
Climate Change Can Be Stopped by Turning Air into Gasoline - ThomPete
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/its-possible-to-reverse-climate-change-suggests-major-new-study/562289/?single_page=true
======
leoedin
The article kind of glosses over the fact that one of the inputs to the
process is hydrogen.

That really makes this whole process a way of converting energy stored in
hydrogen to energy stored in hydrocarbons. This is pretty desirable -
hydrocarbon fuels are much easier to work with, fit in with our existing
transport - but not really a new source of energy.

The problem with sequestering CO2 as hydrocarbons is that you need to put a
whole load of energy (embodied in the hydrogen you're combining it with) into
the ground and leave it there. Fortunately renewables (especially solar) are
heading in the right direction. On a sunny day in an area with lots of solar
panels, electricity is essentially free. We're still some way from having
enough free energy available to be able to put large amounts of it back into
the ground though.

~~~
derefr
It's kind of funny, really: through human history, we "gained" a lot of "free"
energy by burning fossil fuels; now, to fully recover our atmosphere from the
externalities of that energy generation, we would have to _expend_ just as
much, if not more, than that total amount of energy we ever "gained", to
essentially _un-burn_ those same fossil fuels.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> we would have to expend just as much, if not more, than that total amount of
> energy we ever "gained", to essentially un-burn those same fossil fuels.

Ironically enough, our renewable electrification process is like a turbo
coming up to speed. There is simply _so much_ energy hitting the Earth from
the Sun (if I recall off hand, about an hour of sunlight can power humanity
for a year, or thereabouts) that if we continue to rapidly deploy solar and
wind, we'll have orders of magnitude more energy than humanity currently
requires for a first world lifestyle while _also_ having enough energy to
sequestor all of the original carbon burned through fossil fuel based
industrialization.

"A long way around the block" if you will.

[https://www.iea.org/publications/renewables2017/](https://www.iea.org/publications/renewables2017/)

[https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/4-charts-show-
renewable...](https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/4-charts-show-renewable-
energy-rise-america)

~~~
gitgud
Doesn't this feel like we are shifting the problem somewhere else? I'm not
sure it is a sustainable option.

Solar panels take huge amounts of energy to produce, which may not be
recovered in the life of the panel.

Its only sustainable if it's possible to have a solar panel factory powered by
solar panels... Which seems unlikely

~~~
hetman
The idea that solar panels take more energy to produce than they are able to
output would make solar panels economically unviable as the energy cost must
be recovered to at least break even. That may have been true several decades
ago but the solar panels of today are competing economically just fine.

~~~
technicalbard
But deployment is slowing in jurisdictions that have decided they can't afford
the subsidies and what it does to power prices.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Solar and wind are cheaper than coal without subsidies.

------
LargeWu
> The new paper says it can remove the same ton for as little as $94, and for
> no more than $232. At those rates, it would cost between $1 and $2.50 to
> remove the carbon dioxide released by burning a gallon of gasoline in a
> modern car.

If those numbers are true, that's actually a pretty achievable cost to absorb
that could be added directly as a tax on gasoline.

~~~
btilly
The problem is that we want to not only put back in our future use of
gasoline, but also our PAST use of gasoline.

That's going to be..not cheap.

~~~
LargeWu
The article mentions this method can also be used to sequester the carbon. So
if we can extract more than we consume as fuel we could theoretically solve
that problem as well.

~~~
loeg
There's no reason to take the extra step of turning it into fuel for the
portion we would just sequester underground.

------
thinkcontext
This is a terrible article and I am a fan of The Atlantic and would probably
be considered a climate hawk.

The new science that Climate Engineering did has nothing to do with making
gasoline from CO2. There is technology to do that and a number of companies
working on it, its in the $10/gallon range. Some have estimated as low as $4,
if they can get their process to scale up, which they haven't been able to do.

There is already plenty of CO2 available for much less than $100/ton, this is
not a barrier to making products out of CO2.

