America's First Commercial Carbon-Sucking Facility Opens in California (yahoo.com) 206
"In an open-air warehouse in California's Central Valley, 40-foot-tall racks hold hundreds of trays filled with a white powder that turns crusty as it absorbs carbon dioxide from the sky," reports the New York Times.
"The start-up that built the facility, Heirloom Carbon Technologies, calls it the first commercial plant in the United States to use direct air capture, which involves vacuuming greenhouse gases from the atmosphere." Another plant is operating in Iceland, and some scientists say the technique could be crucial for fighting climate change. Heirloom will take the carbon dioxide it pulls from the air and have the gas sealed permanently in concrete, where it can't heat the planet. To earn revenue, the company is selling carbon removal credits to companies paying a premium to offset their own emissions. Microsoft has already signed a deal with Heirloom to remove 315,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The company's first facility in Tracy, California, which opens Thursday, is fairly small. The plant can absorb a maximum of 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, equal to the exhaust from about 200 cars. But Heirloom hopes to expand quickly. "We want to get to millions of tons per year," said Shashank Samala, the company's chief executive. "That means copying and pasting this basic design over and over."
Heirloom's technology hinges on a simple bit of chemistry: Limestone, one of the most abundant rocks on the planet, forms when calcium oxide binds with carbon dioxide. In nature, that process takes years. Heirloom speeds it up. At the California plant, workers heat limestone to 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit in a kiln powered by renewable electricity. Carbon dioxide is released from the limestone and pumped into a storage tank. The leftover calcium oxide, which looks like flour, is then doused with water and spread onto large trays, which are carried by robots onto tower-high racks and exposed to open air. Over three days, the white powder absorbs carbon dioxide and turns into limestone again. Then it's back to the kiln and the cycle repeats. "That's the beauty of this, it's just rocks on trays," Mr. Samala, who co-founded Heirloom in 2020, said.
The hard part, he added, was years of tweaking variables like particle size, tray spacing and moisture to speed up absorption... In future projects, Heirloom also plans to pump carbon dioxide into underground storage wells, burying it.
The company received funding from Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund and Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures, according to Bloomberg, which adds that Heirloom's technology will later "be deployed at a major hub in Louisiana the government expects will remove 1 million tons of CO2 a year by the end of the decade."
The New York Times notes there was also federal funding, something that's been fueling the ambitions of hundreds of carbon-capture startups. "The science is clear," says America's Energy Secretary. "Cutting back carbon emissions through renewable energy alone won't stop the damage from climate change. Direct air capture technology is a game-changing tool that gives us a shot at removing the carbon pollution that has been building in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution."
"The start-up that built the facility, Heirloom Carbon Technologies, calls it the first commercial plant in the United States to use direct air capture, which involves vacuuming greenhouse gases from the atmosphere." Another plant is operating in Iceland, and some scientists say the technique could be crucial for fighting climate change. Heirloom will take the carbon dioxide it pulls from the air and have the gas sealed permanently in concrete, where it can't heat the planet. To earn revenue, the company is selling carbon removal credits to companies paying a premium to offset their own emissions. Microsoft has already signed a deal with Heirloom to remove 315,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The company's first facility in Tracy, California, which opens Thursday, is fairly small. The plant can absorb a maximum of 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, equal to the exhaust from about 200 cars. But Heirloom hopes to expand quickly. "We want to get to millions of tons per year," said Shashank Samala, the company's chief executive. "That means copying and pasting this basic design over and over."
Heirloom's technology hinges on a simple bit of chemistry: Limestone, one of the most abundant rocks on the planet, forms when calcium oxide binds with carbon dioxide. In nature, that process takes years. Heirloom speeds it up. At the California plant, workers heat limestone to 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit in a kiln powered by renewable electricity. Carbon dioxide is released from the limestone and pumped into a storage tank. The leftover calcium oxide, which looks like flour, is then doused with water and spread onto large trays, which are carried by robots onto tower-high racks and exposed to open air. Over three days, the white powder absorbs carbon dioxide and turns into limestone again. Then it's back to the kiln and the cycle repeats. "That's the beauty of this, it's just rocks on trays," Mr. Samala, who co-founded Heirloom in 2020, said.
The hard part, he added, was years of tweaking variables like particle size, tray spacing and moisture to speed up absorption... In future projects, Heirloom also plans to pump carbon dioxide into underground storage wells, burying it.
The company received funding from Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund and Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures, according to Bloomberg, which adds that Heirloom's technology will later "be deployed at a major hub in Louisiana the government expects will remove 1 million tons of CO2 a year by the end of the decade."
