World's Largest Direct Air Carbon Capture System Goes Online (vice.com) 82
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The largest carbon capture facility in the world is slated to come online Wednesday in Iceland, amid growing skepticism over the technology's role in addressing the climate crisis. The Orca, a direct air capture plant constructed by Swiss carbon capture company Climeworks AG, with support from Microsoft, started running Wednesday around 20 miles southeast of Reykjavik.
The facility is made up of eight air collection containers, each holding several dozen cylindrical fans, which pull in ambient air and filter carbon dioxide from it using a filter, according to the Climeworks' press materials. What's trapped is heated, mixed with water, and pumped deep underground. The plant would pull 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air per year in total, which the company anticipates would be stored for "thousands of years." Their process is proprietary, but it's part of a broader form of carbon capture called direct air capture (DAC), a method of geoengineering that's become controversial in recent years for its dubious efficacy and practicality. DAC proposes to slow climate change by sucking greenhouse gasses like CO2 directly from the atmosphere, DAC has splintered environmentalists, some of whom laud it as a potential savior, while others call it as a costly, risky distraction from meaningful emissions distractions.
The facility is made up of eight air collection containers, each holding several dozen cylindrical fans, which pull in ambient air and filter carbon dioxide from it using a filter, according to the Climeworks' press materials. What's trapped is heated, mixed with water, and pumped deep underground. The plant would pull 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air per year in total, which the company anticipates would be stored for "thousands of years." Their process is proprietary, but it's part of a broader form of carbon capture called direct air capture (DAC), a method of geoengineering that's become controversial in recent years for its dubious efficacy and practicality. DAC proposes to slow climate change by sucking greenhouse gasses like CO2 directly from the atmosphere, DAC has splintered environmentalists, some of whom laud it as a potential savior, while others call it as a costly, risky distraction from meaningful emissions distractions.
Fantastic! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, all we need is ~2.5 million more of these and we can make some meaningful progress!
Re:Fantastic! (Score:4, Informative)
Now, all we need is ~2.5 million more of these and we can make some meaningful progress!
That is about the dumbest thing we could do.
Wind turbines and solar panels are a far more cost-effective way to reduce CO2, especially if we install them in places like India, Africa, and Indonesia, where coal-fired power plants are still being built.
Research into carbon capture from the atmosphere is reasonable so that we can be ready, decades hence, when it actually may make sense. But scaling it up now is idiotic.
Re:Fantastic! (Score:5, Interesting)
Energy capture devices reduce CO2 output (which isn't really an issue in Iceland, btw). This is an attempt to build an artificial tree, which will have a net negative CO2 footprint.
The real question is why make artificial ones, when natural one's can be clearly made more abundant?
Re:Fantastic! (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the natural ones are carbon neutral and one capture cylinder does the work of 1000 trees. This one capture plant is the same as a HUGE forest and it never slows down or stops.
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> This one capture plant is the same as a HUGE forest and it never slows down or stops
And, hopefully, has a marginally smaller chance of catching fire...
=Smidge= /We should still be replanting forests though, for lots of reasons
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Actually, they have next to no chance of catching fire.
I'm all for replanting forests but I'm against planting forests explicitly as form of carbon sequestration.
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Re: Fantastic! (Score:2)
Footprint, availability of water. This is a functional prototype. Maybe with a few generations of improvements it will actually be good.
Long term vs short term and feelings vs facts (Score:5, Interesting)
> Research into carbon capture from the atmosphere is reasonable so that we can be ready, decades hence, when it actually may make sense. But scaling it up now is idiotic.
I tend to agree with your overall sentiment here. Short term, we obviously need to reduce emissions and see what we can do with DAC where it makes sense. (And without ruining our economy - making everything cost five times as much). At the same time, actually trying it in the real world at a smallish scale is part of the research. A tiny experiment in a lab capturing milligrams of carbon is one thing, actually capturing many tons in the real world is a very different thing.
Long-term, we run into a fact that collides with some people's feelings. It means having to decide whether you actually want to save the world, or you want to cheer for a team and don't actually care about climate change.
There is one approach that can't possibly reduce CO2 by more than 3% of the current emissions (reducing atmospheric CO2 by 0.01% annually) at most. There is another approach with no such limit. If could theoretically cut CO2 by as much as you want.
If there were zero emissions from human activity, that would reduce total CO2 emissions by 3%, leading to atmospheric CO2 levels falling by 0.01% annually. That's the maximum we can possibly achieve by reducing out emissions. And of course getting to zero may not be practical, but even if we get to zero human emissions, it makes only a 3% difference in total emissions. That might not be enough.