~~~
thinkling
I read the article wondering why you'd want to do this by sucking in air when
you could do it with exhaust from gas-powered power plants that is much richer
in CO2 than regular air.

In fact, there was coverage the other day of a new gas-fired power plant that
throws off CO2 for storage in oil wells. Why not use that CO2?

[https://www.vox.com/energy-and-
environment/2018/6/1/17416444...](https://www.vox.com/energy-and-
environment/2018/6/1/17416444/net-power-natural-gas-carbon-air-pollution-
allam-cycle)

~~~
notabee
The reason is simple: we've already put enough CO2 into the atmosphere to
cause adverse changes over a long period of time. A lot of the IPCC models and
their discussion centers around more near-term climate threats over the next
100 years or so caused by continued emissions and overall severity of going
ever more "over budget" with CO2 levels, but we're still 100+ ppm of CO2 over
the highest average of the last half a million years or more. That CO2 is
going to hang around in the atmosphere for quite some time as the natural
processes like weathering that lower it are slow, and its presence will add
extra heat from solar radiation while it's still there. If we suddenly
stopping emitting now, we would still be above baseline but not in the
apocalyptic range. If things don't change quickly though, we're going to have
to suck CO2 from the atmosphere one way or another because just halting
emissions won't be enough.

------
syntaxing
I wish the article elaborated a little more on where the energy comes from to
(re)form gasoline. Gasoline has an extremely high energy density. To force
hydrogen to bond with CO2 must expense a large amount of energy. The energy
has to come from somewhere and delivering the proper amount cannot be a
trivial thing. There is a limitation on how hot things can get without
chemical reaction (such as burning fuel). Also, a good chunk (I think over
75%) of hydrogen is created by super heating steam with petroleum based
fuel...this would make the whole process counterproductive.

~~~
philipkglass
_To force hydrogen to bond with CO2 must expense a large amount of energy. The
energy has to come from somewhere and delivering the proper amount cannot be a
trivial thing._

The reaction between CO2 and H2 to form hydrocarbons is actually energetically
favorable (thermodynamically spontaneous). It doesn't require outside energy
inputs to force the reaction forward.

See e.g. "CO2 valorisation via Reverse Water-Gas Shift reaction"

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221298201...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221298201730433X)

and "Turning carbon dioxide into fuel"

[http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/roypta/368/19...](http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/roypta/368/1923/3343.full.pdf)

The key issue is, as you note later, producing large quantities of hydrogen
without relying on fossil sources.

~~~
technicalbard
Except the reactions happen at 300C, and the FT reaction is exothermic between
H2 and CO, not CO2. taking CO2 apart is endothermic. And then you need to
refine the hydrocarbons (because they will look like diesel or wax, not
gasoline).

~~~
philipkglass
Using the standard gas-phase enthalpies of formation, the production of 1 mole
of n-octane and 16 moles of water from 8 moles of CO2 and 25 moles of hydrogen
is exothermic by 923 kilojoules.

8 CO2 + 25 H2 -> C8H18 + 16 H2O

Energy of products minus energy of reactants:

(-208.7 + 16 * -241.83) - (8 * -393.52 + 25 * 0) = -923

Experimental values are from NIST WebBook.

The hydrogenation of CO2 to CO and water is endothermic and kinetically
hindered. The hydrogenation of CO2 to saturated hydrocarbons and water is
exothermic (though still kinetically hindered).

There are also hydrocarbon synthesis paths that involve less reforming and
purification of high-boiling products than F-T, e.g. methanol synthesis
starting from CO2 and H2 followed by Mobil methanol-to-gasoline.

------
cletus
I remember reading something a few years ago that this sort of thing was being
investigated as a means of using wind power.

As we know wind power (like most? all? renewable sources) have this
undesirable property of not being constant. And I mean undesirable in the
sense of the base load of an electrical grid.

So the idea is to store excess power. Obviously rechargeable batteries are one
way to do this. But another is artificially creating gasoline as a means of
energy storage. This could have pretty desirable properties at places where
gasoline might otherwise be expensive to ship in and wind power might be in
abundance.