The New York Times notes there was also federal funding, something that's been fueling the ambitions of hundreds of carbon-capture startups. "The science is clear," says America's Energy Secretary. "Cutting back carbon emissions through renewable energy alone won't stop the damage from climate change. Direct air capture technology is a game-changing tool that gives us a shot at removing the carbon pollution that has been building in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution."
I wonder if this matters? (Score:5, Informative)
"Heirloom's technology will later be deployed at a major hub in Louisiana the government expects will remove 1 million tons of CO2 a year by the end of the decade." OK, great, but current CO2 emissions are 37.5 BILLION tons per YEAR. (I just googled that). I feel that if you're going to throw out impressive-sounding figures like "one million tons", you should also include that other figure, just for perspective.
You would need a *lot* of these sorts of plants (tens of thousands of them) to have an impact. Maybe that's the plan, I don't know. The article doesn't tell us.
Re: I wonder if this matters? (Score:3, Informative)
We already have carbon sucking technology.
It's called trees. We just need to stop cutting them down, and then reforest areas that were logged. Forests are huge carbon sinks.
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Are you willing to give up all wood products? Convince others to? Yes we should do re-forestation but "stop cutting down trees" isn't very viable. People will switch from wood to plastic. Paper to plastic. We can cut down trees for lumber as long as an equal or greater number is replanted.
Re: I wonder if this matters? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Not cutting them down is stupid anyway, you cut them down, and then plant more. The carbon is stored in the wood so long as it isn't burnt.
That fine wooden office desk is a carbon store.
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But a sapling won't absorb much until it's as big as the original tree. Right?
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Decomposition releases CO2 so you'd have to bury that wood deep underground.
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Then just plant new ones. Huge areas used to be forested that aren't anymore. They'd grow there.
Re: I wonder if this matters? (Score:5, Informative)
You need about 7-10 acres of mature forest per person to offset US CO2 release. 7 x 300 million = ~2 billion acres. The entire lower 48 is about 2.2 billion acres.
And that forest has to be mono culture of the best types; monoculture are bad and vulnerable. One evolution of an ash borer to those types and your screwed.
Plant trees for shade to save on AC and lower heat domes of concrete cities, and for air quality and just plain beauty. Everyone should plant a tree or 5 in their yards!
But they aren't a viable climate change weapon at scale.
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And if you had done some minimal research, you would know that these are _not_ enough by far. Seriously.
Re: I wonder if this matters? (Score:2)
Wrong. Trees absorb CO2 and produces O2 during the day, but it absorbs O2 and produces CO2 at night, so they are about net neutral with their consumption/production. A much better alternative is in the oceans, via algae, which only consumes CO2, but not in enough quantity to be representative.
Now, I am curious with the process (or the way it was worded in this article). It says they heat Limestone, making it to release its captured CO2 and store it into tanks, then the leftover powder is left exposed to abs
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Wrong. Trees absorb CO2 and produces O2 during the day, but it absorbs O2 and produces CO2 at night, so they are about net neutral with their consumption/production.
User:
I heard that trees capture carbon through photosynthesis during the day, but actually release some CO2 again during the night. Is that right?
ChatGPT:
Yes, that's partially accurate. During the day, trees, like other plants, perform photosynthesis, a process where they absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and, using sunlight, water, and minerals, convert it into oxygen and glucose. This process helps remove CO2 from the air and produce oxygen.
However, at night, in the absence of sunlight, plan
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Later in TFS they do say that they plan (big word!) to inject the gas into wells as a permanent storage option.
I don't know the oil geology of California in any detail ; they may be able to find sufficient deep saline water charged reservoirs to absorb (and eventually solidify) the CO2 there. But it'll probably have to be part of the shut-down of existing production wells. The thousands (millions?) of abandoned wells are likely to have had their completions p
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It's called trees.
Trees burn or rot, so the storage is temporary. Long ago, wood did not rot, is was like plastic and got buried, eventually becoming coal.
Then fungi invented a way to digest wood, and the carbon sequestration party was over.
To emulate that process, we could make plastic from atmospheric CO2 and bury it. Or bury wood so deep it will not decay. But these are far more effort than pumping a fluid deep underground.
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Trees, indeed, tend to release a lot of their stored carbon on a timescale of a few thousands of years. The recorded geological response to a large rapid release of CO2 into the atmosphere 55 million years ago (what we geologists call the "PETM", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]) suggests that the oceans took 100,000 to 200,000 years (2~5 ocean circulations) to absorb that gout of carbon (which was about the same tonnage a
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Trees are beautiful objects to look at. They provide a habitat for various animals.
