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the picture on the right isn’t demonstrating an engine. They simply use renewable energy to power the fans that suck in the air.
Doesn’t change the fact that industrial carbon capture is a scam, and most of that captured CO2 is later released back into the environment to help extract oil from old wells.
https://www.aogr.com/magazine/sneak-peek-preview/carbon-capture-boosting-oil-recovery
I’ve heard there’s a practical green solution to carbon capture. The units are practically maintenance free and power themselves with solar energy. This allows to deploy them on many small patches of land. The captured carbon is stored in solid organic compounds that may be used as building materials. It may sound to sci-fi to be true, but it’s actually just trees.
Density of CO2 produced vs what trees capture is massively unequal. Yes trees can, but not on any tangible scale that would ever keep up with what we are doing to the planet.
Not to mention the area needed, for the amount of trees needed. Trees also decompose, so the storage function is different, but people are quick to assume.
Decomp still sequesters most of the carbon into the soil, which next gen plants uptake some.
Not to mention, a single sq km of algae sequesters tons annually.
And not even mentioning the add on sequesters: New trees bring whole ecosystems, and promote savannah and meadow formation, which also sequesters carbon.
And don’t forget the biodiversity. Ecosystems and fauna depend on each other.
Agree, carbon capture process is quite efficient now. I’m working on (pretty big) company doing Carbon Capture and Sequestration. The idea is to use empty oil&gaz reservoir to inject back carbon where it comes from. So there are several advantage:
- The land is already messed up by former drilling platerform. No need to shave another forest to create a facility
- No waste to handle, as the captured carbon is injected in the underground. We also study the possibility to inject other kind of waste, like domestic ones.
- Simplified process as we can keep Co2 in gaz state to inject back in former natural gaz reservoir. Not even needed to extract carbon to solodify it.
- Yes, trees are much more efficient and eco-friendly, but sometime we cannot just plant billions of trees. Whereas a CCS facility is relatively small compared to a whole forest.
Now imagine if instead of playing technowizard… your company spent that money on planting trees?
Global Co2 production of human activities is about 35Gt per year (https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions). Forests absorb around 7.5Gt per year (https://www.wri.org/insights/forests-absorb-twice-much-carbon-they-emit-each-year). Let say we double the total amount of forest in the whole planet, and we cut Co2 production by half. We are very roughly 15Gt produce VS 15Gt absorb. Is the problem solved ? Nope.
First, because these forests has to stay in place, or used as building material but cannot be burn to for heating. So we still have to plant extra forest for heating. Second, we still have all the Co2 we have put in atmosphere since a century. So the goal is not to be equilibrium, but to be net negative.
Worldwide CCS capacity has been estimated between 8,000 and 55,000 gigatonnes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage). And, yes, it is already carbon negative, and already in production in several countries with currently a net result of ~50Mt Co2 per year (https://www.statista.com/statistics/726634/large-scale-carbon-capture-and-storage-projects-worldwide-capacity/)
There is not a unique solution “Plant Trees and go electric” to global warming. There are lots of solutions, with pros and cons. CCS is just a small part of the equation. Use renewable energy, use storage (litthium batteries, Hydrogen, …), Nuclear, change habit to consume less, plant trees and develop carbon capture solution.
The problem won’t be solved with a unique solution, but by finding the good balance between all the possibilities. And those who know it won’t work are please to let those who doesn’t know try.
How are CCS carbon positive, when it requires more electricity to sequester, than it would to just not produce the carbon output, to begin with?
You doesn’t seems to be the kind of person with whom can have constructive argument. I gave you facts and number. Sorry I cannot take my time machine and go back 200 years back telling Great Britain to stop burning coal.
Also, my company has as objective to becomes neutral by 2030 and 20% carbon negative by 2050. Locally, we have decreased our electricity consumption by 20% since 2022 and put in place mobility actions to push people taking bike or bus. Nearly half of employees use soft transport (public, bikes, onewheel, etc…)
We cannot rewrite the past or snap finger to change habits of 8billions peoples.
We will be juge on our current actions and futur results. As of today, we are trying something which we hope is going to the right direction. But its always easier to criticize and not doing anything.
I gave you facts and number.
The facts are it takes 1.5x powerplants to scrub the carbon from 1x powerplants, using CCS.
So, it’s just better to NOT use dirty electricity, and convert it to a renewable, like solar, wind, or hydro.
Also, my company has as objective to becomes neutral by 2030 and 20% carbon negative by 2050.
So, your company will be paying the full cost of the carbon produced by your company? Doubtful. Nobody pays full environment price at the pumps. Or, their electric bills. Or their nat gas bill.
Fossil fuels are subsidized.
That seems like a disaster waiting to (re) happen, what’s your thoughts on that?
What do you mean ?
Carbonating a void underground seems like a bad plan. God help us if Mentos get down there.
And OP was talking about trees.
Geological reservoirs are thousands metter depth and several dozen of km wide. Pressure is a few MPa, and temperature hundreds of °C. Condition are so extrem that filling them with gaz barely change anything. Especially if they were already filled with gaz dozen years ago. Furthemore, they are not big vacum like most people imagine. It’s more like giant spongy rock, like sand. It’s not a baloon you inflate or deflate.
CCS facilities are not in competition with forest. It’s a complementatry solution. If you manage to capture carbon next to poluting factories, you don’t spread Co2 on the atmosphere, waiting it to be captured by a forest the other side of the globe. And they can be powered by solar panels.
gaz
Why?
How much carbon gets released building this technomarvel?
