
Bioreactor Captures as Much Carbon as an Acre of Trees - vinnyglennon
https://futurism.com/the-byte/bioreactor-captures-carbon-acre-trees
======
julienfr112
There is a sodium anode, that is consumed by the process. You have to build
another "clean" process to produce it :
[https://www.intechopen.com/books/recent-improvements-of-
powe...](https://www.intechopen.com/books/recent-improvements-of-power-plant)

~~~
ginko
Sodium is already commercially produced through electrolysis, so if you use
carbon-neutral electricity for that you should be good.

~~~
VierScar
If we're using clean power to power extraction of CO2, wouldn't it just be
better to connect that clean power directly to the grid and thus reduce the
required production of CO2 at other power plants? Otherwise we'll be having
massive efficiency losses.

~~~
wffurr
Do both.

We are at or close to the point where we need negative emissions to stave off
catastrophic climate change.

~~~
Yetanfou
Is that really the case though? I mean the 'catastrophic' part, not the
'climate change' part as that has been clear from the get-go - climate change
is happening and has been happening for as long as the planet has had an
atmosphere. We're in an interglacial, on the far end of the high point (the
'interglacial optimum') on the curve and with that on the way down to a new
glacial in a few thousand years. The interglacial optimum is the period within
an interglacial that experiences the most 'favourable' climate and often
occurs during the middle of that interglacial. For the present interglacial,
the Holocene (which started about 11.700 years ago) the climatic optimum
occurred during the Sub-boreal (~3000 BCE - 500 BCE) and Atlanticum (7000 BCE
- 3000 BCE) [1]. Our current climatic phase following this climatic optimum is
still within the same interglacial. That warm period was followed by a gradual
decline until about 2000 years ago, with another warm period until the Little
Ice Age (1250–1850). The current interglacial is actually relatively cool
compared to the previous known ones, the maximum Antarctic temperature during
the previous interglacial was about 6°C higher than that registered during the
current one [2].

Can you point us at some non-politicised sources which can refute these
findings, which prove that anthropogenic climate change is such a strong force
that it counteracts the natural glacial cycle?

For those who wonder why I ask this question please note that this is a
serious request. The debate around climate change has been so polluted by
politics that it is nigh impossible to find objective sources. Those objective
sources which I know off fail to show the climate catastrophe which we're all
being warned about.

[1]
[https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png)

~~~
wffurr
Thanks for the lecture on historical climate. Those graphs you have linked as
objective sources aren't particularly useful nor do they illustrate the full
impact of anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

For the canonical report on climate change impacts in the anthropocene, I
would recommend the IPCC reports, e.g.
[https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGIIAR5-Chap...](https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WGIIAR5-Chap19_FINAL.pdf)
on synergistic risks to food security and low-lying coastal regions.

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anonymfus
The forest is more than trees. Forest stores much more carbon in the soil and
the soil covering than in the wood.

~~~
murkle
Are you sure that's measuring the right thing? Doesn't a mature forest reach a
steady state where carbon in = carbon out when dead trees rot etc?

~~~
anon4242
But the carbon isn't released into the atmosphere when trees rot. Dead trees
turn into soil. Most of a dead tree's carbon will be bound to the ground as
soil.

~~~
kjeetgill
Huh, I had also heard (vaguely, from somewhere!) that most of the carbon does
get released back into the air on rotting.

Where does it go after the soil? The carbon that makes up a plant is
definitely sourced from the air not the soil.

If the carbon was still in the soil I'd imagine fossil fuels wouldn't need to
mostly come from the Carboniferous period, right?

~~~
Yetanfou
There are two carbon cycles, the biological one (fast) and the geological one
(slow). In the biological cycle carbon enters food chains through autotrophs
(self-feeders, nearly all of them photosynthesising organisms like algae and
plants) which capture carbon dioxide from air or bicarbonate ions from water
and use them to make organic compounds such as glucose. These in turn get
eaten by heterotrophs (other-feeders) such as animals who consume the organic
molecules and break them down through cellular respiration where carbon in the
molecules is released as carbon dioxide. Decomposers (fungi and bacteria) also
release organic compounds and carbon dioxide when they break down dead
organisms and waste products. Rinse, repeat.

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danieltillett
Is this anything other than vapourware?

~~~
seren
Any article I have seen are showing the same 3D renderings, so I would tend to
agree. If you have a working prototype, show it.

The whole company Hypergiant looks like a joke too.

From A.I. to Space faring, they cover everything..

