'Personal Carbon Sequestration' Device Uses Algae To Remove CO2 From the Air (fastcompany.com) 175
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fast Company: In the future, your office might have an extra appliance next to the copy machine and the refrigerator: an algae bioreactor. Designed to fit inside offices and eventually sit on the rooftops throughout cities, it can capture as much carbon from the atmosphere as an acre of trees. And there's an initial prototype already at work. Inside the bioreactor, algae does the work. "What's amazing about algae is it's really cheap and it's easy to grow -- the core things it needs are sunlight, CO2, and water," says Ben Lamm, CEO and founder of Hypergiant Industries, an AI-focused tech company that developed a prototype of the device, called the Eos Bioreactor. Because algae grows much more quickly than trees, it can also sequester carbon more quickly; the company estimates that the device, which optimizes the algae's ability to capture CO2, can sequester around two tons of carbon out of the air each year.
The first version of the device, which is currently in operation, is three-by-three-by-seven feet. It's a closed system that works indoors, connecting with an HVAC system to reduce CO2 levels inside and release cleaner air. The closed system also makes it possible for the team to study how algae grows -- with sensors monitoring everything from light and heat and pH to the speed of growth and oxygen output -- and how the system can be tweaked to work best in different conditions outside on rooftops. "With the first generation Eos, we have precise control of every aspect of the algae's environment and life cycle," he says. "It's a photobioreactor, but it's also an experimentation platform. We'll be using this platform to better understand the environment that best suits biomass production under controlled circumstances, so that we can better understand how to design reactors for the variety of environmental conditions we're going to encounter in the wild." The team behind the device says they're working on mobile apps that can monitor and run the bioreactors autonomously. It's also "working on DIY plans that it will release next year so people can build the bioreactors at home," the report mentions.
The first version of the device, which is currently in operation, is three-by-three-by-seven feet. It's a closed system that works indoors, connecting with an HVAC system to reduce CO2 levels inside and release cleaner air. The closed system also makes it possible for the team to study how algae grows -- with sensors monitoring everything from light and heat and pH to the speed of growth and oxygen output -- and how the system can be tweaked to work best in different conditions outside on rooftops. "With the first generation Eos, we have precise control of every aspect of the algae's environment and life cycle," he says. "It's a photobioreactor, but it's also an experimentation platform. We'll be using this platform to better understand the environment that best suits biomass production under controlled circumstances, so that we can better understand how to design reactors for the variety of environmental conditions we're going to encounter in the wild." The team behind the device says they're working on mobile apps that can monitor and run the bioreactors autonomously. It's also "working on DIY plans that it will release next year so people can build the bioreactors at home," the report mentions.
God no (Score:5, Insightful)
"an AI-focused tech company that developed a prototype of the device"
The scam artists have arrived. Where is Thunderf00t and EEVblog when we need them?
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If you want to sequester carbon, you have to go big or go home.
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So if this thing actually works as advertised, build a mighty skyscraper out of them!
Re:God no (Score:4, Funny)
Forget the skyscraper. My idea is to put the water in some sort of containment in the ground. You wouldn't need to build anything, just dig out a hole. We could call it a bioreactor pool. Will you fund my Kickstarter?
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Perhaps, but I'm worried about the CO2 sequestration per square foot of land of your idea requires, is there anything you can do to improve it?
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Here is an idea: remove the man made developments from the coastal areas and return them to their natural state and you will have plenty of land. Of course, Al Gore would have to move one of his two coastal vacation home properties, but I think maybe he will manage with just one.
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True, but there are other famous rich people with vacation properties in NYC, which will have to be abandoned, along with Venice, New Orleans, and most of Florida. Lots of rich bastards are going to whine about their vacation homes, and apparently some regular folk live in those places as well I hear. Could be trouble.
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Sounds OK to me. Those places should never have been built there in the first place. Cities have been abandoned throughout millenia. This is about saving the planet, right?
Re:God no (Score:4, Funny)
No, it's about saving civilization - as George Carlin said, the planet will be fine, but the people are fucked.
