiting nutrient in photosynthesis; often it's water or nitrogen availability. The initial promise of CO2 fertilization hasn't really panned out; see here [sciencemag.org]. It does help, but it doesn't quite help as much as one thinks, and it is often more than offset by negative climate changes.
Of course, all recent evidence points to warming having ended,
I hate to break it to you, but 10 years of below-average warming in a highly noisy system doesn't exactly overturn anthropogenic global warming.
and having been due to natural climate variability and/or solar cycles.
Natural climate variability counts against your claim, not for it. See the above: natural climate variability is quite large on short time scales, which makes short-term trends very unreliable evidence of anything. Over the long term, "natural climate variability" utterly fails to account for temperature trends over the 20th century; the only really long term cycles within the climate system itself are oceans, and the space/time pattern of ocean warming indicates the atmosphere is warming the ocean, not the other way around. Turning to external influences, there are solar cycles. Solar trends have been pretty much flat since the 1950s, and completely disagree with the warming experienced since then. They can account for some of the warming in the early 20th century, but very little of it since then.
Re:Natural device? (Score:4, Insightful)
Paperwork is SO 1929. Everyone does things electronically now. You can bankrupt the nation entirely over the Internet now!
Frankly, I'd rather have trees (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Cow Farts... wrong end! (Score:3, Insightful)
How do we kill countless billions?
I mean, we kill lots of delicious cows, sure -- but you'd think the people whose business it was to sell us the delicious cow meat would be counting them.
Re:it this (Score:3, Insightful)
Only a lot more efficient. An average tree will use roughly 22kg of CO2 per year. These things are estimated to remove 20 tonnes per year per square metre, so it's in excess of 1000 times more effective. Even after you factor in the CO2 produced to provide the power needed for these things, you're still likely coming out way ahead.
Only if you plant one tree, and don't use the tree for anything else.
What about planting many more orange and apple trees? What about rubber trees?
We can use trees for more than scrubbing carbon.
Physically impossible! (Score:5, Insightful)
According to David MacKay [withouthotair.com]:
In other words: It'll be at least 200kW per tonne, unless they think the CO2 will somehow magically compress itself to be stored, which is not going to happen. That, or they just invented a perpetuum mobile.