Anyway I can't find the paper but at that time with that process it was
looking at still over $5/gallon (which in remote places is still totally
fine).

So if this new process is real and scalable to an industrial level, that would
be great. As much as EVs are a rapidly growing market, I think we're going to
be stuck with ICEs for a long time yet.

~~~
discreteevent
If there were a lot more electric cars they could act as a buffer to smooth
out the variability of renewables.

------
gmoes
Does the planet really need more gasoline?

Maybe it’s time we consider the opportunity to allow people to convert their
private property into dense carbon sinks that support plant and terrestrial
arthropod diversity.

[http://www.elegantcoding.com/2018/03/reimagining-suburban-
ya...](http://www.elegantcoding.com/2018/03/reimagining-suburban-yard-to-
reverse.html?showComment=1520978508113#c5891458890176884648)

Maybe we should be considering every option we have to promote a healthy
reduced CO2 environment.

~~~
godelski
> Does the planet really need more gasoline?

Are you just going to buy everyone new cars? Or replace all existing vehicles?

I mean I'm all for electric cars and other modes of transport, but the problem
is that we have an existing infrastructure that will take a long time to
replace. As an example, the vehicle I drive is from '97\. I still see people
driving cars from the early 90's (or even 80's) as their daily driver. (And it
is more common for poorer people to drive older cars).

So do we need a new gasoline? Yes, unless you want to either replace 30+ years
of vehicles, or wait that long.

~~~
francisofascii
Electric buses are fast growing in cities, led by China. LA says it will have
all buses converted by 2030.

~~~
godelski
This may surprise you, but half of the people don't live in cities like these.
My city doesn't have any form of public transportation. And this isn't
uncommon.

------
sp332
Would this have all the other downsides of regular gasoline - nitrous oxides
and particulates? If so, I'm going to keep pushing for getting gas-powered
cars off the roads at least in populated areas.

~~~
godelski
> I'm going to keep pushing for getting gas-powered cars off the roads at
> least in populated areas.

This technology is more trying to make it feasible to have a carbon neutral
form of transportation. Most people do not have the money to buy an electric
vehicle. I for one drive a vehicle made in '97.

~~~
philipkglass
Most people who can't afford to buy an EV can't afford to buy carbon-neutral
synthetic gasoline either. I'd expect it to cost $8-$10 dollars a gallon, at
least with foreseeable near-term technologies.

People who already own ICE gas vehicles and don't drive them very much might
still come out ahead buying $10/gallon fuel vs. acquiring an EV. (I put maybe
1500 miles/year on my car.)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Biodiesel is just over $3. Citation?

~~~
philipkglass
Biodiesel is neither synthetic in the sense that I mean (direct chemical
synthesis, no biomass) nor is it presently carbon-neutral. It also isn't
suitable fuel for legacy gasoline-fueled vehicles.

My estimate is based on adjustments to the LANL Green Freedom concept for
synthetic gasoline from 2007:

[http://bioage.typepad.com/greencarcongress/docs/greenfreedom...](http://bioage.typepad.com/greencarcongress/docs/greenfreedom.pdf)

The authors claim that for profitable operation "the price of gasoline at the
pump must be about $4.60/gal." This number incorporated the authors'
unrealistically optimistic expectations of low-cost Generation III nuclear
reactor construction. It rises to $5.69/gallon, adjusting for inflation[1].
The rest of the cost increase comes from my estimate of using renewable
electricity sources instead of cheap nuclear power. (It would be _even more_
expensive if I used nuclear power at actually-observed costs of currently-in-
progress American reactor construction.)

[1] Yes, I used CPI, and I know it's not really appropriate for capital-
intensive industrial projects. This is just a back-of-the-envelope estimate.

~~~
ahakki
Sounds cheaper than gas here in Switzerland.

------
ams6110
Call me skeptical. Hydrocarbon fuels have a lot of energy in the chemical
bonds. That's why they are good as fuel!

