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Earth Transportation United States

American Airlines To Turn 10K Tons of CO2 Into Buried Carbon Blocks (cnbc.com) 100

Posted by BeauHD from the path-to-net-zero dept.
American Airlines today announced a deal with Graphyte to purchase "carbon removal credits" to help accelerate its long-term goal to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. According to the announcement, the airline will purchase credits equivalent to 10,000 tons of permanent carbon removal with delivery scheduled for early 2025. From the report: Graphyte uses a process called carbon casting that converts byproducts from the agriculture and timber industries such as wood bark, rice hulls and plant stalks which have captured carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. The plant material is dried to prevent decomposition and then converted into carbon dense bricks that are sealed with a polymer barrier. These bricks are stored in underground chambers and monitored with sensors to make sure the carbon does not escape, according to the company.

Plant byproducts from the agriculture and timber industries are typically burned or left to decompose, which returns carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This biomass material is equivalent to 3 billion tons of potential carbon dioxide removal annually, according to Graphyte. Graphyte says carbon casting is a cheap, scalable alternative to expensive and technologically intensive methods of carbon capture and removal. The company is backed by Breakthrough Energy Ventures, an investment firm founded by Bill Gates that funds clean energy technologies.
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American Airlines To Turn 10K Tons of CO2 Into Buried Carbon Blocks More

American Airlines To Turn 10K Tons of CO2 Into Buried Carbon Blocks

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  • Plastic is evil, it takes 1000 years to decompose, but if that's the case then every bottle that someone throws away in the trash
    and gets buried in a landfill acts like a carbon sink. Same with any other trash that gets buried and takes a long time to decompose.

    • Plastic is evil? Is that the kind of simplistic moral conclusion you've come to?

      I've never understood this attitude that a garbage dump should be a compost heap. Lots of "natural" things take thousands of years to decompose, so I'm not sure why that's an argument against it...

      • The 1000 years to decompose is a lie told by plastic companies. It starts decomposing immediately and things like plasticizers, UV light, and abrasion dramatically speed up the process. I’ve a pair of shoes I never wore, “new” in the box only a couple of years old with the rubber soled rotting off in chunks. Plastics that are supposed to be sunlight resistant in products I’ve bought become brittle and shatter in only months of exposure. Clothes of synthetic fiber shed visible amo

        • Re:no different than taking plastic to a landfill (Score:4, Insightful)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @10:23PM (#64039977)

          The 1000 years to decompose is a lie told by plastic companies.

          Actually, it is a half-truth told by environmentalists. Some plastics last, and some don't. Sometimes longevity is good, such as in a landfill. Sometimes longevity is bad, such as when plastic is dumped in the ocean.

          things like plasticizers, UV light, and abrasion dramatically speed up the process.

          None of those are a problem in landfills.

          • Sometimes longevity is bad, such as when plastic is dumped in the ocean.

            The largest risk is degradation in the ocean into microplastics, outside of a choking risk and intestinal blockage longevity is good. In some niche products, that are designed to break down it may be better but in the vast plastic waste we generate it slows the rate of microplastic production. It’s quickly degrading plastic never intended to do so that is bad because it gets everywhere in higher concentrations and the last step from micro and nano particles to constituent atoms tends to be quite sl

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dbialac ( 320955 )

            The 1000 years to decompose is a lie told by plastic companies.

            Actually, it is a half-truth told by environmentalists. Some plastics last, and some don't. Sometimes longevity is good, such as in a landfill. Sometimes longevity is bad, such as when plastic is dumped in the ocean.

            Absolutely, and while 1000 years for us seems like a long time, but in the actual scale of things it's not very long on pretty much any natural scale. How much would you be complaining about a plastic bag that was completely decomposed from 1023 AD? Meanwhile, we have archeologists dig stuff up from then all of the time. I'm not saying we can't do better. We also used to do better. Going back to reusable soda bottles makes sense, for example.

        • 'Plastic' encompasses a wide range of materials with a large range of properties. Some break down easily as you found out with your shoes, many do not and can indeed persist in the environment for hundreds of years.

          OP is right in that landfill is the best place for most plastic, where it can do little harm. Microplastics are generally created by some sort of mechanical action, such as wearing and laundering of synthetic textiles or the action of the sea on plastic that's been dumped in it. That doesn't happ

          • many do not and can indeed persist in the environment for hundreds of years.

            Maybe if they are kept in the dark, completely immobile in a static environment but that’s not likely. I’ve been all over in the environment and I’ve never seen plastic last. Not in hot arid areas, not in Forrest’s, not in lakes or the ocean where I’ve fished it out in all forms. It rots more slowly than most all natural materials but hundreds of years is a stretch even in extreme cases.

