Many Carbon Capture Projects Are Now Launching (yahoo.com) 93
The Los Angeles Times reports that "multiple projects seeking to remove carbon dioxide from the air have been launched across Los Angeles County:
When completed, Project Monarch and its wastewater component, Pure Water Antelope Valley, will purify up to 4.5 million gallons of water each day and capture 25,000 tons of atmospheric CO2 each year. (The typical gasoline-powered automobile spews 4.6 tons of carbon each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency).... But the Palmdale project isn't the only new carbon-capture development in L.A. County. On Friday, officials from CarbonCapture Inc. gathered in Long Beach to introduce the first commercial-scale U.S. direct air capture, or DAC, system designed for mass production. The unit, which resembles a shipping container, can remove more than 500 tons of atmospheric CO2 per year... The L.A.-based company also announced that it will mass-produce up to 4,000 of its DAC modules annually at a new facility in Mesa, Arizona. It joins similar efforts from L.A.-based Captura, which is working to remove CO2 from the upper ocean; L.A.-based Avnos, which produces water while capturing carbon; and L.A.-based Equatic, which is working to remove atmospheric CO2 using the ocean...
[Equatic's] San Pedro facility pumps seawater through a series of electric plates that separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen as well as acidic and alkaline streams of liquid. The alkaline, or base, stream is exposed to the atmosphere, where it mineralizes CO2 into carbonates that are then dissolved and discharged back into the ocean for permanent storage, operators say Additionally, the hydrogen produced by the process is carbon-negative, making it a source of renewable energy that can be used to fuel the CO2 removal process or sold to other users, said Edward Sanders, chief operating officer at Equatic.
Equatic announced this month that it will partner with a Canadian carbon removal project developer, Deep Sky, to build North America's first commercial-scale ocean-based CO2 removal plant in Quebec, following the success of its effort in Los Angeles as well as another facility in Singapore. While the San Pedro facility can capture about 40 tons of CO2 per year, the Quebec facility will capture about 100,000 tons per year, Sanders said.
Meanwhile, two new projects by direct air capture company Heirloom were announced this week in Louisiana. Those projects are "expected to remove hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide from the air per year," according to the Associated Press, "and store it deep underground... part of "a slew of carbon removal and storage projects that have been announced in Louisiana." Heirloom estimates that they will eventually remove 320,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year... The company uses limestone, a natural absorbent, to extract carbon dioxide from the air. Heirloom's technology reduces the time it takes to absorb carbon dioxide in nature from years to just three days, according to the company's press release. The carbon dioxide is then removed from the limestone material and stored permanently underground.
In May America's Energy department also announced $3.5 billion in funding for its carbon-capture program — four large-scale, regional direct air capture hubs "that each comprise a network of carbon dioxide removal projects..." The hubs will have the capacity to capture and then permanently store at least one million metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually, either from a single unit or from multiple interconnected units.
And Shell Canada has a pair of carbon capture projects in Alberta it expects to have operational toward the end of 2028, according to the CBC: The Polaris project is designed to capture about 650,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually from the Scotford complex. That works out to approximately 40 per cent of Scotford's direct CO2 emissions from the refinery and 22 per cent of its emissions from the chemicals complex.
[Equatic's] San Pedro facility pumps seawater through a series of electric plates that separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen as well as acidic and alkaline streams of liquid. The alkaline, or base, stream is exposed to the atmosphere, where it mineralizes CO2 into carbonates that are then dissolved and discharged back into the ocean for permanent storage, operators say Additionally, the hydrogen produced by the process is carbon-negative, making it a source of renewable energy that can be used to fuel the CO2 removal process or sold to other users, said Edward Sanders, chief operating officer at Equatic.
Equatic announced this month that it will partner with a Canadian carbon removal project developer, Deep Sky, to build North America's first commercial-scale ocean-based CO2 removal plant in Quebec, following the success of its effort in Los Angeles as well as another facility in Singapore. While the San Pedro facility can capture about 40 tons of CO2 per year, the Quebec facility will capture about 100,000 tons per year, Sanders said.