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Forget the skyscraper. My idea is to put the water in some sort of containment in the ground. You wouldn't need to build anything, just dig out a hole. We could call it a bioreactor pool. Will you fund my Kickstarter?
Mother nature may beat you to it. We're seeing in increase in algal blooms out in the wild around the world. And of course, mother nature does things on a much grander scale than us puny humans can. That's up to 71% of the earth's surface, in case you're wondering.
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The problem is that you can sequester the carbon... then what? You are producing a tons and tons of biological waste. What are you going to do with that waste? Send it to a landfill? You can probably compost it down and compact it, but that will also take lots of space and land, then you still have to deal with the remaining waste.
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Composting it is a good idea, maybe use it for a biogas plant on-site? That could be a carbon-negative energy source.
Not a problem. (Score:3)
If we have a significant amount of algae waste I'm sure someone will figure out what to do with it. Even if it gets turned into fuel at least it's not getting extracted. If someone bought a bunch of land for bioreacter waste and let people dump piles of this stuff all over the place I think it would probably become rich farmland. We've made lots of uses for cellulose including plastic like materials.
I don't know how viable the rest of the project is but the waste is an opportunity not a problem.
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The problem is that you can sequester the carbon... then what?
Eat it.
You are producing a tons and tons of biological waste.
One man's biological waste, is another man's maki sushi. We can feed the world using sequestered carbon.
And then develop artificial products like algae beef, algae chicken, algae spam, algae eggs, algae sausage, etc . . .
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In high enough quantities it is. There have been some clean air studies that suggest that our CO2 levels are higher than it should be for most offices and households. The simplest solution is to simply ensure that air from outside is circulated in, though that costs a lot of energy to heat or cool.
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that sounds way more complex than just getting a few house plants.
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Said someone who clearly doesn't know anything.
Google "sick building syndrome". It's a thing.
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CO2 can cause all kinds adverse affects at levels less than double that of outdoor air. For people who spend many hours in small sealed rooms a CO2 scrubber could be very useful indeed. There are many ways to adsorb CO2 [wikipedia.org] though. I bought a CO2 meter to monitor the indoor CO2 levels. At 600ppm or above you should turn on your scrubber. Probably the easiest way to do this at home is to bubble the room air through a calcium hydroxide (slaked lime) solution. No need for algae. You could even rig your scrubber t
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What if we use edible algae? Something that can be made into hamburgers or "algae nuggets"?
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I'm fairly sure they're open to suggestions, if they haven't already started the videos on the topic.
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I get that you respect scam artists like Anita Sarkeesian, but she is irrelevant. The SJW crowd has moved on to greener pastures.
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They should use paramagnetic qualities of oxygen (Score:3)
To separate it out for breathing using magnets. Then in addition to sequestration, it achieves oxygen rich offices, which are probably healthier and more productive and could be marketed as such.
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Do you have any idea how much power that would require? It would cancel out any benefits.
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Sure I do. Do you understand that American reality and wild parody are almost indistinguishable?
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You do know that too much oxygen is really, really, REALLY bad news, yes?
Yes, we do need oxygen to survive, because we metabolize using it. True. That doesn't mean that more oxygen than you need is a good idea. Oxygen is very reactive and pretty good at oxidizing (gee, where does this term come from, I wonder...) pretty much anything that isn't already.
But hey, why bother with facts? I've seen people propagate pumping oxygen into bodies as a way to eliminate free radicals. The stupidity behind this is painf
Re: They should use paramagnetic qualities of oxyg (Score:2)
Bringing office oxygen levels from below normal to what is typically found outside is not the time to be clutching your pearls.
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And the stupidity behind your post is painful for anyone with two braincells to rub together. It would help everyone if you stopped making up shit to hate on and just shrugged and moved on with your life.
Offices almost always have an excess of CO2 and a deficit of O2. Lots of research has found that CO2 levels in conference rooms will spike high enough to impair people on the order of a couple of alcoholic drinks after a half hour or so. Indoor air quality is epidemically bad in the vast majority of large o
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it achieves oxygen rich offices, which are probably healthier and more productive.