Making hydrocarbons from CO2 will require hydrogen and energy. Where does that
energy come from? Maybe solar, or wind, which would actually be a good use
assuming this process can stop and start as sun/wind is available, but the
amount of solar panels or windmills needed to replace current amount of energy
sourced from petroleum would seem to me to be staggering (I haven't done the
math).

~~~
notabee
We are going to need a staggering amount of renewable power anyways, but this
could at least partly answer the concern of how to store that renewable power
since it is variable in its output.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
> “This opens up the possibility that we could stabilize the climate for
> affordable amounts of money without changing the entire energy system or
> changing everyone’s behavior.”

If you really want to accomplish something on a large scale, you need
something like this. People have been talking about overpopulation dangers for
centuries, and human population growth remained high. Cheap, effective birth
control gets releases, and population growth is stabilizing.

In general, tech solutions are easier than large scale social solutions.

------
blisterpeanuts
Reforestation, and a limitation to asphalt/concrete that replaces grass, would
also take up CO2. I read somewhere that an acre of grass takes up over a ton
and a half of CO2 per year. That's a _lot_. If we could revert a million acres
a year to grasslands, we'd eventually put the Earth back on an even keel.

There's also the algae in the ocean which generate a significant amount of the
world's oxygen -- reduce pollution of the oceans and maintain a healthy food
chain, and perhaps this will restore itself as well.

The Amazon rain forest alone is responsible for a huge chunk of CO2-to-O2
work, and they're chopping it down at an alarming rate. Stop destroying the
rain forest and restore as much of it as possible.

I think these policies would be far more effective long term than this hokey
air-to-fuel thing, and without needing to crack water for the H2 that the plan
requires.

That said, it sounds like cool technology and if it became competitive with
fossil fuels, using (I suppose) solar energy to obtain the H2, it's a
brilliant idea.

------
jadedhacker
I was thinking about this and looked into some of the research. We're not
quite there yet though. However, if we do have a practical way of doing it, I
think it would be best if we use volatile renewables like solar and wind and
store the excess as hydrocarbons. That would give use a smooth transition
path, reduce the energy storage problem, and provide a source of carbon-
neutral fuels.

However, longer term we must still move away from burning fossil fuels even if
we make them completely carbon neutral, because while its a slow effect they
are not oxygen neutral...

[http://scrippso2.ucsd.edu/](http://scrippso2.ucsd.edu/)

~~~
philipkglass
_However, longer term we must still move away from burning fossil fuels even
if we make them completely carbon neutral, because while its a slow effect
they are not oxygen neutral..._

If synthetic hydrocarbons get their hydrogen from water (electrolysis or high
temperature thermochemical cycles), their life cycle is oxygen-neutral as
well. The extraction of hydrogen from water simultaneously produces a matching
quantity of oxygen.

~~~
jadedhacker
That's an excellent point.

------
source99
They claim to be pulling 1 ton of CO2 out of the air per day. Some older
numbers I just found show we are putting 10 Billion tons per year. This only
has to be scaled 27 million times to equal it out...

~~~
igravious
I wonder what year it will be that CO₂ ppm in the atmosphere levels off and I
wonder what level it will be at then? I wonder what the world will look like
then.

------
dfee
I imagine a future where an industry exists that is federally subsidized and
pulls CO2 from the air.

However, our need for carbon sequestration is ultimately surpassed by the
industry’s “output”, and we end up heading in the other direction.

Because regulators tend to be captured, we end up with one industry generating
CO2 (for all the positive reasons we need CO2) so that the sequestration
industry doesn’t kill off all the plants, etc.

~~~
notabee
Not only would this not be a problem for many decades even if carbon capture
is wildly successful, but releasing carbon into the air is much, much easier
than pulling it back out. If that were not true, we would not be facing the
catastrophe that is ahead of us. You could literally just burn old coal mines
or something if in some far-flung future the nefarious carbon-capturers were
somehow sucking down too much. We have over 100 years' worth of artificially
introduced atmospheric carbon since the beginning of the industrial revolution
to work through before this will ever be a problem. Please educate yourself on
the actual quantities involved.