Meanwhile, two new projects by direct air capture company Heirloom were announced this week in Louisiana. Those projects are "expected to remove hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide from the air per year," according to the Associated Press, "and store it deep underground... part of "a slew of carbon removal and storage projects that have been announced in Louisiana." Heirloom estimates that they will eventually remove 320,000 tons of carbon dioxide each year... The company uses limestone, a natural absorbent, to extract carbon dioxide from the air. Heirloom's technology reduces the time it takes to absorb carbon dioxide in nature from years to just three days, according to the company's press release. The carbon dioxide is then removed from the limestone material and stored permanently underground.
In May America's Energy department also announced $3.5 billion in funding for its carbon-capture program — four large-scale, regional direct air capture hubs "that each comprise a network of carbon dioxide removal projects..." The hubs will have the capacity to capture and then permanently store at least one million metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually, either from a single unit or from multiple interconnected units.
And Shell Canada has a pair of carbon capture projects in Alberta it expects to have operational toward the end of 2028, according to the CBC: The Polaris project is designed to capture about 650,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually from the Scotford complex. That works out to approximately 40 per cent of Scotford's direct CO2 emissions from the refinery and 22 per cent of its emissions from the chemicals complex.
how many? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's the model of research that capitalists prefer. Using this method they'll promote enough private research that maybe something will turn out to work.
What appears to be the problem here? Are you under the impression that coal mines aren't paid for using government R&D funds or something, under the premise that it's 'job creation'?
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How many of these projects are just looking to get checks for gov only to file bankruptcy [...]?
That's the model of research that capitalists prefer.
Capitalism, n. - An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development occurs through the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.
Relying on government subsidies, whether for R&D or anything else, is the opposite of that.
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I'm not sure I understand your objection?
People who call themselves capitalists don't adhere to pure capitalist principles and may never have actually read Adam Smith?
You don't say.
To be uh fair to them though, and perhaps contradict you a little... nothing in that statement says their private or corporate equity couldn't have previously been public. Where else do you think that capital came from previously? What even IS a domestic marketplace?
Maybe i'm old and cynical, but an appeal to ideology like this..
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My objection is that you blamed capitalists, but the behavior you described is that of vulture socialists rather than capitalists. Capitalism is a specific thing, not just a word for behavior you don't like.
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Because capitalists would never look to outside funding for a project, right? They wouldn't sell stock in their companies to raise funds, right?. They wouldn't put on a dog and pony show for potential investors, right?. And they would never, ever lie to increase stock value or lure investors into a bad investment and then leave with a nice parting bonus right before the company goes bankrupt, RIGHT?.
Your objection is overruled. You're painting capitalists as some sort of morally upright group that is onl
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Because capitalism can't have a government because if it did then the government would at some point buy something which would make it socialism instead?
I bet you didn't know that paying taxes to the US is voluntary, there is form INA 349(a)(5) you can file to opt out.
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Man, you pro-servitude trolls are Big Mad over being called out for blaming bad government spending on capitalists.
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Or maybe you're upset no one is buying your fantasy that a for-profit company seeking profits is a communism?
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You're literally arguing that taking government money -- in the OP, with the full expectation of going bust rather than turning a profit -- is somehow capitalism. Face facts.
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You're arguing it's socialism.
By the way, none of us want to serve you nor your masters. We don't buy your idea that servitude is freedom.
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Personally, I'd tend to call it fraud, a risk in most any system but kleptocracies.
That's why if the government is going to invest in something, like any smart investor, it should investigate and make sure that there's at least a good chance of the project succeeding.
Then, because the government can be an absolutely massive investor, it should diversify its investments so that, well, a failure rate can be expected and accounted for. As a bonus, it would be very easy in the failure cases, for the government
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It seems like what you are arguing for is a kind of ideological pure capitalism as the only "true" capitalism. In that case there would be no public subsidies , or perhaps not any publicly purchased goods.
By in large in the bulk US production and consumption decisions are made by private individuals and corporations. In recent history US federal spending runs about 1/5 of the economy; if you include local government spending, the total public spending is roughly 1/2 private spending. This is far from
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Bet you can't name a single capitalist country that matches your definition.
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That sounds about as credible as "real communism has never been tried!"
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The same thing is always said about every project getting subsidy or government funding. Sometimes they fail, sometimes you get Tesla.