Not to mention highly flammable.
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WOOSH! You guys must be the target market...
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Or you could just let it diffuse out of the water.
It's not like it produces so much oxygen that it needs a ton of effort to remove the oxygen.
Think this through... (Score:5, Insightful)
An acre of trees supports an ecosystem. This doesn't. ...just plant trees FFS.
Just plant trees ! (Score:2)
just plant trees.
Came here to say that.
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Good thing we have plenty of room to just grow trees on this heavily populated planet full of intensive agricultural areas, and plenty of time to wait for trees to suck up the CO2 we've been spewing out of every exhaust pipe...OH WAIT
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Oh wait. You don't want to be inconvenienced but want to "save the planet". How original.
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Oh wait. You don't want to be inconvenienced but want to "save the planet". How original.
Even if you are willing to be inconvenienced, wouldn't you still rather find solutions which don't require as much sacrifice?
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Damn right I don't want to be inconvenienced, and who wants to be inconvenienced even less is every business interest out there that will set their politician and bootlicker attack dogs on any plan for addressing climate change that inconveniences them. They'll drown us all in humanity's waste before they let themselves be inconvenienced.
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we absolutely DO have plenty of room to plant trees (at least in the US) outside of the coastal areas, most of the country is in fact, incredibly sparsely populated. And most of it is not productive farmland.
Re:Just plant trees ! (Score:4, Informative)
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We could reduce the number of citizens by turning them into trees.
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It won't sequester CO2. The carbon ends up inside the algae. The excess algae will have to be removed (along with the carbon they locked away). SO WHERE DO YOU GET RID OF THE ALGAE. If you toss it into the trash it'll decay to CO2 and Methane (an even nastier greenhouse gas) or you can incinerate it - which returns all of the CO2 you absorbed back into the air.
THIS CANNOT POSSIBLY WORK.
Sequestering carbon into forests ALSO doesn't work - same problem. Eventually trees die...then what? Even if we use
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SO WHERE DO YOU GET RID OF THE ALGAE.
This question is the only reason I took the time to read the article, and their plan is to make products like food, fertilizer, cosmetics, or even fuel with the algae. So it is more like recycling CO2 emissions than long term sequestration.
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Planting trees is a great idea, but it doesn't really serve the same purpose as algae.
They're pitching this as an indoor air conditioner, which is an interesting take. You can't do that with a forest. You could also build a bioreactor with algae engineered to enjoy sucking down power plant emissions. You also can't do that easily with a forest.
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CO2 concentration indoors is usually considerably higher than outdoors. In many buildings it approaches levels that *might* have some effect on cognitive function. With a CO2 scrubber, you could also potentially reduce the amount of outside air circulation, which would improve heating and cooling efficiency.
Haven't you ever been in a stuffy room and wanted to crack a window to get some fresh air?
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An acre of trees supports an ecosystem. This doesn't. ...just plant trees FFS.
Where there is an acre of land that can sustain an ecosystem...yes, we need to do that.
The draw here is that it is possible to do the carbon sequestration of an acre of trees in a space slightly larger than a refrigerator, something far easier to do in a home, office, or apartment building than planting an acre of trees.
Alternatively, though the 'water' requirement starts to become the bigger problem, a set of these in a desert with solar panels could help sequester carbon in places where 'planting trees' i
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For rural and suburban areas trees are a better idea. But for cities covered with Tar top buildings some other device would be more effective. Planting trees on building creates a lot of architectural and structure problems over time.
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The issue with trees in urban areas is that the roots can damage pavements and buildings. They can also be a pain to manage, e.g. cutting branches in public areas requires closing them off for safety reasons.
As such other types of plants as popular in areas like that.
In theory using algae isn't a bad idea, but there must be some waste output from this thing and it's not clear what you do with it. Someone comes and takes it away presumably, and sequesters the captured CO2.
Having a self contained system is at
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Re: Think this through... (Score:2)
To sequester carbon you'd need to entomb those trees into a vault. Much easier to pump algea into a barrel.