While trees do litter the forest floor, and Nature's way of removing that litter (fire) is destructive, the benefits of trees outweigh that.
Now, if Humans could learn to properly manage these forests instead of taking the "Don't touch that forest approach that some US States are known for.
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We already have carbon sucking technology.
It's called trees. We just need to stop cutting them down, and then reforest areas that were logged. Forests are huge carbon sinks.
Why should we stop cutting down trees?
We're actually pretty good at forestry management, at least in the United States. The continental US has more trees now than at the nation's founding. Tree planting has always been seen as a good, worthy, and productive activity in these parts, and there's a culture of appreciating trees in the US. After an area was settled, and the initial tree-clearing for homes and farms and roads was done, there was often local efforts to plant new trees in remaining spaces. The pra
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Reuse already neglected developed land instead of paving everything over and using up open space. Put solar panels over roads and parking lots and we'll get some badly needed shade too.
Re: I wonder if this matters? (Score:2)
Re:I wonder if this matters? (Score:5, Insightful)
After that: Reducing pollution via compulsory schemes that recycle ~2% of plastics rather than reducing the amount that we're producing, which is increasing exponentially.
Like you say, the most rudimentary arithmetic shows that these are band-aids on cancer. But they're good for misdirecting the press' & therefore the public's attention away from the causes of these problems. Let's keep burning the planet. Yeehaw!!
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Like you say, the most rudimentary arithmetic shows that these are band-aids on cancer. But they're good for misdirecting the press' & therefore the public's attention away from the causes of these problems. Let's keep burning the planet. Yeehaw!!
Indeed. The only purpose that these things have is to convince the public that we still have tons of options and nothing drastic is needed at this time. Obviously, all this does is make the problem much, much worse.
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Like you say, the most rudimentary arithmetic shows that these are band-aids on cancer. But they're good for misdirecting the press' & therefore the public's attention away from the causes of these problems. Let's keep burning the planet. Yeehaw!!
Indeed. The only purpose that these things have is to convince the public that we still have tons of options and nothing drastic is needed at this time. Obviously, all this does is make the problem much, much worse.
I seriously wonder if the people who create these schemes have really drunk their own Kool-Aid and believe their own PR. Or maybe they're just evil and opportunistic. Maybe they plan to use their ill-gotten gains to buy space in a secure enclave of one-percenters who will survive in style while the planet burns.
I marvel at humanity's short-sightedness - my own sometimes included.
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I seriously wonder if the people who create these schemes have really drunk their own Kool-Aid and believe their own PR. Or maybe they're just evil and opportunistic.
FTFS... "The company received funding from Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund and Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures"
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It's not so much that it is ineffective in the scheme of things, it's that it will be used as an excuse to keep emitting CO2.
They call it net zero because it doesn't mean no emissions, it means that any emissions are offset by a similar amount of capture. If they can capture 1M tonnes of CO2, someone can pay them and then emit 1M tonnes. It may be cheaper than decarbonizing, or decarbonizing may be impossible for their industry.
So overall it will probably remove exactly 0 tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere,
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Perhaps those pumps should dump that excessive water into the dry parched deserts of Africa.
As that sea water evaporates or seeps into the ground over time it leaves salts that can be mined; a traditional "rural industry" in those parts per some history books.
The evaporated water might help the rain cycle in the region. Water seeping into the ground feeds underground aquifers. Some forms of plant life are bound to thrive near these large salt water "lakes".
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In the face of severe financial inequality, these 'investment' schemes are our greatest tools for wealth redistribution. If more people pushed kooky yet believable-to-an-investor schemes we might be able to end philanthropy.
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It's nothing but theater. Any time you see the words carbon credits it's a scam.
It doesn't, this is a scam (Score:2)
These are fossil fuel back projects designed to make people feel that something is being done about climate chance and therefore we don't need to make any changes to our power supply or energy use. The plastic industry did the same thing with Recycling which is also a scam.
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This is fine but be careful. Too much and you can induce an ice age, which can come on in as little as 2 years. All you need is one summer where the snow doesn't melt and the planet never gets that full summer plump. Then a deeeeep winter.
Then billions will indeed die, not be irritated moving in from the ocean by the time your great grand kids are old.
How about cash for clunkers 2.0 instead? (Score:3)
The plant can absorb a maximum of 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year, equal to the exhaust from about 200 cars.