If carbon capture can be made to scale it would be a very useful technology, so it's worth investing comparatively small amounts on.
Re:how many? (Score:4, Insightful)
Difficulty: Carbon capture can't be "invested" in, because it will never create a product that can be sold.
It's inherently something for the public good, and not just the public of any one nation, for the entire planet. It's inherently impossible for it to ever be profitable.
Capitalism can't do this. It's inherently going to require international socialism.
(We're fucked. Exxon sign out front should have told you.)
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Capitalism can't do this. It's inherently going to require international socialism.
This is not a binary choice, we should stop thinking it is. Capitalism does not cease to be captialism when public funds become involved nor does it suddenyl transform into socialism with a certain amount of those funds are crossed. Almost like we have a term for this [wikipedia.org]
All the "-ism's" are not good or bad, they're just systems, they are neutral.
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Difficulty: Carbon capture can't be "invested" in, because it will never create a product that can be sold.
Depends on the method actually.
If you grow a bunch of trees, you've captured a bunch of carbon. If you proceed to mill said trees into lumber where the carbon will stay for at least a number of decades, you have a product you can sell.
There's also carbon used in a number of products, so if you're capturing the carbon out of the air rather than doing something like mining coal for it, that's another sellable product (carbon black for adding to plastics and such).
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OMG not socialism! And international too!
Capitalism is a system that explicitly requires government regulation of the marketplace. Contract enforcement, anti-fraud regulations, stuff like that. Taxing externalities like CO2 emission isn't any difference. As soon as you charge a realistic price for dumping CO2 in the atmosphere there's a very big market for efficient methods to remove it again.
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Difficulty: Carbon capture can't be "invested" in, because it will never create a product that can be sold.
Objection: assumes facts not in evidence.
How can you possibly say it will "never" create a product that can be sold? It seems that an incredibly carbon-rich material that is an industrial output could become useful in industrial processes that require a carbon-rich input, no? Such as recombining the carbon from this, with hydrogen to make synthetic hydrocarbon chains such as kerosene and diesel instead of exploring for and extracting other naturally-made carbon-rich sources (coal, oil) ?
Try thinking.
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Difficulty: Carbon capture can't be "invested" in, because it will never create a product that can be sold.
I used to think so too until I heard about Biochar. Its a soil amendment that was also called 'terra preta' and was used in the low fertility Amazonian soil to actually be able to farm. Creation of it requires pyrolization of any carbon source and it will stay put in the ground, unlike a tree that can be burned or consumed by termites.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Difficulty: Carbon capture can't be "invested" in, because it will never create a product that can be sold.
How much would it cost to turn that carbon into carbon fiber? Would it be cheaper if a nuke plant was supplying the obscene amounts of energy needed?
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How many of these projects are just looking to get checks for gov only to file bankruptcy like that one company did after getting 100's of millions from the gov a year before?
None. Precisely zero commercial projects are supported on government subsidies alone. All of them have private investors who have an interest in ensuring the project is a success to the point of getting a form of return on investment.
Your assumption is that someone got rich off failed projects, when in reality all that happened is wasted construction and engineering effort. - though even then it's hardly a waste. In an early phase of any technology, especially when most of them are in pilot plant stages, kn
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The challenge is that it is in noone’s private interest to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. So the only way to make this work is for some kind of government regulation that makes people pay for the carbon they add to the atmosphere, and return some of that money to people who can show that they have permanently removed that carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and it isn’t getting back.
There are too many incentives to cheat; for example, if it’s easier to make an underground “reservoir
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Answer: every single one of them that haven't turned their carbon that they capture into a product that has a market.
If the capture methods we're taking about are scaleable and result in a useable material output rather than just exchanging gaseous waste for liquid or solid waste that still needs to be disposed of in a safe long-term fashion, it's a major win.
Farming subsidy is all well and good, until the political will behind those subsidies disappears. Then these efforts fail and we're right back to whe
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Cool. (Score:3)
Re:Cool. (Score:5, Insightful)
It'd only be a problem if it were feasible, which it isn't. Kind a like the other solution to global oil industry pollution; plastics recycling. It'll never be feasible but they'll keep plugging away at it to make people believe "they're working on it." Like carbon offsetting, it's just another type of greenwashing.