If / when we can practically take CO2 out of the air at scale, we can take out as much as we need to. There's no hard limit that we can only reduce CO2 concentrations by 0.01%. So we really do need to ALSO be looking at how we eventually scale that.
I know that fact is probably upsetting to some, but it's fact. So you gotta decide - do we actually want to reduce CO2 levels by more than 0.01%, or do you just want to look like you care, while allowing levels to keep rising?
Building more brings costs down (Score:2)
Worked for every other manufactured good in existence. Would work for DAC as well.
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Plans like this are unpopular with some people because they provide an alternative to their oikophobic agenda to punish ourselves by deindustrializing. Performative virtue with no plausible plan and pathetic totalitarian urges are nothing new for environmentalists.
Nuclear was one big tell. Germany has massively invested in carbon virtue signalling, but they've also shut down nuclear plants so their net progress is minimal compared to France or Finland.
Carbon capture is another big tell: the plants can be
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These seem to be the same reasons that cloud seeding is ignored. We could seed clouds, I have heard for as low as $2mil a year, and it would completely halt climate change, but that would allow people to keep producing CO2, so without the authoritarian aspect of telling everyone else how to live their life, it seems to be a non-starter. Meanwhile, you have climate zealots like John Kerry telling us all how horrible we are while flying to climate conferences in his own personal 747.
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If this could be scaled up it could potentially get us out of a hole by removing CO2 from the atmosphere and cooling the Earth.
Also we can do more than one thing at a time so build renewable energy AND look at ways to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
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*whoosh*
The point is that it's possible to capture the carbon. It however is just like the perpetual motion machine, it's impossible to capture all the carbon necessary to reduce global temperatures back down to the 70's without immediate curtailment of the burning of coal, oil, pete, diesel, gasoline and natural gas.
What has to happen, realistically is that the captured carbon has to be compressed into synthetic diamonds by some means, and water usage has to be completely recycled, not using groundwater li
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So ... about 2% of the peak worldwide annual production of motor vehicles (~95 million in 2018)?
Producing enough of these is simply a matter of will. I don't have the information to determine if they are a net benefit, but production isn't an insurmountable issue. I don't completely trust the numbers from the supporters or the detractors since both have a horse in the race, but if I was forced to bet on something, it would be that some type of human-made carbon-capture technology is going to be a significa
One day we'll look back on these in vain efforts (Score:2)
and wonder what people were thinking....
Re:One day we'll look back on these in vain effort (Score:4, Interesting)
What "they're thinking" is that there's already a very effective CO2 / SO2 fixation system at Hellisheiði that fixes the exhaust gases from the geothermal power plant, and that they want to use its binding capacity to the max.
Carbfix / Sulfix is one of the few carbon sequestration projects that hasn't disappointed; it's been a massive success. They make use of the fact that the buried basalt has a lot of calcium and magnesium oxide, which can convert to carbonates, and it turns out it does so surprisingly quickly in the real world. Last I saw they were able to fix CO2 for under $25/T. Now, that's CO2 straight from the plant, not from the atmosphere; I have no clue how much the direct air capture adds to the bill, but I'd guess "probably a good bit".
(One of the really ridiculous things, BTW, is... greenhouses here that buy CO2 for fertilization, it doesn't come from Hellisheiði (or any of the other geo plants), but rather from a specific CO2 well not even that far from Hellisheiði (I believe it's near Bláfjöll) )
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Does this mean there is a bunch of carbonated water underground?
Re:One day we'll look back on these in vain effort (Score:4, Informative)
Geothermal water contains various levels of various dissolved volcanic gases that you don't want to release, including CO2 and SO2. And yes, what's injected into (other, non-source) strata temporarily has these gases dissolved in it - e.g. carbonated / sulphated water. But then it converts to calcite, magnesite, gypsum, epsomite, and similar minerals by reacting with calcium and magnesium oxides. Apparently takes only about two years.
BTW, there's places here where natural carbonated water comes straight to the surface in springs. Fill up a soda bottle with it, add some juice concentrate, and you've got a (really tasty!) fruit soda :) Probably a lot higher mineral content than most sodas, too.
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BTW, there's places here where natural carbonated water comes straight to the surface in springs.
We have some of that in Yosemite, too. It's fun.
