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MIT Team Makes a Case For Direct Carbon Capture From Seawater, Not Air 131
The oceans soak up enormous quantities of carbon dioxide, and MIT researchers say they've developed a way of releasing and capturing it that uses far less energy than direct air capture -- with some other environmental benefits to boot. New Atlas reports: According to IEA figures from 2022, even the more efficient air capture technologies require about 6.6 gigajoules of energy, or 1.83 megawatt-hours per ton of carbon dioxide captured. Most of that energy isn't used to directly separate the CO2 from the air, it's in heat energy to keep the absorbers at operating temperatures, or electrical energy used to compress large amounts of air to the point where the capture operation can be done efficiently. But either way, the costs are out of control, with 2030 price estimates per ton ranging between US$300-$1,000. According to Statista, there's not a nation on Earth currently willing to tax carbon emitters even half of the lower estimate; first-placed Uruguay taxes it at US$137/ton. Direct air capture is not going to work as a business unless its costs come way down.
It turns out there's another option: seawater. As atmospheric carbon concentrations rise, carbon dioxide begins to dissolve into seawater. The ocean currently soaks up some 30-40% of all humanity's annual carbon emissions, and maintains a constant free exchange with the air. Suck the carbon out of the seawater, and it'll suck more out of the air to re-balance the concentrations. Best of all, the concentration of carbon dioxide in seawater is more than 100 times greater than in air. Previous research teams have managed to release CO2 from seawater and capture it, but their methods have required expensive membranes and a constant supply of chemicals to keep the reactions going. MIT's team, on the other hand, has announced the successful testing of a system that uses neither, and requires vastly less energy than air capture methods.
In the new system, seawater is passed through two chambers. The first uses reactive electrodes to release protons into the seawater, which acidifies the water, turning dissolved inorganic bicarbonates into carbon dioxide gas, which bubbles out and is collected using a vacuum. Then the water's pushed through to a second set of cells with a reversed voltage, calling those protons back in and turning the acidic water back to alkaline before releasing it back into the sea. Periodically, when the active electrode is depleted of protons, the polarity of the voltage is reversed, and the same reaction continues with water flowing in the opposite direction. In a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy & Environmental Science, the team says its technique requires an energy input of 122 kJ/mol, equating by our math to 0.77 mWh per ton. And the team is confident it can do even better: "Though our base energy consumption of 122 kJ/mol-CO2 is a record-low," reads the study, "it may still be substantially decreased towards the thermodynamic limit of 32 kJ/mol-CO2."
It turns out there's another option: seawater. As atmospheric carbon concentrations rise, carbon dioxide begins to dissolve into seawater. The ocean currently soaks up some 30-40% of all humanity's annual carbon emissions, and maintains a constant free exchange with the air. Suck the carbon out of the seawater, and it'll suck more out of the air to re-balance the concentrations. Best of all, the concentration of carbon dioxide in seawater is more than 100 times greater than in air. Previous research teams have managed to release CO2 from seawater and capture it, but their methods have required expensive membranes and a constant supply of chemicals to keep the reactions going. MIT's team, on the other hand, has announced the successful testing of a system that uses neither, and requires vastly less energy than air capture methods.
In the new system, seawater is passed through two chambers. The first uses reactive electrodes to release protons into the seawater, which acidifies the water, turning dissolved inorganic bicarbonates into carbon dioxide gas, which bubbles out and is collected using a vacuum. Then the water's pushed through to a second set of cells with a reversed voltage, calling those protons back in and turning the acidic water back to alkaline before releasing it back into the sea. Periodically, when the active electrode is depleted of protons, the polarity of the voltage is reversed, and the same reaction continues with water flowing in the opposite direction. In a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy & Environmental Science, the team says its technique requires an energy input of 122 kJ/mol, equating by our math to 0.77 mWh per ton. And the team is confident it can do even better: "Though our base energy consumption of 122 kJ/mol-CO2 is a record-low," reads the study, "it may still be substantially decreased towards the thermodynamic limit of 32 kJ/mol-CO2."
Cost (Score:2)
the team says its technique requires an energy input of 122 kJ/mol, equating by our math to 0.77 mWh per ton.
By my calculation, that's $150-$300 USD per ton.
Re:Cost (Score:5, Interesting)
So 100 gallons of gas creates a ton of CO2.