How long before it hits carbon neutral, if even carbon negative?
Ok, but how about we do more than trees? Why are you on the internet when pre-linguistic grunting works just fine?
If you can find a more efficient, less expensive way to physically sequester carbon from the atmosphere than letting forests grow, I’m sure there’s a lot of awards you could win
Why does it have to be cheaper? Why not both?
Because if it isn’t cheaper than simply growing trees, the money would be better spent simply growing trees
And places trees don’t grow?
Try thinking for a second.
Places where trees don’t grow are probably not the best places for carbon sequestration if you can’t sequester carbon there cheaper or easier than sequestering carbon in trees elsewhere
This is wrong, or perhaps I misundertand.
Entropy is a different concept from economic viability.
The rule of non-decreasing entropy applies to closed systems.
A carbon capture system running on solar energy on Earth (note: wind energy is converted solar energy) is not a closed system from the Earth perspective - its energy arrives from outside. It can decrease entropy on Earth. Whether it’s economically viable - totally different issue.
…and I don’t think the Sun gets any worse from us capturing some rays.
Also, I don’t think entropy has anything to do with carbon in the atmosphere. I thought it had to do with the size of the energy packets.
Yeah, it’s different. I think the machine on the left is an infinite energy machine. Those will never work.
The machine on the right is a carbon capture machine which does work. But not well enough. Are fast enough to solve any of the problems that we have.
I’m fine with playing around with a carbon capture machine and seeing if we can improve it, but I would never want to rely solely on it.
I want to try a thousand solutions to the global warming problem. Including societal and government changes. Cuz you know otherwise we all die.
Most pollution comes from shipping, agriculture, and other large industries. Poor countries/people cannot contribute because they are barely getting by as is. Even if the entire middle class in wealthy countries magically switched to electric/public/bicycling, started recycling, stopped watering grass, etc. it would make no noticeable difference.
The idea that social changes at individual level can help with pollution comes directly from propaganda pushed by cunts who are actually killing our planet for profit. Fuck them. Don’t spread their lies.
Where are we putting all this CO2?
Synthetic fuels for air planes and rockets
That would put it right back into the atmosphere, though it would reduce the amount of fossil fuels used
Perhaps do this once levels are back to pre industrial and the excess is in oil wells
Perhaps we should convert all the excess to fuel and pump it into oil wells so any successor civilisations can fuck up their climate like we have
Pumping it back into wells as oil is maybe a good idea. If civilization completely collapses back to the Stone Age humanity might never rebuild and advance into an industrial era if there are no more easily accessible fossil fuels. The rapid advancements of humanity of the last two centuries is because of fossil fuels. Of course there is a chance future humans after the apocalypse can advance without fossil fuels. But we don’t know for sure. To give them a fighting chance we have to replenish whatever we took out of the ground. Otherwise they might never advance past a medieval era.
Another idea is to bury tree logs into old mines where it can’t rot so it will fossilize into coal over centuries.
There are plenty of arguments to be made against direct air capture, but entropy isn’t one of them. Nobody ever claimed this is some kind of perpetuum mobile.
This is a joke.
While physically possible DAC is a waste of money and energy compared to effective measures such as constructing solar farms, batteries and power lines. Even hydrolysis may look attractive.
That’s right. We should only do one thing, and that’s to switch away from fossil fuels. It won’t be a problem that we will still have all that CO2 warming the atmosphere and acidifying the oceans, we really shouldn’t bother trying to make that tech any better, it has clearly no use.
You fucking armchair Reddit-ass commenter.
Just checked the numbers, for those interested.
A gas power plant produces around. 200-300kWh per tonne of CO2.
Capture costs 300-900kWh per tonne captured.
So this is basically non viable using fossil fuel as the power. If you aren’t, then storage of that power is likely a lot better.
It’s also worth noting that it is still CO2 gas. Long term containment of a gas is far harder than a liquid or solid.
Who says you power that thing with fossil fuels? The real way to do that is via giant nuclear reactors or reactor complexes.
Fission power can be made cheaper per MW by just making the reactors bigger. Economies of scale, the square cube law and all that. The problem with doing this in the commercial power sector is that line losses kill you on distribution. There just aren’t enough customers within a reasonable distance to make monster 10 GW or 100 GW reactors viable, regardless of how cheap they might make energy.
But DACC is one of the few applications this might not be a problem for. Just build your monster reactors right next door to your monster DACC plants.
There are 3 use cases I’ve seen.
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Making fossil fuel power stations “clean”.
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CO2 recovery for long term storage.
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CO2 for industrial use.
It’s no good for the first, due to energy consumption. This is the main use I’ve seen it talked up for, as something that can be retrofitted to power plants.
It’s poor for the second, since the result is a gas (hard to store long term). We would want it as a solid or liquid product, which this doesn’t do.
The last has limited requirements. We only need so much CO2.
The only large scale use case I can see for this is as part of a carbon capture system. Capture and then react to solidify the carbon. However, plants are already extremely good at this, and can do it directly from atmospheric air, using sunlight.
It’s poor for the second, since the result is a gas (hard to store long term). We would want it as a solid or liquid product, which this doesn’t do.
Why wouldn’t the device include or feed a compressor to liquidize the CO2? It takes just a little over 5 atm of pressure which is trivial.
You also need to sustain 5 atm, with no leaks for years. Where is it being stored, and who’s paying for the maintenance? All it would take would be a bit of civil unrest, or corruption, and the work could be undone in mass.
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I really think we can capitalism our way out of a capitalism caused climate crisis who’s with me and rex tillerson
