
A “negative emissions” plant has opened in Iceland - jonbaer
https://qz.com/1100221/the-worlds-first-negative-emissions-plant-has-opened-in-iceland-turning-carbon-dioxide-into-stone/
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abalone
Not to pour too much cold water on this, but aside from the extreme cost --
let's just assume that comes down -- these plants ideally need to be located
near specific basalt geological formations _and_ need a substantial freshwater
supply (27:1 ratio to captured CO2). So while it is most economical to capture
at source power plants it may not be geographically possible. And when they're
not located by a source it's 10X less efficient.

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alexandercrohde
Of course. The article doesn't mean nor need to imply that this technology is
practical yet, simply to illustrate progress is being made (and it is).

For any technology you can poo-poo the early stages ("This Wright brothers
plane can only fly 200 feet," "This computer is the size of a room and costs
several years' salary").

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ISL
Most plants have negative carbon-dioxide emissions. The trick is not cutting
them down.

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BurningFrog
Cutting down trees and building permanent structures with the wood is a great
way to take CO₂ out of the air.

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phs318u
“We had to destroy the village in order to save the village.“

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BurningFrog
There is some misunderstanding here.

Does it help if I point out that new trees grow up to replace the chopped down
ones?

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pedrocr
_> "Moreover, they’ve been able to do it for less than $30 per metric ton of
CO2."_

If my math is right this means that with ~5% of the cost of the fuel you could
offset car emissions to make transportation carbon neutral. Seems quite cheap
if that's the case.

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GigabyteCoin
That was achieved by placing the scrubber directly on the coal plant's exhaust
stack.

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pedrocr
This particular solution doesn't scale (most power isn't geothermal and we
should just offline coal entirely) but the fact that we're already in the
ballpark is at least promising.

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jgamman
but it does create options for a lot of countries lucky enough to have
geothermal resources ie, those around the pacific rim, NE africa, east coast
US and Italy.

not a lot of driver for domestic electricity production but carbon capture is
a world-wide market...

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exabrial
I think calling it a 'plant' may be deceptive. The picture makes it look like
a package the size of a dumpster, not quite the size of a shipping container.

Is the byproduct (not sure if it's purified gas or a solid compound) of any
industrial or material use?

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toomuchtodo
> Is the byproduct (not sure if it's purified gas or a solid compound) of any
> industrial or material use?

No. The byproduct is injected back into the ground to be remineralized,
hopefully locked up to prevent its re-release into the atmosphere.

EDIT: If you used the byproduct in another process where it eventually would
make its way back into the atmosphere, the process would no longer be carbon
negative.

"This month, Climeworks installed a unit that captures carbon dioxide directly
from the air and transfers it to CarbFix to inject underground. Because
CarbFix has been monitoring the injection sites for the last three years, they
can be sure there will be no leakage. And once mineralized, the CO2 will
remain trapped for thousands or millions of years. This makes the Climeworks-
CarbFix system the world’s first verified “negative emissions” plant."

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dogma1138
You can sequester the carbon in a product and still be able to use it without
releasing it to the atmosphere.

For example you can sequester the CO2 in limestone which is a useful building
material.

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jaggederest
Limestone (calcium carbonate) is even easy to make. You can make it "at home"
by dissolving unslaked lime (calcium oxide) in water and blowing bubbles in it
with a straw.

The real problem is that calcium oxide is usually converted from limestone via
massive calcining, which releases... CO2.

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orthoganol
Out of curiosity, we would need ~500 of these stations in their current form
to offset a typical coal power plant (7.5 thousand tons co2/ year, a claim
from Climework's about video, v. 3.5 million tons co2 / year), or about 5-6
million stations to offset global co2 yearly emission (40-45 billion tons co2/
year).

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wereHamster
...at the current efficiency levels. Note that this is only their second
installation, so don't expect any miracles. The technology will improve, I'm
sure.

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perpetualcrayon
I'm not that familiar with this sort of thing, but my thinking has always been
that:

If we could theoretically terraform some other planet, why can't similar
things be done on earth to improve our atmosphere?

Especially now w/ renewable energy at historically low prices.

My fear is that once this kind of technology is deployed at scale, it could
make industry far too complacent again.

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throwaway5752
The problem is that "terraforming another planet" is stuff that young men who
are impressionable read in science fiction, it isn't reality. We can't
terraform another planet. We haven't even successfully run a fully-enclosed
self-sustaining ecosystem capable of supporting human life on earth. We have
never sent anyone to another planet, and the rocket equation highly constrains
interplanetary transportation, let along radiation shielded interplanetary
transportation capable of sending humans.

We will _never_ terraform Mars, I doubt a human will ever set foot there. I
doubt we'll even survive as an advanced species for 200 more years.

We actually _have_ every bit of necessary technology to sustainably run
something very close to modern society, and we are too stupid collectively do
fix terrestrial political problems. We don't even need to terraform our own
planet, we just have to stop digging up coal and pumping up oil and burning
it. No wasteful and inefficient "negative emission" stupidness is necessary.
This is like "clean coal". It's something that very, very wealthy people that
make money from oil and coal bring up to essentially troll the populace, and
distract them from the problem until we're as close to the brink as possible.

I'm sorry to be depressing, but this magical thinking about sending people to
Mars and terraforming planets is counterproductive.

edit: I take it back, we can terraform a planet. The sum total of human
activity for 150 years has warmed the Earth few degrees (though they are a
critical few degrees)

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Pfhreak
I can understand the "We'll never terraform Mars" argument. (It's certainly a
looooong ways off if we ever even start. I suspect there's not much value in
it.)

But never landing a human on Mars seems like a bad bet to me. With Musk/SpaceX
pushing for it, and our history of landing rovers there, it seems like putting
some people on Mars, however briefly, is in our future. I'm curious why you
feel this way.

~~~
throwaway5752
The energy for the trip, the return trip, the duration, and weight
requirements associated with radiation shield are why I'm skeptical. It's
technically possibly, certainly. So is switching to a 100% solar fueled grid.
But I hate to be to pessimistic: I'm older than average here, and I would feel
unbelievably privileged to witness humans landing on Mars. I hope it happens.

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lettergram
Idk how old you are, but I suspect within the next 20-30 years we will be
deploying robots that turn the iron, soil, etc. On Mars into a plastic, resin,
metal-frameworks, fuel and water. From there robots can build some facilities
or at least materials and humans can land in a pre-constructed environment.

I dont know about a return trip though, but I do think long term inhabitation
is possible. Especially, with our advances in robotics, genetics, and
medicine.

Also remember it takes a lot less to launch a rocket off of Mars. For
instance, you only need 33 tons of propellant to get an 18 ton MAV off the
ground[1]

[1] [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151002-mars-
missi...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/10/151002-mars-mission-nasa-
return-space/)

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throwaway5752
I should make it, then. I hope you're right! I hope we solve ground level
problems, first.

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EADGBE
Oh great, now people will start refuting the need for trees.