So $1.50 cleanup per gallon of gas at the low end.
https://climatekids.nasa.gov/r... [nasa.gov]
Re: Cost (Score:2)
Does anyone else see the problem?
Yup. There's also a straightforward solution that has been known for 40 years. For a variety of reasons the solution has met fierce opposition from the vested lobbies and ButMahFreedom folks: drastically reduce fossils fuel consumption.
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Well, one clearly can't power this process with gas. But is there any reason that it needs to be? Gasoline should be restricted to uses where there isn't any decent alternative. (And by gasoline, I really mean all fossil fuels.) We're in the process of doing that now, but we really need to step up the pace a bit. Taxes on emission of CO2 and elimination of the "offsets" fake would be a good way to accomplish this. (But think carefully. It might be better to just tax fossil fuels more heavily. After
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Taxes on emission of CO2 and elimination of the "offsets" fake would be a good way to accomplish this. (But think carefully. It might be better to just tax fossil fuels more heavily. After all, breathing is rather important.)
Just who is going to vote for seeing the fuel they use everyday to travel being taxed even higher than it already has been? Since most nations with voting have a representative democracy there is the possibility of the representatives voting for these taxes when the represented didn't ask for it, but that only means some other representative that is opposed to these taxes gets voted in the next time.
Taxes is a horrible way yo accomplish lower CO2 emissions.
A far more effective way is to develop alternative
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The US Navy has been working on fuels they can produce from seawater but their goal is not to get to net carbon zero, that's just a pleasant byproduct. Their goal is to produce fuel in a way that is cheaper than if they bought it.
The US Navy has a specific "advantage" in this calculation in that they're trying to get cheaper than if they bought it and delivered it to their aircraft carrier, given that someone is trying to kill the delivery people and also given that their aircraft carrier already has a nuclear reactor with plenty of spare capacity. That makes their break-even point occur quite a way before other people's break even point.
That doesn't mean this isn't a good thing, and of course peace time usage has other advantages (
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Wind power is not the lowest cost, hydroelectric power is the lowest cost. That's according to a few studies on the topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I agree that the US Navy has to deal with costs that don't apply to civilian uses. As you point out the cost of operating on the shore will be lower than operating at sea so that will impact the cost of the end product. There's no requirement that the fuel be produced by nuclear power, any source of electricity will do. However, there is a video out
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Careful here. Calculating the costs of hydroelectric power is quite difficult. How do you measure damage to the fish in the river? What about the prior watershed? Usually these costs are just externalized and not counted. But they are high enough that some dams have been removed after being built. (I'm probably ignoring lots of the externalized costs, as I'm not knowledgeable in this area. And, also, there are benefits, both counted and externalized.)
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Mentioning that there could be benefits to a dam makes your argument of environmental damage a bit weak, don't you think? Sure, if we ignore the benefits of building a dam then it's all just costs. If we don't ignore the benefits then people will balance benefits of a dam to the costs before building it. Since there's more than one way to build a dam there's ways to add small costs to great benefit, such as adding a fish ladder that allow fish to swim upstream of a dam. Dams also prevent floods and drou
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If you can't really measure the costs, and you can't really measure the benefits, then it's not reasonable to say you can figure the costs. But you may be able to bound them.
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Assuming that's true that only means we need to re-evaluate how hydro compares to alternatives, not dismiss it completely. Assuming hydro produces so much methane that we could classify it worse than coal as a producer of greenhouse gases then we still have nuclear fission as an option.
My point is that wind and solar power take considerably more raw materials than other options for the same energy produced. If we were to use only wind and solar, or at least those were the majority of our energy production
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Their one positive was the greenhouse free-ish source of energy. And now we know that isn't that good. They emit vast amounts of CO2 in construction as well. And we now know they emit large amounts methane, just sitting there for 50+ years. Mostly though, they can't be put in many places. The size/scale/weight make the suitable places fairly rare...and already used. It simply can't scale to ne
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Hydro is vastly damaging to the local ecosystem; it's why even the green focused northwest is removing them.
Assuming that is true it is still a decision that must be made locally on which options make the best cost to benefit for energy. In the Northwest USA it is conceivable they figured out that there's more than enough inexpensive wind power available that benefits of hydroelectric dams are not worth the costs. That doesn't rule out the use of hydroelectric power elsewhere.
The size/scale/weight make the suitable places fairly rare...and already used. It simply can't scale to needs because it can't be built in the capacity needed.