The question is, would it have been cheaper to just ask 200 people if they'd swap their ICE car for a free EV, and then liquid glass the engines?
Yeah, I realize the increased load of 200 EVs added to the electrical grid would have a carbon footprint as well, but I'm sure some creative accounting can make that go away if it's too much effort to deal with the problem at the source. Seems to be no worse than what they're doing with this carbon capture facility.
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Re: How about cash for clunkers 2.0 instead? (Score:5, Informative)
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Talk to Joe Manchin ...
But, isn't he retiring?
... and the GOP who wouldn't agree to maintain them.
We can't be expected to subsidize everything forever. Perhaps there is an argument to maintain the EV subsidies longer to keep this "jump start" of the industry further but the industry must be expected to sink or swim on its own at some point. If not now then when? With a handful of EV makers in the market now it would seem that there's some signs that it is self sustaining. On top of that is every major automaker producing successful (though some more successful than others) EV
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it's not like you're likely to want a reasonable discussion.
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We can't be expected to subsidize everything forever.
We're essentially doing exactly that with carbon credits, and it's presently just benefiting businesses (such as the one in TFA) rather than average people. Wouldn't it be better if say, Microsoft could instead dump money into a scheme that helps get ICE cars off the road and replaces them with EVs, and still receive their carbon credits?
I recall seeing claims that new EVs are second and third (sometimes fourth) vehicles and so is just paying people to buy what is a luxury.
That's why I proposed a "cash for clunkers"-style arrangement, where you know you're removing an ICE vehicle from the road. Yeah, it still does end up hurting the poor so
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That's why I proposed a "cash for clunkers"-style arrangement, where you know you're removing an ICE vehicle from the road. Yeah, it still does end up hurting the poor somewhat because it reduces the availability of used vehicles, but even in the original C4C program the vehicles that qualified were such bad gas hogs that they'd be a burden to own just in fuel costs alone.
That's a "broken windows fallacy". I had a long explanation on why this is a bad idea but decided to delete it as it got long and winded to try to avoid what I expected as replies to defend "cash for clunkers". In short it was a bad idea from the start, and long term did nothing to improve the average safety or fuel economy of vehicles on the road. This is backed up by a number of analyses of the program. I doubt you could produce any improvement on the idea because of how deep the flaws run in the conc
Re: How about cash for clunkers 2.0 instead? (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the larger flaws in the original C4C scheme was that as long as your trade-in met the qualifications, you could turn right around and buy another brand new gas guzzler. Limiting the scheme to only allowing the purchase of EVs absolutely would result in reduced carbon emissions.
Granted, yes, there are valid criticisms against the whole carbon credit scheme, but if you're going to have one, it seems like a better use of it to let companies purchase credits that go towards eliminating carbon emissions at the source rather than funding a pork scheme to remove CO2 from the air. There's also likely some minor economic benefits to be realized in getting people into more reliable vehicles that don't require gas, as well.
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Re: How about cash for clunkers 2.0 instead? (Score:2)
They did do a separate bill, which took away the leverage to get more. Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal. He did both bills in a 50 50 Senate. Again, more with less than any POTUS in history. IRA is the largest renewable bill in US history. Perfect vs good.
As for a bill passed 40 years ago.. that he's admitted was misguided? If that's what you've got for criticism, that's pretty weak.
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I don't want one of those new vehicles with the US Gub'mint-mandated "kill-nanny" switches.
The mandate was written into Biden's Infrastructure law (Biden signed it into law) and set to take effect for all new US vehicles by 2026.
In recent politics Rep. Thomas Massie has spoken about the serious negatives of this Gub'mint-required "kill-nanny" switch.
https://www.climatedepot.com/2... [climatedepot.com] https://thenewamerican.com/new... [thenewamerican.com]
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The question is, would it have been cheaper to just ask 200 people if they'd swap their ICE car for a free EV, and then liquid glass the engines?
Yeah, I realize the increased load of 200 EVs added to the electrical grid would have a carbon footprint as well, but I'm sure some creative accounting can make that go away if it's too much effort to deal with the problem at the source. Seems to be no worse than what they're doing with this carbon capture facility.
The key phrase you used is "creative accounting". Those who devote their lives to that discipline have already figured that the creative accounting used to justify the subject of TFS is more profitable than the creative accounting that would justify those 200 EV's you mentioned.