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viach
Interesting, how much CO2 is released producing this? And there is no mention
of what electricity supply should be? How both of these factors are comparing
to just planting an acre of trees?

~~~
iamgopal
Electricity supply will be as much as acre of solar cell.

~~~
Gibbon1
Advanced low cost molten salt thorium rectors will provide cheap electricity
to power these.

~~~
acqq
> Advanced low cost molten salt thorium rectors will provide cheap electricity

...that still don't exist. Those that we know how to make have still so
serious problems that they aren't being made for anything but the research:

"Basically, MSRs are underdeveloped and require a lot more research
(especially in corrosion) before they can surely take off as the world’s fleet
of power plants."

[https://whatisnuclear.com/msr.html](https://whatisnuclear.com/msr.html)

Also:

"The problem with MSRs, then, is that the fuel is already completely cut open
and melted. You’re halfway to a bomb already"

By the same state of availability, it can be said "the advanced fusion
reactors will provide cheap electricity."

EDIT: in reply to the argument below (as I can't answer there, the moderators
like it that way):

> Thorium is ... also _closer than wind and solar_.

How? Both wind and solar are already available and usable _today_ to every
individual who has the property to install them, everywhere in the world. Who
can buy and install his own thorium reactor on his property, and where?

~~~
ThomPete
Thorium is potentially closer than fusion or fuel cells which means also
closer than wind and solar.

But yeah we are still not even close to having it ready and it might take
decades. So we are going to be stuck with fossil fuels for a very long time.

~~~
Retric
What do you mean closer than wind and solar? Solar + batteries is cheaper than
coal in some areas. [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/giant-batteries-
and-...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/07/giant-batteries-and-cheap-
solar-power-are-shoving-fossil-fuels-grid)

This means Solar is down to 3.3c/kWh at night. That’s vastly cheaper than any
Nuclear power plant.

~~~
ThomPete
Solar is not cheaper as it requires backup energy sources such as coal, oil,
nuclear etc.

You can't just isolate the cost of solar or wind as they are only viable
because they sit on top of a fossil or nuclear infrastructure.

Solar and wind is always depending on backup energy, those backup energies are
not depending on wind and solar.

Wind and solar haven't factored in the cost of decommision and maintanance in
their prices which is going to be much more given the huge areas they have to
be spread out on.

There is plenty speculation about how to solve the intermittency problem of
wind and solar but we are not even close to a solution for that.

~~~
mantap
Why is it necessary to replace _all_ fossil fuels? You can keep gas turbine
power plants around.

I support nuclear power but it's very very expensive, even in meteorologically
inactive places such as UK. Maybe India and China can make it work, but in the
west you can forget it. Hinkley Point C is a failure and it hasn't even been
constructed yet.

~~~
acqq
> Why is it necessary to replace all fossil fuels?

"Just" in order to avoid the uncontrolled warming up of the Earth's
atmosphere. As long as we use them, there will be more CO2 in the atmosphere,
more warming and the destruction of the environment in which the humanity grew
up (the climate was extraordinary stable since the civilizations appeared...
until the last 100 years). We still don't exactly know how fast that
difference can hit us, and how big issue for us it can get (i.e. the worst
case) but what we know already is enough to know that the resolute action is
needed even if the worst case doesn't happen, "business as usual" will be a
serious, long-time problem:

[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6459/eaaw6974](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6459/eaaw6974)

"The human imperative of stabilizing global climate change at 1.5°C"

"increasing GMST to 3°C above the pre-industrial period substantially
increases the risk of tipping points such as permafrost collapse, Arctic sea
ice habitat loss, major reductions in crop production in Africa as well as
globally, and persistent heat stress that is driving sharp increases in human
morbidity and mortality"

"Our preliminary estimates suggest that the benefits of avoided damage by the
year 2200 may greatly exceed energy sector investment costs to 2050. Current
national voluntary emission reduction pledges for 2030 are insufficient to
drive this even if followed by “very challenging increases in the scale and
ambition of mitigation after 2030”"

"The majority of pathways for achieving 1.5°C also require carbon dioxide
removal from the atmosphere. Delays in bringing CO2 emissions to net zero over
the next 20 to 30 years will also increase the likelihood of pathways that
exceed 1.5°C (i.e., overshoot scenarios) and hence a greater reliance on net
negative emissions after mid-century if GMST is to return to 1.5°C"

Simply put, it's safer to not the let the CO2 in the atmosphere at all than to
try to remove it later and fail. But eventually we will have to remove more
than we let. And the amounts in question are immense, and removal costs a lot
of energy too. So we do need all the energy to be produced without fossil
fuels. Wherever some fossil fuels are burned, we'll need even more energy to
remove that.

~~~
ThomPete
There is no base for the claim that it's safer to not let CO2 into the
atmosphere. More people die from cold than from heat and then world has gotten
14% greener because of more CO2.

So if anything it's inconclusive and I don't see any scientifically
demonstrated consequence of the climate-changing that we don't know how to
deal with.