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Re:Cool. (Score:5, Interesting)
Plastic recycling is completely viable using fluid bed pyrolysis.
It's not profitable, which is why we're not doing it, but you can recycle ANY MIX OF PLASTICS in this way.
The problem isn't plastic recycling technology, it's capitalism. Doing this doesn't even lose money, it just doesn't make any, so we're not doing it. No matter how beneficial to humanity something is, under corporatism we don't do it if nobody can make a buck on it.
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That's not true. Governments do lots of things that aren't profitable.
Not most of them, not most of the time, certainly not ours. Everything they do is profitable for someone. Aiding Ukraine's defense of Ukraine or Israel's Holocaust of Gaza are both things that cost the taxpayer money, but which make money for the MIC.
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You're saying we can send men to the moon but we can't recycle plastics economically even though recycling plastics is technically possible. I'm trying to understand this reality you claim, (and I'm not doubting you).
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Just because it's possible, doesn't mean it's profitable or even feasible at scale.
If it's not profitable, there's not a single business that is going to spend capital to do it without a subsidy that would allow the business to survive the losses. This leaves it as an activity for government to do, and local governments aren't interested in raising taxes to get the required capital to build and operate the facilities.
Want to prove me wrong? Start a business and obtain the capital necessary, or go get a ba
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Just because it's possible, doesn't mean it's profitable or even feasible at scale.
Isn't this worthy of a moonshot?
Given this info along with all the Supreme Court news in recent days, I'm not even going to bother to try drinking all the alcohol I'm inclined to at this moment.
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It'll never be feasible but they'll keep plugging away at it to make people believe "they're working on it."
Indeed. There are too many people with your attitude to make recycling plastic feasible where you live. In the mean time my office chair is made of 100% recycled plastic. As are virtually all of the plastic bottles in my fridge (Coke use 100% recycled plastic for nearly all products in my country). You've tried nothing and you're all out of ideas. Everyone else is laughing at your defeatist attitude.
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Have you ever thought that your purpose in life is to act as a warning to others?
Pie in the sky! (Score:5, Informative)
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We need to do both things, because just stopping the bad behavior at this point doesn't solve the problem. But yes, we obviously should be making real changes to make the problem not get worse, and not emitting the carbon in the first place is cheaper than trying to capture it later, but then the wealthy would have to pay for it instead of The People.
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The problem is that we need to actually stop doing the bad stuff first, ASAP, and we can do a lot more of that faster and cheaper than carbon capture.
i.e. per $1 you can build more renewable power generation to eliminate emissions than you can capture existing carbon.
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The problem is that we need to actually stop doing the bad stuff first, ASAP, and we can do a lot more of that faster and cheaper than carbon capture.
The problem is capitalism. We will do what is profitable, and only what is profitable, because everything has to be done by a private company because the state isn't allowed to own enough stuff to be effective at anything.
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The problem is capitalism. We will do what is profitable, and only what is profitable, because everything has to be done by a private company because the state isn't allowed to own enough stuff to be effective at anything.
You'd still have limited resources available under communism or whatever other system, so that you'd have to prioritize. It would still make sense to replace fossil power generation before doing carbon capture.
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It would still make sense to replace fossil power generation before doing carbon capture.
Honest question: if we can create a capture tech that outputs a carbon-rich material that is worthwhile as an industrial feedstock for making an input fuel to energy generation which essentially makes "fossil" power generation decoupled from fossil fuel production, does that statement still hold?
Or, more succinctly, if we can make jet fuel and diesel fuel from carbon capture and renewable energy inputs (solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, etc.) then it doesn't make sense to replace fossil power generation until it
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As long as we're not also creating NOx or a bunch of ozone or something, sure. The problem with combustion with air is that it tends to have other problems, too.
If we can make synfuels energy-effectively, though, and we can burn them sufficiently cleanly, then we've basically solved storage. And for stationary purposes, hydrogen is already pretty good, and you can "burn" it very cleanly in a fuel cell. It's when you try to use it as a motor fuel that it becomes a PITA. If it were convenient to drive around
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The problem is that getting fossil carbon out of the ground as coal, oil, or gas, and then burning it or transforming it in ways that give off CO2 has a private benefits and a public cost. So humanity has been busy doing so much of that for a couple centuries, that now we’re changing the climate away from the one that existed since civilization began.