CO2 Production vs Capture (Score:2)
Re: CO2 Production vs Capture (Score:3)
I was wondering the same and TFA is unclear about this:
Finding enough clean power for the energy-intensive process could be a challenge. In California, Heirloom paid a local provider to add more renewable electricity to the grid. But experts say care is needed to ensure that direct air capture plants donâ(TM)t inadvertently cause emissions from the electricity sector to rise by diverting wind or solar power from elsewhere.
Notice the use of "clean power" which can only be to misguide: all sources of power result in greenhouse gas emissions. The net contribution of such a project to greenhouse gas emissions should be negative. I wonder why it is not quantified and advertised, but I do not wonder too hard: if the net was indeed negative, it would be foolish to not advertise it.
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Notice the use of "clean power" which can only be to misguide: all sources of power result in greenhouse gas emissions.
That's true, all sources of energy will emit some amount of greenhouse gases but with many the amount is so close to zero that it is effectively zero. Humans cannot live without emitting some amount of CO2, just by breathing we emit CO2. What we can do is bring our CO2, and other greenhouse gas emissions, to a low enough level that it becomes what natural forces can cancel out on their own. The ecosystem in which we live is very large and built to come to an equilibrium all on its own, if it didn't come
Re: CO2 Production vs Capture (Score:2)
Re: CO2 Production vs Capture (Score:4, Informative)
The company CarbonCure is making concrete that absorbs the CO2 during mixing.
All concrete chemically bonds to CO2 from the air, there's nothing special about their kind of concrete. They only force the CO2 into the blocks they produce than allow the blocks to pull CO2 from the air naturally. The net CO2 pulled from the air is identical to any other concrete block. Well, arguably the CarbonCure blocks are worse because they put so much energy into capturing the CO2 from the air.
We still have to make concrete... If we can use that to permanently sequester CO2, that's a significant bonus.
The CO2 captured in the concrete is identical to the CO2 released in the production of the lime that was mixed to produce the concrete. Well, there is some lime not produced from "cooking" limestone into lime but this is rare. For the concrete to be a carbon sink is dependent on the lime coming from a natural source, such as igneous basalt, not because they pumped CO2 into the lime later. That CO2 is getting into that concrete block just by being exposed to the air, not because they pumped CO2 into it.
There is no "bonus" here. Well, maybe a bonus for the people that thought up this "green washing" scam, I expect they could see a nice paycheck at the end of the year for selling worthless carbon credits.
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So rare, I've not heard of it in the geological world (my degree). Nor in the chemical world - which was a minor in my degree.
Do you have a reference for this "un-cooked" lime? As a minor point, are you talking about calcium oxide (CaO, "quick lime") or calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)2, "slaked lime") ? Not that it matters much outside the storage jar - "quick lime" exposed to any significant level of atmospheric moisture
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So rare, I've not heard of it in the geological world (my degree). Nor in the chemical world - which was a minor in my degree.
The mineral isn't rare, only the use of this mineral to make cement.
Do you have a reference for this "un-cooked" lime?
It's called basalt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Basalt generally has a composition of 45-52 wt% SiO2, 2-5 wt% total alkalis,[6] 0.5-2.0 wt% TiO2, 5-14 wt% FeO and 14 wt% or more Al2O3. Contents of CaO are commonly near 10 wt%, those of MgO commonly in the range 5 to 12 wt%.
I don't know what is a good source to demonstrate basalt as a source of lime for cement but this is a source: https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
It's a green pork barrel project. (Score:2)
So what does green pork taste like?
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Re: CO2 Production vs Capture (Score:5, Insightful)
We already have cement plants around the world that separate 1.5 Billion tons of CO2 from cooking limestone to make lime from cement. Heirloom Carbon Technologies does essentially the same thing but "stores the CO2 in storage tanks" and promises to find a way to bury it underground sometime, somehow in the future. https://essd.copernicus.org/ar... [copernicus.org]
If Heirloom just worked with preexisting cement plants to capture the CO2 and reliably store it for thousands of years, they would not need to build their own limestone cooking plants. If Heirloom could just capture half of the CO2 from cement plants in the US, they could remove 20 Million metric tons of CO2 instead of the thousands they plan. https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
This is so stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
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This can only work if we are at 100% renewable energy and
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We're not going to achieve 100% renewables tomorrow morning. Probably never ; certainly not in my lifetime, and probably not in yours.
So, some form of enhanced CO2 capture is probably necessary.
That said, I agree that this is very likely not the way to do it. Growing biomass, then burning it (to recove
All board the CO2 sucking hype train! (Score:2)
What happened to planting trees or living in an ecological friendly way?