Re: One day we'll look back on these in vain effor (Score:4, Interesting)
All fun and games until a massive release kills everyone in the vicinityâ¦
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
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and wonder what people were thinking....
I doubt it. The utility of these carbon capture plants is mostly in demonstrating the technology for uses other than carbon sequestration. One use is to get "green" CO2 for use as an industrial gas. Welding is one use. Adding CO2 to greenhouses is another use. There's a market for CO2 to make fizzy drinks. Seeing the petrochemical industry support this suggests value in CO2 capture for synthetic lubricants, "upgrading" tars and heavy oils to higher value gasoline and jet fuel, and eventually moving to
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Ever heard of "research project" and "upscaling"?
Upscaling would in this case mean by a factor of about 10000000x to cover a country like the US. And the US is not a big number of people, counted globally.
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I don't think you know how hard i punch or how much i weight...
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Better carbon capture devices (Score:5, Insightful)
The world's largest carbon capture device is the rainforest in Brazil, and that is being cut down quite quickly. If you want to capture carbon, plant a tree. Don't rely on Bill Gates to make an expensive machine to do it.
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The oceans plankton suck up more c02, than the small land mass on earth. We are a water planet dude. Land is just barren dry spot.
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Re:Better carbon capture devices (Score:4, Interesting)
The limit on the Amazon rainforest's ability to absorb CO2 is phosphorous.
If we apply 10 kilotonnes of phosphate annually, the Amazon could remove another billion tonnes of CO2.
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This is the exact sort of narrow passes-for-thinking that got us here in the first place. The environment has many levels of buffers to offset our stupidity -- we just have to stop destroying them for a few decades or centuries until we get through this.
Re:Better carbon capture devices (Score:5, Interesting)
Can rainforests actually support higher biological densities? They have poor storage in the soil, but that's because by the nature of being a rainforest, you have a high erosion rate.
In Iceland, most of our emissions are from drained bogs. The government used to pay farmers to drain them ( to make more farmland), even if they weren't going to use them. All of the stored carbon, no longer submerged in anoxic water, is oxidizing. So now there's a big push to do things in reverse, to fill in the drainage systems and restore the wetlands (loss of the wetlands also had a terrible impact on our bird populations).
Peat bogs, unlike most biomes, engage in continuous sequestration. Most biomes hit a balance point where decay is matched by new growth and further sequestration stops - but in peat bogs, by definition, decay remains slower than new growth, laying down increasingly thick layers of organic matter (peat). I'm tempted to fertilize my peat bogs, but I'll first want to make sure there's no adverse consequences from doing so.
And actually, even non-bogs here have potential for sequestration, because of a normally really annoying mineral in our soil called allophane. It gets produced in bulk in subglacial eruptions, blows around as a fine dust, and gets deposited across the country. It tightly binds phosphorus, leaving us phosphorus deficient, binds water too tightly for plants to use it, and is prone to liquefaction. But on the upside, it also binds carbon really tightly, so....
IBRE: Allophane from subglacial eruptions (Score:2)
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Rainforests are not carbon capture devices. They are carbon neutral. As they grow they die, the ground literally littered with decaying co2 releasing material. A freshly planted growing forest is carbon negative ... for a while.
Provided you use a green method of cutting down the forest and don't burn out otherwise release the stored co2 the cutting down doesn't effect the world, and if you replant after cutting you get a net carbon sink.
That said this is not what Brazil is doing, and they absolutely need to
Awesome: 20 hectares of forest. (Score:2)
It is wonderful that we are working on this problem; and I think research like this is invaluable.
The technical shiny is that this is the equivalent of 20 hectares of forest. It costs about $USD 3000 / hectare; so the equivalent capture system could be constructed for about $USD 60 000.
Is there any expectation that these artificial de-co2 processing plants will eclipse the efficiency, and greater good of caring for our forests? Can the technophiles be convinced to stop pouring money into the religion of
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If forest don't create a long term store of carbon, where did all that oil and coal come from?
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Forests do not continuously bind carbon. They reach a balance point where growth matches decay, and the carbon balance equalizes. Net changes in carbon then only happen with disruption (such as land-use changes).
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So the issue is in 200 years; while this worthless bit of tech junk will be in a landfill before the decade is out. Good trade.
Re:Awesome: 20 hectares of forest. (Score:4, Informative)
A growing forest in Europe absorbs about 5 tonnes of CO2 per hectare annually and reaches about 200 tonnes after 40 years.
The device in TFA absorbs 4000 tonnes per year.
That is equivalent to 800 hectares of immature forest, not 20.