The only fix is to make those who extract value from that carbon pollution, world-wide, pay for that privilege, and compensate those most harmed by carb
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per $1 you can build more renewable power generation to eliminate emissions
That only works if it REPLACES some emission producing source. At this point, solar and wind are barely keeping up with the growth in demand. The electric industry is aggressively promoting itself as the solution to global warming. But investors don't really care whether the power replaces current consumption or meets added demand.
By contrast, it would cost nothing to reduce traffic speeds and there would be an immediate reduction in emissions from improved mileage. There would also be a long term reductio
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To my knowledge, no such sequestration project has thus far proven to be successful.
When you say "such" do you mean DAC or CCS? DAC is largely at the pilot plant stage only just moving towards commercialisation so it isn't expected to have been successful yet. CCS on the other hand has several successes, including the world's first one the Sleipner Project which at this point has been operating for over 25 years. Gorgon is also operational, the criticism of that is that it was delayed and the operating cost was higher than anticipated, but it is none the less capturing carbon. Boundary Dam
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a distraction from what actually NEEDS TO HAPPEN
You mean what ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN. We'd need a time machine to unburn that coal, the alternative is to scrub CO2 directly from the atmosphere. Those projects are unattractive because it's a local cost for a global benefit.
Calcium carbonate releases carbon dioxide upon heating, called a thermal decomposition reaction, or calcination (to above 840 C in the case of CaCO3), to form calcium oxide, CaO, commonly called quicklime, with reaction enthalpy 178 kJ/mol:
CaCO3(s) --> CaO(s) + CO2(g)
----
CO2 Std enthalpy of formation (fH298) 393.5 kJmol1
Overall this means you could make a coal-powered CO2 scrubber that pulls out 2 CO2 molecules from the atmosphere for each CO2 burnt, even without saving any of the heat energy released.
Calcium carbonate reacts with water that is saturated with carbon dioxide to form the soluble calcium bicarbonate.
CaCO3(s) + CO2(g) + H2O(l) --> Ca(HCO3)2(aq)
Attempts to prepare compounds such as solid calcium bicarbonate by evaporating its solution to dryness invariably yield instead the solid calcium carbonate:[1]
Ca(HCO3)2(aq) --> CO2(g) + H2O(l) + CaCO3(s).
This means you can cycle calcium carbonate and calcium bicarbonate via evaporation to capture CO2. Or c
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but have major doubts that it's both financial not cost effective and actually not feasible from a science and engineering perspective
The financial situation is where the government could really help out.
If we start taxing carbon emissions and make carbon capture a way to get tax *credit* it will benefit both problems.
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no such sequestration project has thus far proven to be successful
Check this guy out: Not exactly a power plant, but similar enough concept. [dakotagas.com]
Carbon capture at source? (Score:2, Interesting)
Does anyone know if carbon capture at source is being worked on, e.g. on the end of a car exhaust, top of chimney. Is there no one working on it because its unfeasible, or we don't know how to do it?
The processes in atmosphere carbon capture could they be scaled down, implemented at source?
Re:Carbon capture at source? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, power plants are interested in -- and sometimes required to use -- CO2 scrubbers to reduce their CO2 emissions, but current technology isn't great in terms of cost (especially in terms of fuel efficiency): https://science.howstuffworks.... [howstuffworks.com]
The processes in atmosphere carbon capture could they be scaled down, implemented at source?
The CO2 concentrations in flue gas are so much higher (than the atmosphere in general) that it's a great place to focus efforts, but the conditions are also different enough that the same technologies aren't likely to work well in both. A lot of these atmospheric carbon-capture techniques are relatively slow in order to reduce power needs when dealing with the lower CO2 concentrations.
Re: Carbon capture at source? (Score:2)
Yes: https://www.sliteccs.se/en [sliteccs.se]
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Or nano filters?
https://energypost.eu/could-na... [energypost.eu]
Pipe the CO2 off to your algae farm, use the algae on your fish, shrimp and crab farm. Gumbo Galore!