Re:All board the CO2 sucking hype train! (Score:5, Insightful)
What happened to planting trees or living in an ecological friendly way?
None of that allows for government funds to be laundered through private businesses into campaign donations so there's no incentives to pass laws to subsidize it.
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Bingo! You won the internet this week!
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What happened to planting trees or living in an ecological friendly way?
None of that allows for government funds to be laundered through private businesses into campaign donations so there's no incentives to pass laws to subsidize it.
Your mate can't set up a business supplying trees? What kind of Crony Capitalist are you?
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Commercial? What do they sell? (Score:5, Insightful)
To be a commercial endeavor implies they are selling something at a profit. What is it that they sell? It looks like they sell carbon credits, but that's an artificial market created by government mandate, not something people go looking for naturally like they look for food, shelter, and clothing. Well, they do claim to make CO2 for concrete which I guess is something...
The carbon dioxide still needs to be dealt with. In California, Heirloom works with CarbonCure, a company that mixes the gas into concrete, where it mineralizes and can no longer escape into the air.
The problem with this is that the concrete would suck the CO2 from the air naturally, the CO2 doesn't have to be pumped into it to mineralize.
Concrete (or more specifically the cement or mortar that hold the aggregate in concrete together) is an artificially created sedimentary rock. We make it from mining naturally formed sedimentary rock. We mine limestone, "cook" it to release CO2 into the air and leave quicklime behind. This quicklime is mixed with water, sand, and other stuff to make cement, mortar, or concrete with the distinction being how much of each is mixed in and other factors. This artificial sediment slurry is poured into forms, or whatever, then allowed to set. This setting process isn't drying out, though that happens too as part of the process that makes this a durable sedimentary rock. The part that makes this stuff truly durable is that as it is exposed to the air the lime slowly returns to becoming the limestone from which it came. They can forcefully inject CO2 into concrete to speed up the process of turning quicklime into limestone but this isn't a net gain on drawing CO2 from the air, either way the CO2 that this artificial rock absorbs is the same as that released back when the original limestone was "cooked" down into quicklime. There will never be more CO2 out of the air with this process than was released in the process of mining the limestone for quicklime.
There are experiments with making cement/concrete/mortar that is a net carbon sink but it starts with the mining for material. Instead of using limestone for the quicklime they mine basalt, an igneous rock that contains natural lime, lime that has been buried deep enough that it hasn't had enough exposure to air to turn to limestone yet. Basalt has a lot of sand in it already so much that it wears out mining equipment quickly and some of the sand would need to be removed to make a useful concrete, cement, or mortar.
This carbon removal system is not going to lower CO2 in the atmosphere, not if the CO2 they extract is being used for what is clearly "green washing" like rapid curing of concrete blocks. They point out several times in the fine article the need to use carbon neutral energy for the process so it is a true carbon sink, and I certainly agree on that point. If the politicians in California were truly interested in lowering their CO2 emissions then they'd be putting the money they collect from taxes into new nuclear power plants than fund this carbon credit scam. Unless I'm missing something very important in this process they are not taking any CO2 from the air in anything they do. Chances are they are only making the problem worse by consuming gobs of electricity to do what would happen naturally without their intervention. The electricity used in this carbon credit scam is electricity that could have been used for something that actually produced a product that could be sold at a profit rather than add to the government overhead of accounting for imaginary tons of CO2 removed from the air.
This would be laughable if it weren't such a waste of valuable resources.
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Given enough nuclear power, they might even be able to split the CO2 back into carbon and oxygen. Butit's probably more efficient to farm large amounts of fast growing plants and use solar power to pyrolize the plant matter and bury the charcoal in old coal mines.
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Given enough nuclear power, they might even be able to split the CO2 back into carbon and oxygen. Butit's probably more efficient to farm large amounts of fast growing plants and use solar power to pyrolize the plant matter and bury the charcoal in old coal mines.
How would either of those processes be something that is a profitable business? Are there people that own mines willing to pay people to put charcoal into them?
What is a product that is at least close to net zero carbon, as close to zero as anything currently advertised as "zero carbon", is using nuclear power to crack CO2 into carbon and oxygen then taking that carbon to make hydrocarbon fuels. There's CO2 released from burning the hydrocarbon fuels but no more than was already taken out from the product
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solar constant is aroun 1kW/m^2, not 100W.