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An acre of trees supports an ecosystem. This doesn't. ...just plant trees FFS.
Assuming this isn't vapor, the space efficiency means you could do both. Once your acre is planted with trees, you have to find another acre to do it again. Those are scarce in urban areas.
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
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CO2 is actually needed... by vegetation! (Score:2)
Rather than use some algae-filled machine to remove CO2, we have better "machines" already out there that can get the job done.
They're called TREES. There's also lots of other vegetation that can already get the job done. Rather than Brazil burning every tree it has, why not keep them and use them? And grow more here? Believe it or not, we still have way more than enough land to grow LOTS of trees which can enrich the air with oxygen for man and beast alike.
Think about this... how much energy was consumed
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Growing trees can contribute to CO2 sequestration but won't be enough on its own, some kind of artificial CO2 sequestration technology will be needed to do most of the work. Any energy requirements for this technology can be provided by renewables and the maintenance can be easily managed on an industrial scale.
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Plant and grow more trees to later cut down and use as construction materials then plant more rinse an repeat. We already do a lot of this and lumber is cheap. I'm not saying it would fix global warming but an excess of lumber would bring construction costs down.
Algae is actually needed... by fish! (Score:2)
Now they need to focus their AI on developing a market for sucker fish... Buffalo Fish Wings!
Climate and food crises solved, hooray!
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How about instead of paying farmers subsidies to grow corn noone wants to eat (which is then turned into unhealthy HFCS) we use the subsidy money to buy up the land in the midwest and plant trees on it?
Why do we always want third world nations to sacrifice their development to solve a problem we caused?
To sequester CO2 (Score:5, Interesting)
The resulting algal growth needs to be collected (as TFA says) but then it needs to be buried where it can't decompose back into CO2. I suspect the energy required to do that wrt transportation and burying will produce more CO2 than the algae stored in the first place.
Probably best to leave the algae bit to nature in the oceans and just plant trees instead. Yes they decompose back to CO2 eventually but not for a good 100 years by which time either the climate will be totally fucked and it won't matter any more or we've found a much better solution.
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Algae can be used as biofuel with massive, massive efficiency. Trees can be used to build mid-rise buildings.
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Using it as biofuel will release the CO2 again.
Re:To sequester CO2 (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is still better than the alternative since at least then you're cycling through the CO2 that's already out there, and not digging up new sources of it from the ground.
Re: To sequester CO2 (Score:2)
So have a groundskeeping crew bury it? Or will that induce too much flatulence to be worth it?
How much organic matter is this thing supposed to produce, enough to feed a small koi pond?
You're complaining about the pickle on your nothing burger.
So many questions... (Score:4, Interesting)
So how much does a unit cost. How much power does it consume. Does it consume less if placed on a rooftop with access to sunlight?
Is there still a net gain if the power for it comes from coal? Biofuel? Natural gas? Where is the threshold?
Can this be composted or will that release all the carbon again?
Depending on what it's used for, how far can it be transported before any gain is used by the truck's diesel engine?
How much CO2 does producing these things put into the atmosphere?
I do not have the background to be sure, but the above seem to be some really problematic questions unless I vastly underestimate the efficiency of this process.
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I'm sure there are all sorts of ways they 'could' over-complicate it, but as a concept you could run one of these yourself with absolutely no (extra) power usage.
You need a light source, a container for water, and for it to be exposed to air. Boom, you'll get algae to grow. The light could be incidental light from pre-existing bulbs.
Now, they're probably going to care about the exact wavelength of light, so let's add a bulb somewhere in there.
They're going to care about the looks, the smell, and proper ai
Still ignoring the total cost... (Score:3)
Where do you put this algae so that it doesn't just decompose a large fraction of the CO2 back into the atmosphere? How much energy is required to operate this system as well as harvest, transport and sequester the algae? How much energy does it take to convert it into usable fuel?
Another damned scam. Just plant trees!
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What do we do with the trees that die and decompose and put CO2 back into the atmosphere?