~~~
dfee
I don't think you understood my comment was about how people respond to
incentives. Anyway, I'm particularly interested in this remark you made:

> We have over 100 years' worth of artificially introduced atmospheric carbon
> since the beginning of the industrial revolution to work through before this
> will ever be a problem. Please educate yourself on the actual quantities
> involved.

Is "100 years' worth" a unit of measure of CO2 I'm unfamiliar with? Are you
saying that the industrial revolution was only 100 years ago? Is this the
"actual quantities involved" you were referring to?

~~~
notabee
I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were inexperienced with searching the internet
for information. Here's some handy links with some numbers:

[https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions](https://www.co2.earth/global-
co2-emissions)

[https://www.earth-syst-sci-
data.net/7/349/2015/essd-7-349-20...](https://www.earth-syst-sci-
data.net/7/349/2015/essd-7-349-2015.pdf)

"The total cumulative emissions for 1870–2014 are 545 ± 55 GtC. These
emissions were partitioned among the atmosphere (230 ± 5 GtC based on
atmospheric measurements in ice cores of 288 ppm (Sect. “Global atmospheric
CO2 growth rate estimates”; Joos and Spahni, 2008) and recent direct
measurements of 397.2 ppm; Dlugokencky and Tans, 2014), ocean (155 ± 20 GtC
using Khatiwala et al., 2013, prior to 1959 and Table 8 otherwise), and land
(160 ± 60 GtC by the difference)"

Estimates may vary on what to count as the start of the industrial revolution,
but the internet indicates that it started in Britain around 1760. It did not
spread much from there until 1840 or so. Here's a quantity emitted into the
atmosphere since 1870: 230 gigatonnes of carbon (GtC). That's 230,000,000,000
tonnes. Not carbon dioxide, just the carbon itself. Multiply that by 3.67 for
weight of CO2 gas: 844,100,000,000 tonnes CO2. Note that this is metric
tonnes, so 2,204.6 pounds per tonne for us in metric-challenged countries.
This is just legacy CO2 without counting other greenhouse gases, starting from
a few decades after the industrial revolution went global to close to present
day. We're adding around 10 GtC (36.7 GtC CO2) every year to that total
recently.

I used this calculator, though I had to remove the commas from the number
because there seems to be a character limit.
[https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-
calc...](https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator)

So let's take one of the measures from there. It said that that much CO2 could
be absorbed by 994,228,504,122 acres of U.S. forest in a year. Let's try that
out. There are 57,308,738 square miles of land surface area on Earth
(habitable and non-habitable). Multiply that by 640 to get 36,677,592,320
acres. Alright, subtract the entire land surface area of Earth, whether we
could grow trees on it or not, from the number of acres of trees we'd need to
capture that carbon in a year: 994,228,504,122 - 36,677,592,320 =
957,550,911,802. That's a lot left over. How many planet Earths' worth of land
area would we need to clear that much CO2 with just trees in a year then?
27.10 Earths. Okay, well that's easy then. We just need to somehow blanket the
entire Earth including mountains, deserts, etc. with trees for 27 years to
remove the CO2 backlog! So easy, right? Except we're also adding to that
number constantly.

So if we just assume for the sake of argument that this man-made carbon
capture works as well as blanketing the entire land surface area in trees, and
we somehow started at scale immediately, it would take 27 years to get back to
_baseline_. (Let's put aside that there would be 27 * 3.9 = 105 GtC additional
in the atmosphere to deal with if emissions were flat, and pray that the land
and ocean would keep absorbing the rest) I guess if you're really worried
about them overshooting that mark, you can go ahead and panic now about that,
and not about the _massive surplus_ of carbon we've got hanging around
trapping the sun's heat.

Oh, and I didn't even get into methane or N2O, which are also heating things
up.

I know it takes time and energy to google things (each search is about 0.2
grams of CO2 emitted equivalent) but I believe in your ability to do so.

------
prewett
The article didn't talk at all about what the limestone is used for. What
happens to the carbon in the limestone (CaCO3)? Is the limestone reusable? If
we have to keep mining limestone, it just converts the problem, although I
assume there isn't really a shortage of limestone at the moment, given how the
ocean has been making it for billions of years.

------
gnode
Converting CO2 back to fuels to be burnt in combustion engines sounds
counterproductive to me. If the goal is to reduce atmospheric CO2, then it
would be better to more permanently sequester it in carbon-rich building
materials, for instance.