Perhaps the GPP confused the annual capture of a growing forest (5 t/h) with the total absorption to maturity (200 t/h).
Re:Awesome: 20 hectares of forest. (Score:4, Informative)
The point still needs to be stressed that forests do not continuously bind new carbon. Mature forests have a balance between new growth and decay. The net carbon change is zero.
Planting a new forest will sequester carbon - quickly for the first several decades, then slow, and after many decades will essentially null out as decay matches growth.
The only landscapes that continue to sequester indefinitely are those in anoxic terrain, such as peat bogs, where decay is interrupted.
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The point still needs to be stressed that forests do not continuously bind new carbon. Mature forests have a balance between new growth and decay. The net carbon change is zero.
Planting a new forest will sequester carbon - quickly for the first several decades, then slow, and after many decades will essentially null out as decay matches growth.
which is why forestry management is important. harvest the mature trees so you always keep the forest at max co2 processing. OTOH, grasslands may also prove helpful in absorbing co2. https://climatechange.ucdavis.... [ucdavis.edu]
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Nope. Once again, ill informed engineering mindset of destructive technology.
There are many constructive technologies and processes that do not trade tomorrow for today.
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Support from Microsoft? (Score:3)
Blue Sky Of Death. I don’t know how, but they’ll make it happen.
Exceptionally risky? (Score:2)
“Carbon capture schemes are unnecessary, ineffective, exceptionally risky, and at odds with a just energy transition and the principles of environmental justice,” the letter reads
So I don't speak environmentalist that well, so I'm probably not going to understand what a "just energy transition" is, or what the "principles of environmental justice" are - let's just forget about that rhetoric for now.
But can someone explain to me why these facilities are considered "Exceptionally risky"?
What risk? Why is it exceptionally high?
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So I don't speak environmentalist that well, so I'm probably not going to understand what a "just energy transition" is.
My daughter is a greenie, so perhaps I can translate: The 1st world nations are where the industrial revolution began. Europe and North America consumed coal and burnt oil to modernize and we now have a high standard of living as a result.
Many people feel it is unjust to ask developing countries to forego the same opportunity to grow on cheap abundant energy. So the "fair" solution is for the 1st world to bear the cost of reducing CO2.
I don't totally disagree with that viewpoint. But when the lifeboat is
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My daughter is a greenie, so perhaps I can translate: The 1st world nations are where the industrial revolution began. Europe and North America consumed coal and burnt oil to modernize and we now have a high standard of living as a result. Many people feel it is unjust to ask developing countries to forego the same opportunity to grow on cheap abundant energy. So the "fair" solution is for the 1st world to bear the cost of reducing CO2.
But then that doesn't make sense either - the effective or not, the cost of building these carbon capture systems will be predominantly borne by 1st world nations. I doubt a developing nation would have the resources to build one.
That letter seems to be a conglomerate of garbage thought.
Garbage thought is all Bill's (Score:1)
Do note all the disdain he holds even for his own daughter, metaphor he uses (bailing out of a sinking lifeboat - clearly the thought of plugging the holes and pumping the water out or godforbid saving someone else and not his own ass... that never crossed his mind) and ultimately admitting he doesn't know what he's talking about - but still being eager to fill your mind with his bias and unknowledge.
Argument makes no sense to you cause it's being explained by a hostile entity.
Imagine if you will me coming
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And if you feel some compulsion to atone for actions of other people, people who lived hundreds of years before you, well, again, don't let me stop you.
Just leave me out of it.
Wanna bet a post got some paleface very upset? (Score:2)
Anyway, as I was sayin before some pale snowflake had a meltdown and tried to mod-out the truth...
Garbage thought is all Bill's.
Do note all the disdain he holds even for his own daughter, metaphor he uses (bailing out of a sinking lifeboat - clearly the thought of plugging the holes and pumping the water out or godforbid saving someone else and not his own ass... that never crossed his mind) and ultimately admitting he doesn't know what he's talking about - but still being eager to fill your mind with his b
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For some people, environmentalism is a religion. Does that help make sense of the letter?
That said, I do believe the wealthiest nations (one of which I reside in) should bear the brunt of the costs of cleaning things up, both for moral and pragmatic reasons.
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This argument is very strange.
The problem is supposed to be physics. The problem is supposed to be that for the world to emit 37+ billion tons of CO2 annually is going to lead to the destruction of civilization because of global warming.