That's the mid-day peak power at the equator, not the power that reaches the ground after accounting for day/night cycles, clouds, angle of the land to the sun, and perhaps other factors.
http://www.withouthotair.com/c... [withouthotair.com]
The power of raw sunshine at midday on a cloudless day is 1000W per
square metre. Thatâ(TM)s 1000 W per m2 of area oriented towards the sun, not
per m2 of land area. To get the power per m2 of land area in Britain, we
must make several corrections. We need to compensate for the tilt between
the sun and the land, which reduces the intensity of midday sun to about
60% of its value at the equator (figure 6.1). We also lose out because it is
not midday all the time. On a cloud-free day in March or September, the
ratio of the average intensity to the midday intensity is about 32%. Finally,
we lose power because of cloud cover. In a typical UK location the sun
shines during just 34% of daylight hours.
The combined effect of these three factors and the additional compli-
cation of the wobble of the seasons is that the average raw power of sunshine
per square metre of south-facing roof in Britain is roughly 110 W/m2,
and the average raw power of sunshine per square metre of flat ground is
roughly 100 W/m2.
After that we would need to account for conversion losses to get how much of that power is actually useful.
http://www.withouthotair.com/c... [withouthotair.com]
Photovoltaic (PV) panels convert sunlight into electricity. Typical solar
panels have an efficiency of about 10%; expensive ones perform at 20%.
(Fundamental physical laws limit the efficiency of photovoltaic systems to
at best 60% with perfect concentrating mirrors or lenses, and 45% without
concentration. A mass-produced device with efficiency greater than 30%
would be quite remarkable.) The average power delivered by south-facing
20%-efficient photovoltaic panels in Britain would be
20%Ã-- 110 W/m2 = 22 W/m2.
I'm being generous to assume 100 W/m2 from solar power. The power per unit of land area from nuclear fission is about 1000 W/m2 with conversion losse
Re: (Score:2)
Mines are potentially dangerous liabilities. For a long time - as long as I can remember - the business has been about extracting the maximum profit possible, then shutting the mine down and selling it (and - crucially - all it's associated liabilities) to a legally separate entity who has no prospect of being able to pay for associated remediation. So if threatened with those costs, they just go bankrupt, while the profits are
Re: (Score:2)
That's basically the definition of a government service - it solves the problems a market will not, but that citizens collectively do want solved. Protecting (or now, restoring) the environment is much like nati
Re: (Score:2)
That's basically the definition of a government service - it solves the problems a market will not, but that citizens collectively do want solved. Protecting (or now, restoring) the environment is much like national defense - it provides value to everybody, so each individual is better off not paying for it and just letting everybody else pay. This is why taxes have to be mandatory.
If it is a private entity producing some service only because the government pays them to do it then is it "commercial"? This sounds to me like a government contractor. That's like saying battle tanks are some commercial product when it is something that only the government can buy. Carbon credits are sold to private companies but it is the government that hands out the carbon credits to sell. So more like a private trash collector that is picking up trash, they charge private entities for this service
Re: (Score:2)
As for carbon credits, I wonder if they will ever really take off. They would be the best solution if the accounting was honest and if people would trust them, but there is a lot of mistrust about "greenwashing" or "indulgences."
As such, I suspect at some point the primary producers of hydrocarbons will simply be required to sequester an equal or greater amount of CO2 than they are extracting. This re
Re: Commercial? What do they sell? (Score:2)
If there is a product people want to pay for there would be a market for it. If I want a road to my house, I can pay someone out of pocket and then levy an entrance fee if someone also finds that road interesting enough to pay for it. That is how many highways both in Europe and the US operate (tolls), if it were cheaper to use rail to traverse certain terrain or air, then that could be done just as well.
Government paying for services implies nobody wants to pay for the service to begin with, taxes are thus
Population project (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
They're using Microsoft LeakProof(tm) Technology built on Windows11, Carbon Edition.
mispelling in headline, I have fix (Score:2)
America's First Investor Scam Money-Sucking Facility Opens in California.
You're welcome.
Wrong Approach (Score:2)
This reminds me of these "composting machines" like the Pela that are trying to enter the market. It's a 1200W heater/grinder which processes your food scraps while heating them to remove the water, and produces a crumbly brown material that is almost but not quite completely unlike dirt. It reduces bulk going into your garbage, which is a problem nobody really needed to solve, and I actually suspect the resulting dessicated and sterilized vegetable mulch is actually much harder to compost than the food scr
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Recently, I saw a variant on this idea where you then packed it up, and someone trucked it back to the farm, were it was put back in the ground! Someone seems to be unfamiliar with the laws of thermodynamics. But imagine how well it will signal your great virtue!
poorly designed and worthless (Score:2)
If they are going to do this, then they should pull it from the OCEAN instead. Cold sea water holds 26x the CO2 that the atmosphere does. When the water is heated, it can no longer hold anywhere near the same amount of CO2. So, where do we see lots of sea water being heated? Nuclear power plants by the ocean. This could use a fraction of the energy that pulling from the atmosphere does. In addition, by pulling it from the oceans, it wi
Re: (Score:3)
Cold sea water holds 26x the CO2 that the atmosphere does.