We burry it
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Wouldn't something like this be perfect for fertilizer after some minimal processing?
Or even just directly as food for something non-discriminating?
Obviously that's not sequestration, but it seems like a great and (theoretically) cheap way to make use of the existing CO2.
Done before, and better (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a friend working for Greenfuel, a startup that had a much better version of this idea nearly two decades ago: bioreactors that grow algae from sun and CO2 that were genetically engineered (or maybe just selectively bread, I forget) such that the dried algae was, by weight, a significant fraction biodiesel. Put in on top of your factory roof, percolate the waste gasses from the furnace through the bioreactor, expose to sunlight, and you can turn a profit all told since in addition to generating fuel, the non-biodiesel algae fraction can be sold off as fertilizer, etc. Even if the system was not 100% efficient, you were capturing waste heat, adding sunlight, and for minimal maintenance, reducing energy costs substantially. The bioreactor was independently measured to capture 80% of the CO2 in the exhaust stream. Their primary test in Arizona showed that the algae grew twice as fast expected. It was a billion dollar idea, but, unfortunately, history showed us another case of a great innovation ruined by a poorly run company. The Great Recession didn't help, either.
And there are now a dozen plus companies trying to do variants on the same theme.
That's not really much (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay neat concept and is a lot more workable than the crew that's "plant a gazillion trees!" (Which I mean if you want to plant trees, go plant trees, but that's not going to save you. I like trees, but they just don't scrub enough CO2 to make a dent in anything). The only about this is, this thing.
the company estimates that the device, which optimizes the algae's ability to capture CO2, can sequester around two tons of carbon out of the air each year.
And this is the problem with all capture systems. We're expected to dump 37.1 billion tons of carbon into the air by end of year. This thing removes 2 of that 37.1 billion. Not only that, given the change that happens per year, 2020 CO2 emissions are expected to be 2.3% greater than 2019's. That's an increase of 853 million more tons next year. This thing only removes 2. We'd need around 427 million of these devices everywhere just to absorb the expected increase for next year, not that which is already there, or that which is expected to be there, but just the increase in CO2 that we're expected to have.
This is ultimately the thing that makes carbon capture of any sort a pretty meaningless solution to anything. We keep dumping CO2 in volumes that are unmanageable by any conceivable man-made or hell even natural technology. We have to significantly reel back the amount of CO2 we put into the air for any of this to matter. Am I saying put zero CO2 into the air? No. We can't put batteries on everything. But I would argue we don't have to put 10 billion tons of CO2 into the air per year much less 37.1 billion tons.
Don't let me sell anything short here, carbon capture systems are great and all (eye roll) but they aren't a solution, especially if their by-products aren't even being used. People aren't going to burn electricity to power a carbon capture, that's just dumb. And we can't do carbon capture on any meaningful scale if we're continuing to dump billions and billions of tons of carbon into the air. The math just doesn't work in our favor there. We have to stop putting so much CO2 into the air. There's not a way we get around that. And what gets me the most, is some people get too dreamy eyed, pie in the sky kind of solutions. I'm sure that the Coke vending machine sized CO2 scrubber is amazing and we'll all want one in like 50 years. But we need to work in today's terms and to that end we need to work with today's solutions. That is solar farm, that is wind farm, that is tidal power, that is nuclear, that is geothermal, that is hydroelectric. These are today's technology and they are the ones we have to work with today, for better or worse. I mean we can keep our eye to the sky, but we have to walk along the ground.
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Okay neat concept and is a lot more workable than the crew that's "plant a gazillion trees!" (Which I mean if you want to plant trees, go plant trees, but that's not going to save you. I like trees, but they just don't scrub enough CO2 to make a dent in anything). The only about this is, this thing.
the company estimates that the device, which optimizes the algae's ability to capture CO2, can sequester around two tons of carbon out of the air each year.