Nobody is claiming that hydroelectric dams can provide all the energy we need. The case being made is that hydroelectric power has uniqu
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The US Navy has been working on fuels they can produce from seawater but their goal is not to get to net carbon zero, that's just a pleasant byproduct. Their goal is to produce fuel in a way that is cheaper than if they bought it.
The goal of the US Navy producing fuel from seawater is to reduce dependency on vulnerable supply lines.
Re: Cost (Score:2)
Why are you assuming we'd use gas to do this?
Re:Cost (Score:4, Interesting)
it's surprising that it's not 100%. I mean the amount of energy you get from rolling a ball down a hill should be the same as it takes to roll back up...
Poor analogy. This process doesn't turn CO2 back into gasoline. It just collects the CO2 so it can be sequestered. But it's still CO2.
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Amazing! the GP is now modded up to +4!!!
Burning a gallon of gas creates 20 lbs of CO2.
So 100 gallons of gas creates a ton of CO2.
So $1.50 cleanup per gallon of gas at the low end.
Weight of a gallon of gas:
https://www.jdpower.com/cars/s... [jdpower.com]
Many owners pump their cars with fuel but never stop to think about just what they’re pouring inside the tank. Gas has unique properties, like weight and density, which all play an essential part. In this piece, we’ll try to understand how much gas weighs and why that matters.
The weight of a gallon of gasoline is about six pounds. There is a slight difference depending on the type of gasoline and its additives. Unlike water, which weighs about 8.4 pounds per gallon, gasoline is 25% lighter.
So according to the +4 post we are now creating mass out of thin air, generating 20 pounds of output with only 8 pounds of input and managing to run our cars on apparently free energy on top of that along the way.
Seriously?
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according to the +4 post we are now creating mass out of thin air, generating 20 pounds of output with only 8 pounds of input
I'm not going to try to check the math directly (or I shall embarrass myself) but the point holds. For example, one propane molecule plus five oxygen molecules plus combustion equals three carbon dioxide molecules, plus four water molecules and some heat. On a cooktop the goal is to produce the heat, and the volume is wasted; in an ICE the goal is to produce the volume, and the heat is wasted.
The EPA says CO2 Emissions from a gallon of gasoline: 8,887 grams CO2/ gallon [epa.gov]. 1G of gasoline masses 2840g [forestville.com] (its weig
Re:Cost, math, physics, chemistry (Score:2)
Mass of thin air... (Score:2)
...is still mass.
Ever held water, in container or otherwise, in your hand? Most of that weight was those O atoms, not the H ones. Despite there being twice as many of them in the mix.
Now, take in account that CO2 has twice as many O atoms as H2O and that C is a lot heavier than H - and that all those O atoms come from the gas we call "air".
As in thin.
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Read the link I already provided above.
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CO2 Emissions from a gallon of gasoline: 8,887 grams CO2/ gallon linky [epa.gov]
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So according to the +4 post we are now creating mass out of thin air, generating 20 pounds of output with only 8 pounds of input
CO2 has a molecular weight of 12 + 16*2 = 44, so CO2 is 27% carbon and 73% oxygen, by mass. So 27% of the 20 pounds of the CO2, or 5.5 pounds, comes from the 6 (not 8... you got confused and used an approximation for the weight of water) pounds of gasoline. The remaining half pound in the gasoline is mostly hydrogen.
No violation of the laws of conservation of either energy or matter... but you have to factor in the mass of the air burned in combustion.
Yes, seriously (Score:2)
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Waited a bit before the avalanche was over. I swear I didn't have a clue! Always feel nice to stand corrected otherwise life would be pretty boring. Thanks!
Re: Cost (Score:2)
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A KwH around here, retail, is 16 cents,
Wow, where do you live?
Re:Cost (Score:4, Informative)
A KwH around here, retail, is 16 cents,
Wow, where do you live?
According to the US Energy Information Agency [eia.gov], the average US price is $0.1564/kWh. However, some states are much cheaper. Considering states with ocean coastlines, Washington state has a cost of $0.1032/kWh. And those are residential prices. The industrial cost is $0.0603/kWh. It's even cheaper in Puerto Rico [lumapr.com], where the residential price is $0.05564/kWh, and likely even cheaper for industrial customers.
And of all that is buying electricity at market prices. If this really works, then governments should build hyperscale solar installations just for this, bringing the electricity costs even lower.
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A KwH around here, retail, is 16 cents,
Wow, where do you live?