~~~
DennisP
Depends. Assuming we keep using hydrocarbon fuels to some extent, and want to
be carbon neutral, we have to either (1) create them from atmospheric CO2, or
(2) absorb the atmospheric CO2 emitted from fossil hydrocarbons, and sequester
it somewhere.

Which we should do depends on which is cheaper and more scalable.

------
classicsnoot
Can someone explain to me how any technology or change in mass habit will
arrest changes and return us to, as well as hold us at, a perceived
equilibrium that never truly existed within our dynamic climatic environment?

------
newnewpdro
I once had to pass on purchasing a home because its well had been ruined by
the nearby gas station.

Even if they find a way to hypothetically enable a future for the internal
combustion engine, why would we want it? Good riddance.

------
hokua2
The article doesnt mention it takes more energy to recapture than you get out
(you cannot violoate the laws of thermodynamics). Solar and Wind are thus key
to making this sustainable

------
dsfyu404ed
I hope this is as good as it sounds. Liquid fuels have a lot of pros.

If can see this being useful to nations who want to reduce their dependency on
other nations for energy.

------
wmnwmn
Very simple question that the article completely failed to address: does the
process output more energy in the form of gasoline than it takes in? I am
quite certain that the answer is, NO, which means that the factory ends up
putting more CO2 into the atmosphere than it is taking out...unless the
factory itself runs on renewable energy, in which case who needs it at all.

~~~
JoshCole
The article does address the question, but I think you're coming at this from
the wrong angle. Let me give an example of what I mean by that.

Let's say a person swallows poisons. The poison is going to kill them if it
stays inside them with the amount that they swallowed. They absolutely need to
vomit or they are going to die. The way your comment is approaching this,
you're basically saying that vomiting isn't worthwhile because it takes more
energy than it gives back.

In this analogy, taking carbon out of the atmosphere is like vomiting up a
poison. If we extend the metaphor a little bit, then using renewable is like
eating normal food. So if we take the way your comment is approaching things
in an analogous way, you're also implying that vomiting up poisons is
pointless if the energy we used to vomit was acquired from healthy food.

The metaphor does start breaking down eventually, but its a lot more obvious
why this matters when you realize it isn't whether a question of whether we
need to vomit - its just a question of how we do it and what we gain from
doing it. This method gives us a carbon-neutral fuel, which is valuable. It's
also somewhat cheap. There are other ways to remove CO2 from the atmosphere
that don't have those upsides.

------
squozzer
I have my doubts. It always seems more expensive to work against the 2nd Law
of Thermodynamics than with it.

------
dicroce
WTF? This is amazing... Please be real! Please be real!

~~~
igravious
Too good to be true I'd say… Still, I admire your hopefulness, me I'm just a
bucket of inured cynicism.

------
vanderZwan
> _“This opens up the possibility that we could stabilize the climate for
> affordable amounts of money without changing the entire energy system or
> changing everyone’s behavior.”_

Regardless of whether this technology works as promised, the last part (and
possibly the first part too) does not show the right attitude to solving this
issue, I think. It's not just technology that got us into this mess. It's also
_how_ we decided to apply that technology. Silver bullet or not, we need to
change that.

It's one thing if the necessary changes don't have to be as drastic and doom
and gloom as predicted until now, but if everyone thinks _" oh it's fine, we
fixed this!"_ we'll be hit by Jevon's Paradox[0] so hard that we somehow
manage to destroy ourselves anyway.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox)