So the argument is, these emissions must be brought down by at least half by at least 2050. Some people say far more aggressive goals are needed, bring them down to below 5 billion tons.
Consider that China alone is emitting 10+ billion tons and rising. Its mining and burni
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So, your argument is "whataboutism"?
You believe, because one country is bad (though working hard at improving), we should allow China to screw over the whole world, to somehow get everyone else back for all their previous emissions (before anyone knew there was an issue)?
Everyone needs to do their part to lower overall emissions. Giving China a pass will just mean that we all go over the cliff that much faster. Per capita means shit, as the poster you replied to pointed out. It is total emissions that is
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The whataboutism was whatabout America in a conversation about China's emissions. The rest of my post was factually based, so please point out a single lie in the post, and we can discuss that since you obviously live in a different universe.
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The hope is if the developed nations can develop clean energy technology and drive the price down, developing nations can adopt it and enjoy the same benefits we did but without the massive amount of emissions.
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The only risk I see is if this CO2 laced water finds a fissure somewhere and heads right back up to the surface. Or, maybe, that happens after a few years of running and we get a massive rupture pumping years worth of CO2 capture back up into the atmosphere. That doesn't seem likely, but as a dude that likes to day-dream doomsday scenarios for fun, it seems to at least be possible.
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But can someone explain to me why these facilities are considered "Exceptionally risky"?
I don't know what they are thinking but I have some guesses.
One issue is a potential catastrophic release of the stored gas. There was a natural CO2 gas release from an small earthquake that shook up some CO2 that had collected at the bottom of a lake, built up from rotting plants or something. CO2 is heavier than air and so will sink into valleys until winds and such mix it up. This massive CO2 release filled a valley and suffocated many people and animals. These events happen at sea once in a while to
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Your guess is basically correct [ciel.org].
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But can someone explain to me why these facilities are considered "Exceptionally risky"?
There is a paragraph in their complaint that explains it [ciel.org].
Practical? (Score:2)
I'm glad they're doing this as a technological test, but I question whether it's really helping. How much power does this plant consume? Could this power be used elsewhere instead of electricity from gas or coal plants? If so, then this plant is probably adding CO2, not removing it.
Once we get the electrical grid to be entirely carbon free, then adding plants like this becomes a win. In the meantime, the value is in developing the technology, not in the CO2 it sequesters.
Massive expansion needed. (Score:2)
Honestly, I don't care what antinuclear people think because we need a dedicated nuclear power to provide the heat needed to power a concrete forest of direct air capture tubes. If we can scale up a site to capture 10Mt/year (2500x more per site) then we might actually have a shot. Now isn't the time to worry about nuclear waste because we are facing insurmountable odds with almost no chance of preventing the biosphere from collapsing.
That's 250 American's worth of carbon (Score:2)
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250 American's what? Their farts?
Religious debate (Score:1)
It really is a religious debate.
Whether this particular method will work or not remains to be seen, but there are quite a few people who don't want it to.
No, the great god CO2 can only be appeased with painful sacrifice. And unbelievers (excuse me, "deniers") must be punished.
Hmmm. Microsoft. (Score:2)
Climeworks AG, with support from Microsoft, ... ...
stored for "thousands of years."
Their process is proprietary...
Reminds one of Visual Source Safe. [wikipedia.org]
"Growing scepticism" (Score:1)
Nice, how you just made that up and threw in in there.
Although, given how opposite-universe American views are, I wouldn't be surprised, if that was true for those US nutters who are proudly "rolling coal" and such.
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Not made up at all, the tech is expensive and useless since negligible amount of carbon captured, it's a boondoggle grab for VC money.
Bamboo is better. (Score:2)
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Proprietary techology & stored deep undergroun (Score:2)
Simple locations (Score:2)
Line all Interstates within the bedroom community range with these. Esp. down the center, so we can save more energy by cutting out asshole gaper delays on the other side of the road.
Capitalism = Stupidity (Score:2)
These idiots are looking for a way to PROFIT off sucking carbon. That's all there is to this dumb pseudoscientific idea.
Good Scheme, Known Process (Score:2)
So they're basically pumping it (in water) through mafic rocks, making silica-carbonate rock. Not the only place that's been tried.
There was a scheme several years ago (what ever happened to it?) for pumping simply air through a matrix of tunnels in ultramafic rock. The target location was in one of the Emirates, but similar rocks exists worldwide in small exposures. The theory was that the ultramafics would take up the CO2 hungrily and convert to silica-carbonate rock. Small-scale tests appeared to work. W