I honestly can't tell if you are surprised because 16 cents/kwh is so high or so low.
in California, I pay 7 cents/kwh for off-peak power between 2 & 4 AM.
Re: Cost (Score:3)
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And tell them what you pay in daytime, esp after a small amount.
In the daytime, I pay in tiers depending on consumption. The more I use, the higher the rate. The first tier is 15 cents/kwh. The second tier is 20 cents, and the third tier is 30.
I have solar, so I've never gone beyond the first tier.
Re: Cost (Score:2)
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You have solar? Smart on your part. Out of curiosity, battery?
No. Batteries make little sense with my rate structure.
I charge my EV when rates are low in the middle of the night.
Most of my other use is during the day when the sun is shining.
I have net metering, so the grid is my battery. I upload power when rates are high in the middle of the day, and download power at night when rates are rock bottom.
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My (also California) commercial rates are:
Peak (4pm-9pm): $0.32329 /kWH /KWH
Off-Peak: $0.30718
My residential rates are lower than at my business, but vary on time-of-day and by tiered usage (exceed certain amounts and the cost per kWH goes up) -I have never used enough to be out of the first tier (coastal living -no heating or cooling).
Peak (4pm-9pm): $0.12600 / kWH
Off-Peak: $0.07700 / kWH
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Is it retail or wholesale pricing that should be used?
CO2 is used in the ocean. (Score:2)
Wonder how areas of lower CO2 might impact growth of algae and other sealife. Sort of the opposite of an algal bloom from fertilizer runoff.
I assume the top layer of ocean is the important part. Where the sunlight, gases, and other necessary parts all come together in the water for photosynthesis (one of the ways nature removes carbon from the atmosphere already). Wouldn't lower CO2 in the top layer mean less photosynthesis across the same area?
I applaud the outside the box thinking, but I hesitate to su
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It will be perfectly fine to fallback a little bit.
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It literally won't make a dent. The sea has been fine without us pumping billions of tons of CO2 into the air and 40-60% of that getting absorbed in the ocean.
The sea is mostly a nutrient desert. Toss a little iron in, and the plankton & algae go nuts fixing carbon, and the rest of the sea life chain is down steam from there. This is how all that carbon got sequestered as coal & oil in the first place. The 1991 Mt. Pinatubo eruption offers good clues here, but its somewhat obfuscated by the co-morbid atmospheric SO2 injection.
Re:CO2 is used in the ocean. (Score:5, Informative)
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This is the first thing that came to mind for me - CO2 acidifies the ocean as well (surprised that isn't mentioned in the brief), so pulling CO2 out of the water hopefully will result in a more favourable PH.
But that's a LOT of carbon to remove.
Re: CO2 is used in the ocean. (Score:2)
But isn't the constant releasing of co2 into the ocean the problem? And the ocean naturally processes this co2? So the issue in not removing it after we dump it but not dumping it in the first place?
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Yes....
-Humans are not going to stop releasing CO2 into the atmosphere.
-The ocean will continue to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.
Scientists have discovered that they may be able to reclaim CO2 from the ocean more efficiently than from the atmosphere.
This is a treatment, not a prevention, but it may help. It is not perfect, but it may be good.
I say "may" because this is experimental. It remains to be seen if it can, or will, be implemented at all -much less on an effective scale.
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Wonder how areas of lower CO2 might impact growth of algae and other sealife.
It will make no difference. Carbon is not the bottleneck. For life in the ocean, iron and phosphorous are the bottlenecks.
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Wonder how areas of lower CO2 might impact growth of algae and other sealife.
The ocean currently is overacidified (technically, insufficiently alkaline, since the point of comparison is neutral Ph) because there's too much CO2 in it.
mWh? (Score:4, Informative)
Not mWh clearly, that needs to be MWh. Still, if that is the dominant cost it's still quite cheap.
We did it slashdot (Score:3)
> Best of all, the concentration of carbon dioxide in seawater is more than 100 times greater than in air.
1. Co2 creates global warming
2. global warming melts polar ice caps which means more sea water
3. ??? --> more sea water absorbs more Co2
4. less Co2 means global warming
We finally solved the equation!
Called it! (Score:3)
Still won't really make up for pumping billions of tons of it into the atmosphere in the first place.
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This exactly. We really don't need to be concentrating on our efforts on removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The environment can do that just fine. We need to concentrate on reducing our emissions and let nature do what it does best.
