New CO2 Harvester Could Help Scrub the Air 368
sciencehabit sends this excerpt from ScienceNOW: "Researchers in California have produced a cheap plastic capable of removing large amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air. Down the road, the new material could enable the development of large-scale batteries and even form the basis of 'artificial trees' that lower atmospheric concentrations of CO2 in an effort to stave off catastrophic climate change."
Re:Massive farms of artificial trees... (Score:5, Interesting)
We as a species should just decide on whether we want to live in the tropics or the arctic.
Or instead of playing god, why don't we try to limit our effect on the environment and let it decide for itself?
Re:Massive farms of artificial trees... (Score:4, Interesting)
From TFA:
It also says:
So you have to expend a fairly large amount of energy heating the media to 85C/185F to get it to give up the CO2, (then more energy to store the CO2).
How long it takes to saturate the polymer is not mentioned, but unless its months between regeneration, the CO2 generated while collecting the polymer media, transporting it to a facility, HEATING it, capturing the recovered CO2, could exceed the amount it could capture. And then you are still left with the CO2 you captured. What to do with that?
So the original purpose of this polymer, to keep C02 out of batteries seems to be a far better use for the polymer than environmental CO2 sequestration.
While far from perfect, farming real trees seems a less energy intensive method [wikipedia.org] especially when treated as a crop, harvested at the optimal time, with the wood used for long duration storage.
With a requirement of only 85 C, they could easily be heated using low-grade waste heat from a process plant, or using a solar concentrator or similar. No additional energy expenditure required. It would also probably be done locally, so there would be little to no transport cost. There will still be some cost to recover and contain it, but it should still be an overall reduction of CO2. There are multiple uses for the CO2, that should not be a problem.
Re:How are you going to power that? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nothing chemically easy to break the bond ? Kind of sucks but oh well, what do we do with it once collected ? feed it to real tree's ? At that point why not just plant real tree's ?
Re:How are you going to power that? (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the future. Trees turned into biomass wood pellets. It's cheaper to convert coal power stations to biomass than to build new ones.
The cycle is nearly complete.
Regeneration systems (Score:5, Interesting)
The thought of giant CO2 scrubbing plastic trees seems like hyperbole to me. Seems we could plant real trees that work about as well for that. But an obvious application jumped out at me. Undersea vehicles, labs, manned spacecraft, and any other artificially maintained environment that humans have to work in need to remove CO2 because it can be poisonous in sufficiently high concentrations even if there is enough to breathe.
So would this material make good scrubbers for sealed environments people have to work in? If there is a way to vent the waste gases, being able to drive the CO2 off with a bit of heat and using again seems a great feature too.
Re:Massive farms of artificial trees... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, isn't that the official Republican position on healthcare?
I'm kidding, OK, kidding. Back away from the flamethrower.
Re:too late, give up already (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Frayed Knot (Score:2, Interesting)
volcanic pollution contains more than just CO2.
yeah, no shit. People put more POLLUTION into the air then volcanic eruptions as well.
So, please step away from Fox News. learn to think.
"Trees cause more pollution than automobiles." ~Dan Henninger, Deputy Editor for Fox News