            UV damage hits plastics hard in water because they are typically near the surface, mak

      • I was obviously not talking about myself. I was pointing out that the same people who say plastic is evil because it doesn't decompose are also usually the same ones that are complaining about carbon dioxide and plastic being buried in landfills but a non-decomposing substance that is made mostly of carbon works great as a carbon sink whether it is in blocks or in unsorted trash in a landfill.

    • Plastic is evil, it takes 1000 years to decompose, but if that's the case then every bottle that someone throws away in the trash
      and gets buried in a landfill acts like a carbon sink.

      No.

      It serves as carbon that started underground in the form of oil, and is moved to be underground in the form of buried landfill. Not a carbon sink. Best you can say is, it's not a carbon source either (except for the energy used to transform it from petroleum into plastic),

    • >> Plastic is evil, it takes 1000 years to decompose
      That is actually a good thing when viewed from the carbon retention angle.

      • That was my point. If we continue making a bunch of plastic either by using up the remaining oil or even better from carbon capture sources like corn, non decomposing plastic could actually help with carbon retention. Single use plastic could actually possibly help us reduce our carbon levels if it was made from soybeans and then buried properly in a landfill.

    • You sound like the people who cry about how "this area will be radioactive for 50,000 years!" who don't understand half lives.

      If the plastic is so sturdy that it lasts 1000 years in the environment then it's the next best thing to inert and harms no one. At worst it's an eyesore. Plastic that breaks down quickly into smaller particles that get into the food chain are a much bigger problem just like a radioactive area that will be radioactive for only a few months is highly dangerous while 50000 years is t

  • > that are sealed with a polymer barrier

    What's that polymer made of?

    Is this different than firewood bricks which are already carbon neutral over the short term and reuses forestry waste?

    But encased in petro plastics?

    Will this push wood brick heating homes to fossil fuels with market demand?

    This whole thing sounds like an engineering solution to "sell carbon credits" not "capture atmospheric carbon". On net, lunacy.

    > an investment firm founded by Bill Gates

    Oh, ok then, confusion ended.

    • Re:"that are sealed with a polymer barrier" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Wednesday November 29, 2023 @04:11AM (#64040309) Homepage

      From a more fundamental level, plant "waste" isn't actually waste at all from an ecosystem perspective; it's how the majority of carbon in soil gets there. If you don't let it decay and return to the soil, then you're reducing soil fertility (and making it more sterile, since decaying matter is the primary feeder of soil ecosystems). Decaying matter on the surface also resists soil erosion. Loss of fertility doesn't happen overnight, but the longer you do this, the worse you're making your soil.

      The irony here is that there actually is something they could do to sequester carbon which doesn't destroy fertility, which is biochar. Biochar increases soil fertility - it's pretty remarkable stuff, practically an ideal soil additive. You can sell it, instead of having to pay to bury it. And the production process even generates energy (just not as much as simple combustion). Now, it doesn't last forever in soil, but it does last for a long time - studies seem to estimate around a century on average (up to nearly a thousand years in certain environments).

      It's not perfect - it doesn't feed soil microbiota (though it makes it a fertile place for them to thrive), keeping production processes clean (involving high-temperature gassification of "dirty" feedstocks) has to be done right, finished products need to be properly cleaned and inspected to ensure that they don't add e.g. potential windborne dust or VOCs, etc. But it'd sure be a lot better for the soil than just taking all the carbon that plants are producing (which normally would replace what gets lost from the soil), binding it with plastic and then burying it somewhere.

      • No problem, we can just use petroleum based fertilizers.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          Fertilizer != Fertility

          Fertility = CEC, water retention, pore structure, etc.
          Fertilizer = For replacing the nutrients taken up by the crop

          For example, hydroponics uses ample fertilizer but the growing medium has zero fertility.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Toad-san ( 64810 )

        Good on ya for mentioning biochar. Great stuff, so I understand. Not perfect, but I think much better than burying blocks of carbon (well, kind of) underground.

  • Greenwashing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pete6677 ( 681676 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @09:24PM (#64039889)

    There's no grifting quite like Green Grifting!

  • super cereal solution (Score:3)

    by VampireByte ( 447578 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @09:38PM (#64039917) Homepage

    let ManBearPig eat the carbon bricks

    • Some day, future archeologists will uncover these and assume they were some current age equivalent to Easter Island Moai and assign deep meaning to them.

  • Idiots (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    All that carbon is still a useful raw material for manufacturing other products.

  • 10,000 tons. They should use those bricks to bury their heads, like ostriches don't do, but we all like to think that they do. 10,000 tons. Out of 50,000,000,000 tons a year. That's not a token gesture, that's just pathetic politics.

    Airplane travel is already more than twice as efficient from point of view of fuel consumption as travel by car or by bus, I won't get into debate about trains, in case if they are diesel powered or use electricity from 'dirty' sources.

    Airplane travel makes about 2.4% of tota

    • cars, buses are horrible in efficiency compared to airplanes.