Can this pay for itself? (Score:2)
Yes, this action is valuable in itself, but it'll go down smoother with something one can SELL.
Is there something else we can extract at the same time, something like the 17 rare earth elements, precious metals, lithium, or uranium that can be found in sea water?
Perhaps one or more of these will just naturally collect on the emitter/receiver plates?
Or since we're doing the work of pumping it around and through a channel, does that make the mining operation cheaper to start with and thus make element
Re:Can this pay for itself? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is there something else we can extract at the same time
You suggested lithium. With the increasing popularity of electric cars, and with products like Tesla Megapack for grid storage, there is now huge demand for battery-grade lithium.
My understanding is that it's possible but not cost-effective to extract lithium from seawater... but if you set up a desalinization plant, the more-concentrated brine you get when you remove some of the water as fresh water might be cost-effective for lithium recovery.
I'm wondering how many things you can do at once and whether some of them help the others. Is it easier, or harder, to get carbon dioxide from desalinization brine than pure seawater?
Also, Tony Seba and his think tank are predicting that we could transition to relying on "renewable" power only if we overbuild production by 3 to 5 times the minimum. That way, when it's a winter day (less sunlight) and the wind dies down, you aren't getting 100% production but you at least have more production of what you can get (and the plan also calls for enough backup battery power for 2 to 4 days). Well, the corollary of that is that most of the time, when sun and wind are normal, your overbuilt production makes excess energy that you can afford to sell cheaply.
So I've started reading stories like this and wondered if they would be good candidates for the excess power from wind/solar on normal days. Collect lithium and carbon dioxide while the energy is cheap, and plan for some down time in December.
For a real win, turn the carbon dioxide all the way into pure jet fuel, because long-haul jet airplanes aren't converting to battery power anytime soon. If you have carbon, and you can get hydrogen from the water (just need more electricity), you can make hydrocarbons. I don't know whether it would be economically feasible, but large amounts of cheap power might help with that.
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Well, the jet fuel returns the CO2 to the atmosphere, but I guess it prevents more fossil fuel being burned. The real win, though, is to turn it into something durable. Perhaps we could enter "the diamond age" with it. Graphite (and it's developed forms) are an easier alternative, though. (But that assumes enough energy to remove the oxygen. Plastics would be a lot easier.) Perhaps the easiest/best alternative is to use it for a synthetic photosynthesis process to produce various organic chemicals. W
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Yeah, thanks for that, previous generations.
Sure sucks to be responsible adults. Why can't we just also kick that can down the road to our kids...
Oh, we're supposed to be adults. And care about our kids futures.
What about sea life? (Score:3)
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The life gets turned into micronutrients.
Electrodes are consumables (Score:2)
It seems to me that the recapturing of protons won't work perfectly, and some will wash out to sea. Simularly, anyone with a boat knows sea water has a lot of gunk in it, and some of it will be attracted to the electrodes, or just naturally stick to them, further degrading performance.
The New Atas article talks about this briefly, but doesn't say anything about the material the electrodes are made of, and what it costs to replace them:
> And mineral precipitates are fouling the electrodes on the alkaliniz
Re:Electrodes are consumables (Score:5, Informative)
Reading some more, they do acknowledge this:
"The bismuth electrode is inexpensive and can robustly modulate the pH of chloridecontaining salt water regardless of the type and concentration of cations. On the other hand, although silver has the advantage of large capacity and low energy penalty, electrode dissolutionwill need to be overcome by modifying the silver particles or replacing silver with another material; this is to be the subject of future studies."
Seems like a pretty relevant caveat for New Atlas to skip over.
"Methods to overcome the fouling of electrodes during the regeneration step owing to local high surface pH conditions that promote the formation of precipitates such as Mg(OH)2 must be developed, and several engineering and electrochemical approaches are currently being considered to alleviate the fouling issues; one such method was discussed in which the degasified water was mixed with fresh ocean water before being fed to the regeneration cell to reduce the overall pH increase in the flow channel."
I hope they figure it out.
Hipsters - put those chopsticks down! (Score:2)
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HAHA! This is actually a good point. It might be much cheaper to seed an area with nitrogen and phosphorus and iron, and periodically rip half the seaweed out and ... well, bury it, probably.
There's a comment above about planting trees. I'll bet seaweed works better for carbon capture.