I'm not sure that makes sense without more context. Is that 26x more CO2 by mass? By volume? Per unit of energy required for extraction?
I can see that there's value in this because the US Navy is using CO2 extracted from seawater in their experiments to produce jet fuel at sea on nuclear powered vessels. They proved it works in a lab, they just need to prove it works on a ship that is rolling and bobbing on the waves. They believe they can get costs to where it is competitive with what it costs them to
Re: (Score:2)
You should like this one [mit.edu]
What's the facility's total power draw? (Score:2)
Realistically, that should factor into the "tons of CO2" removed calculations. If it removes 1,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere per day, but its power draw from the grid results in 500 additional tons of CO2 being released power plants, then the "true" amount of CO2 being sequestered is half what they're claiming. And this isn't even getting into if the power draw induces *more* in grid emissions than it actually captures from the air, at which point this thing is less climate change revolution and more
200 cars?! (Score:2)
So one thousand tons, that's one million kilograms ... equals the emissions of just 200 cars in a year? Are you saying each car emits 5 tons of CO2 in a year? HOW?!
Re: (Score:3)
1 ltr of petrol produces 2.68kg of carbon dioxide
https://www.driverknowledgetests.com/resources/why-does-burning-1-litre-of-fuel-create-over-2kg-of-carbon-dioxide/
lets say a car does 25 mile per gallon = 25 / 4.546 = 5.5 miles per ltr
10,000 miles a year (as a guess) = 10000/5.5 ltr = 1818 ltr a year
so that's 1818 * 2.68kg = 4872kg = 4.8 tonnes = 5360 ton
Re: (Score:2)
Wow. Those numbers are certainly counter-intuitive. I'm pretty sure cars have been rated for far better than 5.5 miles per liter for ages, though I admit to not having paid much attention past what ads on TV mention.
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't matter how efficient a car can be made if everybody buys the less efficient ones instead. My '98 Ford Escort got 35 MPG. But Americans have been buying larger and heavier vehicles every year. So even with all the hybrids and electrics factored in, the average new passenger vehicle sold in the USA in 2021 got 25 MPG.
What's funny ... (Score:2)
... is how upset some people would be, if stuff along these lines works eventually.
"But ... but ... you can't just solve the problem. Where's the pain? Where's the religious aspects? Where's the political tool?!?!?"
How does it compare (Score:2)
Isn't the planet a "system"? (Score:2)
It is well known that we humans know everything there is to know about everything ... at least everything that matters.
So we suck the CO2 out of the air and _permanently_ store it in concrete or underground. So we know for a fact that removing anything from a system has no repercussions ... at least no repercussions that matter.
It's kind of funny too when you look back. Remember the people all fussed about radioactive material being stored underground? Not a problem in retrospect because it is stored the
Re: (Score:2)
Remember the people all fussed about radioactive material being stored underground? Not a problem in retrospect because it is stored there permanently, so no worries.
Not even that, radioactive material decays. Within a decade or two, all the hot isotopes are gone, within a few decades the radioactivity is for practical purposes gone.
On the other hand, carbon lasts forever.
Reducing CO2 could be bad for human life (Score:2)
They're just making and easy cement. (Score:2)
The entire article is simply describing a rather inefficient method of making cement. Then after they do that, they expose it to the air in order to fully react it, then start the process over again. Nothing new. Nothing special. Lots of wasted energy.
What about methane? (Score:2)
Methane accounts for about 16 percent of global emissions, and is more than 28 times as effective as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. [epa.gov] That means that methane emissions cause approximately 4 times as much warming as CO2 does. Shouldn't we be concentrating on methane? Or at least giving it equal billing?
Let's ignore agriculture for the moment and concentrate on the fossil fuel industry. It's responsible for about 23% of total methane emissions [earth.org]. Heck, 0.69 Tg, (about 760,000 tons) are release [acs.org]
Once they grabbed the carbon (Score:2)
Carbon, defined broadly... (Score:2)
...as dollar bills.
Because this puny, expensive, and inefficient method is ONLY good for virtue signaling and absorbing money.