What's the business model? (Score:3, Insightful)
Every time I see someone talk about some new mega-project the question that comes to mind is how this gets money to sustain itself. You want to send people to Mars? Okay then, how does this make money?
I see this a lot with the maga-projects in the Middle East with the different countries in the region trying to out do each other on how big of things they can build. That's fine if you want to build a big tower or whatever but you need to put something in this that produces something of value that people will pay for. The usual business case with these Middle East projects is that wealthy people from all over the world will come there to spend money because a hot dry desert is where they want to party, or something.
You want to pull CO2 out of the air? Okay, how does this make money to sustain itself? It looks like their business model is that they can sell carbon credits. That's fine so long as there is some government mandate for companies to buy these credits. Maybe there's some companies that will buy carbon credits for PR purposes as they are large CO2 emitters. There's other ways to make that work than to shame people into buying carbon credits.
There was just a thing on Slashdot earlier of a company that wanted to make carbon neutral diesel fuel. They happened to use direct air capture to get CO2 out of the air as a source of carbon for the fuel to close the carbon cycle on the fuel and make it carbon neutral. I believe their business model is fine but with the inefficient way they are producing their fuel I doubt they'd be able to compete with petroleum fuels, that is unless they get some sweet government subsidies. But even then its only a matter of time before someone else uses a more efficient process and eats their lunch.
Maybe I missed it on where this CO2 ends up. With a process that takes CO2 out of the air to make hydrocarbons then maybe they can make asphalt or something as a carbon sink. Once that CO2 is locked up in asphalt then it's going to sit as a road surface or something for like 100 years, and then when that's all turned to potholes it will get dug up and turned into landfill. Asphalt production from CO2 captured out of the air might be a business model for carbon capture because people will buy asphalt. They can get their government subsidies and have a product they can sell on top. When the subsidies go away then maybe they can keep going because they got so efficient in making asphalt that its cheap enough to do better than petroleum based asphalt, and also do better than alternative products like concrete.
I'm not seeing much of a business model here. Maybe I just missed it from the fine article.
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While certainly interesting I think that the ongoing work on low-carbon technologies for metal production is potentially more important. Steel production is responsible for 7% of the world's greenhouse gases, and there is ongoing work to bring that down to zero.
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You want to pull CO2 out of the air? Okay, how does this make money to sustain itself? It looks like their business model is that they can sell carbon credits. That's fine so long as there is some government mandate for companies to buy these credits.
Most major governments have announced that they plan to reach net zero in the next 15-25 years, so it's a pretty good bet that anything that removes carbon from the atmosphere will be in demand.
I believe their business model is fine but with the inefficient way they are producing their fuel I doubt they'd be able to compete with petroleum fuels, that is unless they get some sweet government subsidies.
You mean like petroleum companies do?
Who's paying? (Score:2)
So who is willing to pay for these? What product do they sell and how are they going to make a profit?
Greenwashing scam (Score:2)
Mostly greenwashing scam and federal/government money
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I don't think you understand what that word means. Greenwashing is the act of doing nothing, not spending millions of dollars and countless engineering and construction hours building something which may or may not work.
Re:Who's paying? (Score:4, Interesting)
Everyone who buys property insurance should be interested in this. The idea of having to sell a product as the only way to make a "profit" is narrow-minded: you recommend spending money on preventive measures like cybersecurity, right?
The old adage "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" applies here: it's likely better for society to pay $X today instead of having to pay $100X later.
Consider all the insurance companies no longer doing business in Florida or California; if you could spend $100M a year on sequestration to eliminate one $5B event every 10 years, you'd come out hugely ahead. Not to mention the added bonus that instead of having to repair, society could spend time developing "new" things.
Re: Who's paying? (Score:1)
This isn't a prevention.
It's an expensive placebo pretending to be a cure.
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This particular endeavor might indeed be snake oil.
I was commenting only on the fact that one doesn't need to "sell a widget" to have a viable business.
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Well that's the ultimate trick, right?
It's one thing to say "I can remove carbon from air!" when the output is a useless goo that you still have to dispose of responsibly.