And this is the problem with all capture systems. We're expected to dump 37.1 billion tons of carbon into the air by end of year. This thing removes 2 of that 37.1 billion. Not only that, given the change that happens per year, 2020 CO2 emissions are expected to be 2.3% greater than 2019's. That's an increase of 853 million more tons next year. This thing only removes 2. We'd need around 427 million of these devices everywhere just to absorb the expected increase for next year, not that which is already there, or that which is expected to be there, but just the increase in CO2 that we're expected to have.
This is ultimately the thing that makes carbon capture of any sort a pretty meaningless solution to anything. We keep dumping CO2 in volumes that are unmanageable by any conceivable man-made or hell even natural technology....
You're right, these aren't a silver bullet, but I think you're selling this short...
1. Think of these like household solar panels. They don't solve the problem on their own, but houses with solar panels are not only using less power, they require less cooling in the summer since less sunlight is actually hitting the home. Make them cheap enough that there are millions of homes with them in a decade, and the needle is nudged. It's not solved, but it is a start.
Apply that to these things - put a million of th
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So stupid. Now I know why Kickstarter/Indiegogo is actually a thing.
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It's not a solution to CO2 on its own, but I wonder how much food you'd get out of this thing if you bought a field and scaled it up.
2 tons of output from 3x3x7 seems like a lot. Maybe the cows of the future can eat algae instead of corn.
Legionnaires' disease (Score:2)
"Closed System" (Score:3)
It... it's not a closed system. Even discounting that it's obviously taking building air as an input, those two tons of CO2 need to go somewhere; it's not like your box of algae just keeps getting two tons heavier each year.
Those two tons, of course, go into building algae biomass. You need to take a bunch of the algae out (continuously? periodically?) and put it somewhere it won't just decompose and release a bunch of CO2 or methane. You need to supply water, and very likely other nutrients to grow the algae.
I'm not saying this is a terrible plan (maybe this would have applications in wastewater treatment, or work in areas where growing trees won't but the idea that you can stick a box of water on top of your office building in "set it and forget it" mode is totally unrealistic.
A "personal carbon sequestration device"? (Score:2)
So ... a pet tree?
Re:A "personal carbon sequestration device"? (Score:5, Funny)
Close. A personal Virtue Signaling appliance.
You wanna sequester carbon? Stop recycling your office paper and put it in a landfill.
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" A personal Virtue Signaling appliance."
Now that is both funny and sad at the same time, but so on target.
More permanent (and prettier) solution. (Score:3)
Grow a tree, maybe more.
Ensure your city has tree laws in place, give the developers something to think about before destroying one of God's greatest gifts.
Smile, knowing you did your job to ensure future generations will breathe easier.
Efficiency? (Score:2)
It probably releases more emissions from the electricity it needs than the amount of O2 it releases.
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I know! We will make them solar powered and hook them up to a battery (with an app). Problem solved.
Seen it (Score:2)
So where does the algae go? (Score:3)
So - if this thing actually works (doubt it!) then there will be rapid algae growth as it absorbs CO2...Great!
Now - eventually, the machine will fill up with algae...right? Must do...conservation of mass etc...right?
So you MUST have to empty some algae out once in a while. For every pound of CO2 that goes in - more than a pound of dead algae goes out because algae contains nitrogen compounds and all sorts of other stuff.
WHERE DO YOU PUT THE DEAD ALGAE?
If you incinerate it - it'll turn right back into CO2 and we're back to square one.
If you toss it into the trash - it'll go to landfill - where it'll decay - releasing methane and CO2 - methane is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2 - and it eventually decays into CO2.
Really, the only thing you can do is to put the dead algae someplace where it can NEVER decay. Not "never during the next year" - not "never during the next 100 years"...we need "NEVER!!" - which probably means you have to bury it in an anoxic container - someplace very deep underground. A disused coal mine, for example.
Will this actually happen?
Not a chance in hell.
This is NOT a solution - even if it works...which it won't.
From the article (Score:2)
There’s nothing new about the idea of growing algae to sequester carbon, and a few dispersed bioreactors alone are not going to reverse climate change,
They have it exactly right. These puny devices will accomplish nothing. But they still want to sell this to you. Fool. Money. Parted.