      ...not when you have empty planes being forced to fly due to scheduling rules.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        Scheduling rules are also forcing empty buses and trains to drive around in many places.

        • And they're more efficient at doing it.

    • Airplane travel [Re:another token gesture] (Score:5, Informative)

      by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @10:31PM (#64039993) Homepage

      >

      Airplane travel is already more than twice as efficient from point of view of fuel consumption as travel by car

      slightly more than twice as efficient as a single driver traveling the same trip by car. The break-even point for carbon dioxide emission for driving vs. flying is just slightly over 2 people (1 driver plus one passenger). ( Depends a little on whether it's a short-haul flight or a long-haul, since airplanes are slightly more efficient over a long flight, but not that much better.)

      Of course, if it's a giant American SUV, the plane starts to look better. But still, a car with four people will beat any airplane flight.

      or by bus,

      Not even close. Depends on how full the bus is, but no, in general, even with their poor fuel efficiency, if a bus is reasonably well filled, it's much less carbon dioxide per passenger mile than an airplane.

      I won't get into debate about trains, in case if they are diesel powered or use electricity from 'dirty' sources.

      Regardless whether it's diesel or electric, passenger train are much more efficient than any of the previous. A passenger train will typically be half to a third of the emissions of the CO2 emissions of a bus per passenger mile.

  • Seems like this sort of technically removes carbon from the cycle, but one can see how ludicrous this could get in a hurry.

    • It's far worse. That plant material is supposed to be returned to the soil to increase the organic content of the soil which increases fertility.

      So we'll end up with sterile dirt that will take huge applications of multiple chemicals to make it grow anything. Did Monsanto think this up?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by edis ( 266347 )

        Like growing more woods and leaving alone rainforests would be less efficient. Wood growth is guaranteed to require less energy and chemicals, works by itself, while sucking CO2, encapsulating chunk of loose energy, stored vertically in a compact manner, providing shade, promoting biodiversity - birds animals insects funghi whatever, also undergrowth and epiphytes, offering useful material, not a filler to monitor and push around. Thank nature for being genius and show due respect, instead of spitting out a

  • The plant material is dried to prevent decomposition and then converted into carbon dense bricks

    This is literally how charcoal is made: from dried wood that is pyrolyzed at high temperatures in a low oxygen environment to burn off the hydrogen content and leave carbon behind.

    This isn't new, they reinvented charcoal.

  • It only takes 20K tons of carbon to run the process from beginning to end.

    • That's where the math really comes in handy. Typically they say they're doing it with 'clean energy', but when you look at the amount of carbon they sequester per watt it is always more effective to apply that clean energy to the grid and reduce the carbon being emitted in the first place.

      Sequestration is best considered experimental for now, until such time as there's excess clean energy and barely any wood or fossil fuel burning happening, and we'd like to compensate for what would be inconvenient to giv

      • and we'd like to compensate for what would be inconvenient to give up.

        Can you provide a short list of things that are convenient to give up? Because my impression is that people are not willing to do anything for the environment. Nada.

      • That's where the math really comes in handy. Typically they say they're doing it with 'clean energy', but when you look at the amount of carbon they sequester per watt it is always more effective to apply that clean energy to the grid and reduce the carbon being emitted in the first place.

        Yep, and that's why I agree with you that sequestration efforts should remain experimental, figuring out how to best do it now isn't bad, but major efforts should wait until we actually have excess power such that it can't be more directly or efficiently used to remove carbon otherwise.

        I mean, if we end up still using fossil fuels for a handful of mobile applications - airplanes, rockets, very remote vehicles, we can use carbon capture to neutralize them, as well as undoing current burning of it.

  • Of all the countries to want to curb CO2, I would think Canada would benefit more from more CO2. As the planet warms, the upper 95% of the country would become more habitable and benefit the nation as a whole. I know, heresy! But it's damn cold up there, and with a longer growing season, the entire country would benefit. Someone please explain how warmth is bad for Canada. No I didn't ask why it's bad for other countries, so please don't respond with "but muh collective!"
  • We know the oceans are the best carbon capturing process nature has to offer. We just need to extract CO2 from the ocean. Better to spend money on figuring out how to do that at a large scale. And the best thing is, if we figure out how to do that, then we can power them with wind and solar floating out in the middle of the ocean, just constantly sucking the carbon out of it.

  • Someday in the future, the carbon containment systems will all fail, resulting in the release of one hundred years of carbon emissions happening in less than three months.

    Or maybe it will just be a slow leak while we figure out the next idea.

  • Next step (Score:4, Funny)

    by kipsate ( 314423 ) on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @10:58PM (#64040033)
    The next step will be to bury the wood barks, plant stalks and even entire tree trunks at the site of abandoned depleted oil wells. After decomposing, the carbon rich remains will be turning into a black liquid that over time will fill up the underground cavities.