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That's nice, but kinda orthogonal to the goal (Score:2)
If the co2 is already in solution, and the end goal is to sequester it, like in minerals, then wouldn't pulling it out as a gas be, at best a lateral move, given that minerals are generally more easily formed by aqueous chemistry?
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This sounds quite plausible. I'm not *sure* it's true, but it's certainly plausible. Certainly iron rusts more easily in sea water than in dry air. I guess it may depend on how you intend to sequester it. (Many of the suggestions I've heard seem very temporary.)
Cost is 1/3 of world GDP to erase humanities carbo (Score:2)
0.77 * 32 / 122 = 0.2 KWh/ton
0.2 * 1000 KWh/MWh $0.10 = $20/ton
1.6T * $0.02 = $32T at theoretical maximum efficiency
humans have pumped about 1.6 trillion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere
Given their theoretical cheapest figure of 32 kJ/mol-CO2
World/Gross domestic product
96.51 trillion USD (2021)
the team says its technique requires an energy input of 122 kJ/mol, equating by our math to 0.77 mWh per ton. And the team is confident it can do even better: "Though our base energy consumption of 122 kJ/mo
Hmm (Score:2)
Why not add Coca Cola syrup to sea water and make it a soda instead? When we could use fossil fuels and have unlimited coke.
Embarrasing nonsense (Score:2)
If they really wanted to sink carbon there are no shortages of smokestacks with way higher concentrations of CO2 to pick from.
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I thought about that too, but then I realized they'd probably be scrubbing it out with water mist anyway, so this process is the same thing but using the atmosphere as a filter. What could possibly go wrong, etc etc, but I see why they want to do it this way.
Still too expensive (Score:4, Interesting)
Note that the utility gets to have fresh water, pull out purified CO2, and pull out other elements from the concentrated brine. Oddly, 2 of the easiest to pull out is uranium and thorium. Turns out they will stick to treated paper.
What happens to the collected CO2? (Score:2)
Wondering if it is possible to just add some sort of chemical to sea water, precipitate the dissolved CO2 into some nonsoluble inert carbonate particles that will simply sink to the sea bottom.
Yep (Score:2)
Drop in the bucket (Score:2)
71 percent of the world is ocean which is already performing carbon capture naturally. What makes anyone think that this idea is going to make any significant difference?
Re: Drop in the bucket (Score:2)
The ocean capture hits a homeostasis based on temperature and other dissolved elements. Any carbon taken out will be replaced by the atmosphere at accelerated rates.
pipe dream (Score:2)
This pipe dream would require an infinite quantity of pipe.
0.77 miliwatthours / ton? That cannot be right. (Score:2)
Maybe some incompetent has, again, screwed up SI prefixes?
https://www.nist.gov/pml/owm/m... [nist.gov]
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Maybe we could make something that is able to move on top of the water and travel around the world decarbonizing the oceans as it goes. Oh, we have this huge industry called shipping. If we could retrofit these vessels with a decarbonizer then as they travel around the the world they can make money by participating in carbon capture.
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Maybe we could make something that is able to move on top of the water and travel around the world decarbonizing the oceans as it goes. Oh, we have this huge industry called shipping. If we could retrofit these vessels with a decarbonizer then as they travel around the the world they can make money by participating in carbon capture.
So you're proposing that we burn more number 4 bunker oil (ship fuel) in order to extract CO2 from the oceans? You know it's one of the most environmentally damaging fuels around, right?
Most of us are gonna die from climate disasters & food shortages at this rate.
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So you're proposing that we burn more number 4 bunker oil (ship fuel) in order to extract CO2 from the oceans? You know it's one of the most environmentally damaging fuels around, right?
I propose the ships be nuclear powered. They can sail through the ocean to extract CO2, perhaps freeze it to dry ice, then offload it at a port for sale. Then head out to another port that wants bottled CO2 and/or dry ice and extract the CO2 from the water along the way. The CO2 they capture can be sequestered when it reaches port or used to replace CO2 that would have been produced by fossil fuels, either way this reversing CO2 emissions from fossil fuels.
Most of us are gonna die from climate disasters & food shortages at this rate.
Dying from climate disasters in our lifetime is
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More people are already dying from super-charged weather events & crop yields are already suffering in some places. The simple fact of more heat energy in the at
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actually implementing it would be insane as long as fossil fuels are still being burned anywhere in the world.