CO2 sequestration is useless (Score:2)
For two reasons.
1st, what will happen to CO2 and to algae when the algae will die? Will them magically disappear or transform into rock?
2nd, without also reducing the CO2 footprint, that device will give the false expectation that people can keep producing more CO2 (either directly or indirectly).
Not really a sequestration device. (Score:2)
It's a carbon capture device. Sequestration is about capturing carbon and putting it somewhere, like the deep ocean or in geological formations or as standing forests. This just turns atmospheric carbon into algae... What would you do with 40 gigatons of algae being produced every year?
Sequestration is a last ditch quick fix. It's pure cost, and the only reason to do it is to avoid greater costs.
So this device is both more and less interesting than it is being promoted as. It's completely useless for seques
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algae into fuel for cars would be cool ( although the CO2 would go right back in the atmosphere).
My assumption is there is some plan to bury the algae somewhere , or maybe fill a cave with it. but I'd need some proof that transporting the algae and burying it could be done with less of a CO2 emissions then the amount amount captures.
Admittedly this is just an experiment and could only possibly be part of the solving a very complex problem.
so? does it actually work? (Score:2)
where does it put the carbon it captures? How does it now wind up back in the atmosphere ? what goes in must come out right?
Also, how much CO2 was generated to create/install this complex system , how long does it have to operate before it breaks even?
Acre of trees (Score:3)
I'm being sarcastic...but, you know what else captures as much CO2 as an acre of trees? An acre of trees.
And an acre of trees doesn't require energy for the plastics, transportation, and manufacturing to build a carbon sequestration device. Plants, trees, bushes, shrubs, all do a pretty good job capturing carbon... simply by being alive. They also do a great job keeping their environment cool by evaporating water during the process.
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Problem solved then. All we need is an acre of trees, why look for anything else, right?
Sunlight (Score:2)
your office might have an extra appliance next to the copy machine and the refrigerator
I don't know about your office. But in ours, the copy machine and refrigerator are deep in the bowels of the building. The only area that gets less sunlight is where the IT techs work.
THC (Score:2)
It's called a tree? (Score:2)
Get real (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm probably going to kill my karma here... Society needs to wise up and stop focusing on half-assed, feel good "solutions" that do nothing but kick the can down the road.
Alone, sequestration won't work. Wind won't work, solar won't work. Why? Because none of these can meet current demands, demands that are not static, but ever increasing.
The sum total of waste (in blast proof containers) created by all nuclear power plants to date would fit on a football field. Somehow this is unacceptable but the idea of expending energy to create billions of tons of waste that has to be stored in an anaerobic environment *forever* is fine? Really? Who the fuck thinks this makes sense?
You have to go to the root of the problem which is society is consuming ever increasing amounts of energy and our current production methods are dirty as hell.
If you really give a damn about the environment, you need to put the bloody drums down, stop singing "Kumbaya" and learn actual science. Nuclear is *literally* the greenest power generation method we have by orders of magnitude when you look at the total cycle of a given technology. Zero CO2, for all intents and purposes, 24/7 stable,. That's using current 3rd generation designs, not 4th Gen or beyond that have been stifled by what can only be described as ignorant zealots.
Did you know much of the Anti-nuclear fear was funded by...wait for it...OIL COMPANIES? And that gas companies LOVE wind and solar because the base load gaps are filled by natural gas fired plants? Look at the rate of new gas power plant construction over the last 20 years. Look at CO2 emissions in pro nuclear countries like France vs. Germany. Despite switching to wind and solar, Germany has put NO significant dent in their CO2 emissions that can't be explained by mild summers.
FFS, quit looking to the sky for solutions when answer is right in your face!
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you're half right. It's real but the "solutions" are by agenda driven power and money grubbing scum. We know for fact that "cap and trade" has billions of known scam dollars, that's mainstream news.
Cleaner energy sources are the way, I hear there is a fusion power plant 93 million miles away that puts out more energy on Earth alone than a thousand civilizations could use.