    • This big hole you have to fill up, you can only do it once.

      For the oil to form (which will take millions of years) it requires heat and pressure, which is only going to happen once the well has been completely filled up.

  • And burn the biofuel while growing more in a closed loop? Got to be less overhead.

  • Emissions from airlines are significantly worse because they are emitted straight into the upper atmosphere. Carbon capture at ground nowhere near offsets this - and is frankly just a publicity exercise.

    The real solution is a greatly reduced number of flights and it'll take government mandates to achieve that.

  • ...At least they're burying the pastic now. Baby steps, amirite?

  • This approach has already been debunked many times, by a lot of people who should know. To recap:

    - Conveniently, there seems to be no analysis of the actual carbon cost of all the steps involved

    - They want to remove crop waste from fields that would otherwise decompose and enrich the soil. This means reduced soil quality and increased fertilizer usage.

    tl;dr: Another carbon feel-good program that is actually counterproductive.

  • Yesterday we had airplanes on used cooking oil at UK tax payer's expense. Today we have a different billionaire competing for carbon scam credits burying potential fertilizer for a greenwashing airline fee.

  • Car tyres are full of carbon. So is the slag/flock? when crushed cars get melted. If I am a farmer in Brazil, cutting and burning the Amazon forrest, can I get paid to dump the carbon bits in a geological deep pit? African power plants burning western used clothing? If Bill wants to help the planet, then nuclear powered portland cement kilns could save globally 8% or abouts.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbengt ( 874751 )

      If Bill wants to help the planet, then nuclear powered portland cement kilns could save globally 8% or abouts.

      Globally, cement production accounts for less than 5% of CO2 emissions (according to Wikipedia) or about 3.7% (according to an old report by the EPA), and, according to the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, only about 1.5% of US CO2 emissions.
      Further, only 40%, give or take, of that CO2 production is from burning fuels, around half or more is from the chemical reactions needed to create p

  • It may be better to turn it into compost fertilizer and use it for farming more trees.

  • Or just theirs?

    In other words, are they also going to pay to offset the energy used to sequester that carbon? And no, "but the energy is made with solar/wind/whatever" is NOT going to cut it, that power could have gone into replacing power produced by fossil fuel power plants.

    Because I'm still not really convinced that putting CO2 into handy little carbon bricks is anything you can do with a net positive energy balance. You still need to put in more energy than would be released by burning those bricks.

    Entr

  • There are companies actively digging very dirty lignite coal out of the ground and we're burning it in power plants, and that's adding more than just carbon to the atmosphere. Here we are manufacturing clean burning carbon bricks and storing them underground. Can we get any more insane?
  • How much energy do you think it takes to collect, ship, dry, compress, and then ship and bury these? Plus the staff, their cars, computers, etc.
  • ...they could drop the cabon blocks from their airplanes.
  • CO2 is consumed by plants amiright? Why not just plant more plants? This helps with other things like moisture retention, cooling of the ground, more habitat for diverse animal life, etc. Seems like a more logical suggestion than the process from this article or pumping under the sea floor.

  • ... of this bullsh*t PR stunt? Most likely abysmal. ... The world is going insane.

  • This sounds incredibly dumb to get carbon credit to burry agriculture waste. Why not just compost to re-use vs burn/burry?

  • Haha. Good virtue signalling PR release. However, I would be more impressed if they promised to bury their airplanes.

  • When Graphyte eventually goes belly-up and is liquidated by its creditors, these blocks can be sold as a fuel.

    That counts as recycling, right?
  • "Monitored"? For how long? The millennia it would take to know it's not a bad idea?

  • I have invented a fantastic new solution.
    I plan to coat turds in plastic and place them in giftwrapped boxes I will leave in the back seat of unlocked tourist cars in San Francisco. When I gave a presentation to venture capitalists the room was silent as they contemplated the awesomeness of the concept. I could see some were overcome with emotion, because their shoulders were shaking.

  • This solves nothing because itâ(TM)s not just the net amount of carbon in the air that matters, itâ(TM)s hour much is coming and going. We could be literally offsetting all our carbon with these cubes and have higher co2 in the air then we do now.
  • Wouldn't it be more effective to not release CO2 that mined coal would emit by burying it back in the ground?

    And yes, that sounds a bit silly, but it highlights how silly this whole thing is.

    Next logical idea would be to not dig out the coal from the mines, and instead sell the biochar to clients that would have bought the coal to burn it.

    This reminds me people interested in pumping back the very dilluted CO2 from the atmosphere, with a complex and costly process, while there are concentrated CO2 sour

  • Bury carbon and then pay to monitor it? Why not just compress the carbon and make diamonds? No more oversimplified than buying make believe "carbon credits" to do fly airplanes.

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