Let me not take away from your point that reducing the use of fossil fuels, especially for industry and short range transport is critical and should be done first. However there are ways to use this.
An obvious place to do this on a massive scale is in the far North of Scotland and the correct use for the CO2 is converting it into various liquid fuels and gasses, especially hydrocarbons for uses such as long distance aviation where substitution is really difficult. If this could become cheap enough then it s
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It would make way more sense for Scotland to use surplus power for something like nitrates or ammonia, which have huge global markets (and currently shortages since Ukraine was a big producer).
Even better would be to install some HVDC lines and export the surplus power to England or across the North Sea to the EU.
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These lines are tiny for single digit GW transport. European power needs are in the 10s to low digit 100s of GWs. Scottish potential power generation is in the high hundreds of gigawatts up to terrawatts with more distant floating offshore wind. If Iceland was connected through Scotland also there's a potential for a huge transformation in how Europe is powered as a whole.
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The extra drag on the ship will increase fuel consumption far more than the CO2 extraction will help.
Look, this is an interesting research project, but actually implementing it would be insane as long as fossil fuels are still being burned anywhere in the world. Installing wind and solar is ten times as cost-effective at reducing CO2 as this scheme.
This. My own thoughts on the situation is that the Roller coaster ride has begun, and that tinkering with the huge amount of carbon that would need sequestered, is likely to destabilize things further. We are in the unstable period where the weather is just that - kind of unstable. Wanna make it worse? Tinker with CO2. As well, what level of CO2 is proper? 1750 levels? Medieval warming period?
And say we somehow decide that 1750 is the right level, then we get a huge volcanic eruption that gives us a year
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The gulf stream flows a fair bit. Use a bunch of ships to cover the full width of it with HVDC cables to string them up to power?
It's going to be a trillion dollar project to make a dent, but that's to be expected.
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The ocean moves and flows. CO2 itself will start moving into the local area from both the air and the water as it is naturally forced to reach equilibrium.
And you can pipe the input water from a number of miles away further mitigating the issue.
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I assume you'd do it where there's a current, and grab the water upstream and deposit it downstream. You want the highest carbon concentration anyhow, so you'd want to make sure you're not outputting in your input supply.
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Also, pipes exist to pull from a separate area to mitigate the exact thing you describe.
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I used to think this too.
It's not a bad idea. It can definitely work to some extent. But trees are relatively expensive (if you're doing seedlings, not seeds) and fragile. They can only grow in places that really work for them, and open grasslands are 1. open grasslands for a reason -- it's not good forest area and 2. a highly evolved tree-killer (grass is much newer than trees, and evolved to steal the land trees have, albeit slowly).
Ultimately forests do best in forests. The places were there are fores
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But trees are relatively expensive (if you're doing seedlings, not seeds) and fragile.
They also take a lot of water to grow.
Re: Plant more trees? (Score:2)
They also capture water from the atmosphere. One of the first steps in many sustainable water management projects is to plant trees on ridges to collect water.
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open grasslands are 1. open grasslands for a reason -- it's not good forest area
Often, the reason is that all the trees were cut and/or burned down. Even Native Americans burned down forests to increase range land for bison.
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What we need to do is plant more trees, cut them down, pulverize them or otherwise convert them into compressed bricks, bury the result deep in the ground, and repeat ad nauseum. The industrial part of this needs to be run on solar/wind, of course.
The coal industry has conveniently left a fair number of holes that would work well for that permanent storage. And the construction industry has conveniently developed extremely fast-growing trees.
Win-win.
It won't be the solution, but it will help work toward it
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The industrial part of this needs to be run on solar/wind, of course.
No, that is not obvious to run this, or anything else, on solar and wind. There's hydroelectric power, geothermal power, and nuclear fission power.
The coal industry has conveniently left a fair number of holes that would work well for that permanent storage.
You know what has also made a lot of holes in the ground? Mining for the raw materials to make solar collectors and windmills will make holes in the ground. Especially for solar, wind power takes less material for the same power or energy output.
People make big deals about the environmental damage of mining for coal, uranium, and whatever else but appear obliv
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There isn't enough suitable land on the surface of the earth to plant enough trees. And most "offset" projects the planted trees, the new trees were dead within a couple of years. (But the "offset" was collected, so that was considered a win.)
Re: Ummm ... trees? (Score:2)
If you make a door out of wood, then bury it in a landfill when you're done with it, you've sequestered carbon. Why would we stop cutting trees?