~~~
acqq
> world has gotten 14% greener because of more CO2.

"But that isn’t cause to celebrate. It’s a bit like hearing that your
chemotherapy is slowing the growth of your tumor by 25 percent.

Despite global greening, carbon dioxide levels have climbed over the past two
centuries to levels not seen on Earth for millions of years. And the carbon
dioxide we’ve injected into the atmosphere is already having major impacts
across the planet."

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/science/climate-change-
pl...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/science/climate-change-plants-
global-greening.html)

~~~
ThomPete
Sahara desert is greening. How is that a bad problem? Furthermore Sahara used
to be a jungle and that disappear long before we ever started using CO2.

The climate is always changing. I am celebrating every day that fossil fuels
have made life better and safer for us in the west. What I am fearing is that
well meaning but fundamentally ignorant climate catastrophism will make it
harder for the worlds poorest to get access to the very energy they need to
fight any change in climate.

~~~
acqq
> Sahara desert is greening

And the amount of greening that is possible is also a part of the models: we
know that it can't save us from the increase in CO2 which is pushed to the
atmosphere orders of magnitude faster. Even if in some areas some plants will
appear, the climatic changes in the whole world will be seriously problematic
for most of human population and most of the rest of the nature.

It's a classical red herring:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring)

~~~
ThomPete
I know what a red herring is, that's not that it's a simple fact that goes
counter to the claim about catastrophic climate change.

You have no proof for your claim, it's a non-testable hypothesis and the only
thing you are relying on is computer climate models notorious for fitting and
underappreciating negative feedback loops which have resulted in less than
stellar predictability.

------
z3phyr
The oceans and maturing forests are the best carbon sinks, and as of now it is
more economical to just conserve them

------
ollybee
These kinds of ideas just don't seem to make sense given the scale of the
problem. It's as if some people imagine you could set up a few plants of for
each power station and we'd be all square. When in fact:
[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/the-
craz...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/the-crazy-scale-
of-human-carbon-emission/)

~~~
pbj5679
One of these machines could sequester about 10 tons of Co2 per annum. (1)
According to the linked article we have roughly 25 billion tons of Co2
emissions yearly. If we take 5k cities in the world (2), and each had just one
machine you could cut emissions down to about 500k tons per year, that is a
1e6 factor magnitude difference. If each city had a single "farm" of 20 of
these (they are 3x3x7 after all for roughly 400 m^3 of space) you'd be down to
25k tons of Co2 per year.

1\.
[https://projects.ncsu.edu/project/treesofstrength/treefact.h...](https://projects.ncsu.edu/project/treesofstrength/treefact.htm)
2\. [https://www.quora.com/How-many-towns-and-cities-are-there-
in...](https://www.quora.com/How-many-towns-and-cities-are-there-in-the-world)

~~~
IanCal
Hang on, if they sequester 10 tons and you build 5000 of them you would
sequester 50,000 tons per year, not nearly 25 billion.

10 tons is in the region of what the global per capita emissions are so you're
looking then at about 3+ billion needed.

~~~
pbj5679
good catch. I divided where I should of subtracted.

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magicalhippo
So what does it do with the carbon? Turns it into more algae? If so, what do
you do with the algae to prevent it from returning to the atmosphere?

~~~
kebman
This just in: Flying algae seen returning to the atmosphere!!1 :D

~~~
wcoenen
Eventually excess algae would have to be removed. If you then just let them
rot or convert them into food which is then eaten (both being the slow
biological equivalent to burning), then the captured CO2 returns to the
atmosphere.

~~~
kebman
You guys have no sense of humour. Methane, on the other hand...

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rapsey
400 trees is not that much. And they require no electricity

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goatinaboat
Why do we need this? Just plant some trees!

~~~
ben_w
You can put this in the Sahara or on the space station, but yeah trees are
probably easier 99% of the time.

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kebman
But can it make diamonds? ;)

