
Groundbreaking carbon capture project in Squamish, B.C - ph0rque
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/carbon-capture-squamish-1.3263855
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ChuckMcM
The "win" here is that if you have a source of "carbon free" energy (on their
web site they mention solar, wind, and nuclear) you can pull CO2 out of the
air and make it available for other processes (like Fischer-Tropsch) which can
combine it with Hydrogen and turn it back into long chain organics.

As far as relevance goes, this is an interesting bridge technology. One could
imagine a massive solar plan in the Sahara that was using its output to
produce diesel fuel. Transporting diesel long distances is more feasible than
transporting electricity and you can use it when you need it and store it when
you don't.

If one of the several fusion efforts start generating excess energy this is
one way to use that energy productively. You reduce airborne CO2 (good for the
climate) and you produce fuel for later.[1]

Compressed CO2 is also used in a number of industrial processes so you can
just sell the stuff if you want to make back money.

[1] And yes that re-releases CO2 into the air but if you're pulling it out to
make it the result is a net-zero impact on CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

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mkingston
A high-level description of functionality: [http://carbonengineering.com/our-
technology/](http://carbonengineering.com/our-technology/)

Essentially running an alkaline solution through a structure and
simultaneously forcing air through the same structure. Air contact with
alkaline solution results in CO2 absorption into the alkaline solution.

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spenrose
Key passage:

"In CE’s lowest-technical risk ‘baseline’ design, all the input energy
required onsite is supplied by natural gas. The carbon dioxide from gas
combustion is also captured along with the CO2 extracted from the atmosphere,
so that no new CO2 is emitted to the atmosphere by our technology. In the
longer term, we expect that carbon-free power will drive air capture. CE is
building collaborations to conduct full-scale studies on using solar thermal
or nuclear energy as the source of energy for its air capture system."

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appleflaxen
This makes no thermodynamic sense. CO2 is about the worst "fuel" possible,
because it is the end product of combustion.

Then, the call it a "capture project", with the goal of burning what they
create.

It can be carbon capture, or it can create fuel, but not both.

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acdha
Right now people are getting fuel by pulling stored carbon out of the ground
and burning it, increasing the net CO2 in the atmosphere.

If a system like this worked, the level of CO2 would stay constant rather than
increasing because you're recirculating carbon which was already in the
atmosphere.

That's still not as good as actually pulling carbon out but if they can make
the numbers work, it's to see how that's not a noteworthy improvement.

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Fargren
I'm by no means an expert in the subject, but what you say sounds suspiciously
similar to a perpetual motion machine.

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acdha
Seconding what ac29 said – this obviously only makes sense if you have a power
source which doesn't generate new carbon. Solar in particular could make a ton
of sense if you had a viable process which could happen out in relatively
cheap desert spaces, but I have no idea whether that could work with the water
requirements that the article described.

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mrfusion
Side topic, how much carbon capture could we achieve by burying crop plants
after harvesting? It seems like only a small amount of biomass is harvested.
Think of corn. I'm assuming the rest is turned back into co2 by decomposition?

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maxerickson
It's sometimes used:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stover](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stover)

It's also probably not sufficient to just bury it:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar)

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brrt
Cool stuff, certainly. But why take C02 from the air, when there are large
stationary sources of CO2 readily available, like _any bloody thermal power
plant_? It... seems very wasteful to me.

EDIT: also, one tonne per day, very wow.

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struppi
I could imagine that, when you take the CO2 from the air, you could build
those plants in remote locations, where it is difficult to get fuel right now.
Like, in the desert.

But I guess that would work only in theory, because those plants would
probably need quite a lot of infrastructure - right?

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brrt
It requires a lot of energy to do this, obviously. I don't know the exact
details, but my naive assumption is that they require hydrogen as an
intermediate, which would also imply they need relatively pure water as a
source. Altogether I just don't know why they decided to take this from the
air rather than build a plant in any major port with a refinery installed,
which would seem to be much cheaper.