It's quite another thing to say "I can remove carbon from air, and turn it into this useful industrial material to sell to people to make useful stuff, where they once required oil to do that!" - that process reduces the amount of oil we need to extract while also cleaning up the damage from previously extracted oil and coal.
Strict oversight is needed... (Score:3)
Many of the projects are probably scam or there is a risk that the captured CO2 will come back...
Regulators should watch them very closely...
Carbon projects are the new NFT 2.0 (Score:2, Funny)
Except no ugly monkey picture to stare at which you don't even own.
Grant capture (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Grant capture (Score:2)
Grant capture is a great and funny term. As an engineer, these projects baffle me. It's hard to think of anything that would be more ineffective on a planetary scale than these silly carbon capture projects.
I've applied my own root cause analysis to the problem, and concluded that the root is that there are 9 billion people on the planet and more on the way.
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The problem with that root cause analysis is that national CO2 emissions are only very weaking correlated to population. For example, Qatar, with 2.5 million people, emits 80x the CO2 of Nigeria with 188 million people. The one thing that correlates to CO2 emissions perfectly is fossil fuel consumption. That's the root problem of carbon emissions: fossil fuel burning. So the sensible thing is to reduce the amount of fossil fuels we burn.
Carbon capture is one of those things that work, but only if you ignor
Fine, I'll say it (Score:2, Troll)
Oxygen, not carbon capture (Score:1)
These plants remove oxygen from the atmosphere, not carbon. The carbon was never in the atmosphere originally - it was added by burning fossil fuels. What these plants are actually doing is taking oxygen out of the atmosphere as they return the carbon underground.
Think about it another way: if adding too much carbon dioxide - a natural chemical - to the atmosphere can cause climate problems, how much worse will it be when we've removed sufficient oxygen that we can no longer thrive as a species? Even
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Earth's atmosphere:
78% Nitrogen
21% Oxygen
0.04% CO2
So we're fine on that score even if you were correct... Which you're not, you're incredibly wrong to a degree that is difficult to comprehend. Plants absorb CO2 from the air and bind it with things drawn from the soil. The only oxygen they're taking isn't free oxygen, it's bound with carbon.
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And by the way, just to further add to the wrongness - the plants only keep the C, they release the O2.
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Which is what the plants used to do, but that CO2 is now being buried. That's the issue. It's not just carbon which is being buried, but atmospheric oxygen as well.
BTW, the religious right used to seriously argue that because CO2 was only 0.04 % of the atmosphere that its effect could not be significant. It seems you're making the same argument, except for sequestration.
Even human beings require a very specific [sciencing.com] oxygen concentration to live. While we can detect negative effects with just a 1.4% chan
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Sorry, I think I should have clarified: carbon capture plants sequester the CO2 that green leafy plants would be processing into carbohydrates and free oxygen.
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While a potentially fair point, that ship sailed when we reacted all that atmospheric oxygen with hydrocarbons and ended up with that oxygen tied up in way more CO2 than the natural carbon cycle can draw down.
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The carbon was never in the atmosphere originally - it was added by burning fossil fuels.
That will come as a big whopper of a shock to the half-billion or so years of plant life that adapted to using CO2 as their primary source of carbon in their metabolic processes.
Or, and just follow the bouncing ball on this: CO2 can happen in atmospheres without the burning of fossil fuels at all. See: Venus. Or are you saying that there was once a civilization on Venus and they burned all the fossil fuels that Venus doesn't have any detectable trace of and turned the planet's atmosphere into the burning
I read that headline as laundry (Score:2)
That was the goal of these ventures. To launder money from ill gotten wealth.
Friedrich Nietzsche (Score:3)
"Little prigs and three-quarter madmen may have the conceit that the laws of nature are constantly broken for their sakes."
The priority is avoiding emission. (Score:2)
ROTFLMAO (Score:2)
This is pure BS and a money grab.
The BEST (and only feasible) option is stop the pollution. Prevention is cheaper than cure.
Dig up tons of carbon, then try to bury it again (Score:1)
It seems kind of crazy that on the one hand we're digging up or drilling up tons of material that's absolutely loaded with carbon, then, on the other, we're trying to figure out how to bury that carbon again.
It would be a lot more efficient if we just didn't dig it up in the first place.