
Catching CO2 from trucks and reducing their emissions by 90% - finphil
https://nuadox.com/post/189850038527/co2-trucks-emission
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gus_massa
This is too complicated and I'm not convinced, but the research paper has more
details that make more sense that the short press release
[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2019.0014...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2019.00143/full)

They don't use the collected CO2 to make diesel fuel, they make methane. Some
trucks may use methane as fuel.

IIUC they don't expect every gas station to have a converted from CO2 to fuel,
but to have the conversion in the operational bases of the trucks, or collect
it and send it to a specialized facility.

They use the heat from the exhaust gases to power the device, the calculations
are in the paper.

They say that in other projects, they use the same heat of the exhaust gases
to improve the efficiency of the fuel in a 10%. So this is not totally "free".

How does this compare to releasing the CO2 (and getting a 10% of efficiency)
and collecting the CO2 from the air in a central location?

How does this compare to using Hydrogen as fuel? I guess the difference is
that most of this technology is buildable now, but Hydrogen storage is too
difficult for now.

How does this compare with a electric truck? I guess this system gives more
autonomy, but all the chemical reactions to convert the CO2 to methane are
less efficient that good batteries.

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karmakaze
One reason why it should be much more efficient in energy expended for CO2
captured is that the concentrations from the truck exhaust is so much higher
than in the atmosphere.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
On the other hand, a central facility can often be more efficient (other
things being equal) than a bunch of small facilities. (A central generating
facility, for example, is more efficient than a bunch of car engines.)

That said, my money is on the higher concentration of CO2 winning by far.

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remote_phone
Making electric trucks makes more sense. Then you can centralize the CO2
collection to the power plants and make it much more efficient.

~~~
on_and_off
I don't think so.

Building an electric car emits a ton of CO2 as well. The figure that is often
used is that building your car generates just as much CO2 that what it will
generate during its lifetime of driving.

So even if your truck runs 100% on renewable energy (and that's a big if, not
to mention that creating this system also generates pollution before becoming
green), retrofitting existing vehicles with technologies such as this one
should be studied seriously.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
> Building an electric car emits a ton of CO2 as well

And building a regular fuel car doesn't? (Assuming we need to build some kind
of car anyway?)

"Electric cars are bad for environment because of building them and producing
batteries" is plainly just a myth.

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detaro
> _(Assuming we need to build some kind of car anyway?)_

Why do you assume that, given the parent comment explicitly talks about
retrofits?

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AnimalMuppet
_Some_ retrofits will happen. I would guess, though, that 90% of electric
vehicles will be manufactured as electric vehicles, rather than as retrofits.
So to focus only on retrofits to make the argument is rather misleading.

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blunte
Their technology aside, I don't think it's a good idea to put 7% of their
vehicle payload on the roof. That would measurably elevate the center of
gravity, which is not ideal for any vehicle that turns.

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mhandley
Seems like this might be a better solution for shipping than for trucks.
Batteries are not really a viable solution for shipping, except on short
routes. They're probably stuck with hydrocarbon fuels, but this might work,
and the extra mass of CO2 carried wouldn't really be a big deal for a ship.
Probably won't work with current dirty bunker fuel though, as I expect that
contains too many contaminants; it would need the fuel to be cleaned up a lot
first so I wouldn't expect the shipping industry to be overly enthusiastic.

~~~
crca
77% of semi truck routes are 250 miles or less, a distance easily covered by
today’s EV technology.

~~~
njarboe
What fraction of the total semi truck traveled miles are on those short
routes?

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H8crilA
This will probably not work because the joules maths does not add up:

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

It's a cool student project though, and could possibly work on a large scale
if we actually had a solution for the fundamental energy problem.

~~~
hhjj
I don't follow your logic. Could you explain your thoughts a bit more please ?

~~~
H8crilA
It's okay to collect the CO2, but what source of energy will be used to
reverse the C -> CO2 reaction? Renewables and even nuclear are by far
insufficient.

Global warming is fundamentally a problem of sourcing enough energy in a
different way than we used to. And the world/technology is nowhere near ready.

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swiley
>Just convert the CO2 to fuel using renewable energy

That’s a nice idea but I haven’t seen a reaction that reduces CO2 anywhere,
I’m not a professional chemist though so maybe I’m missing something?

EDIT: lol, yes I am [1]. I should just stick to software since I only mildly
suck at that.

Also all that crazy tech sounds a bit like overkill; alkali hydroxides absorb
CO2 and are pretty cheap to produce.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrochemical_reduction_of...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrochemical_reduction_of_carbon_dioxide)

~~~
gus_massa
It is possible to convert the CO2 to methane
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction)
but it is not as efficient as portrayed in the media. Conversion to gasoline
or diesel fuel is much more difficult and inefficient.

~~~
swiley
Well that only makes methane so you need an extra step (like Fischer topsch)
to get longer hydrocarbons. So it makes sense that using it that way would be
way less efficient.

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thereisnospork
What a stupid idea[0]. Massive distributed capital expenditure for the express
purpose of collecting CO2 for an uneconomic (but technically feasible)
conversion to methane.

If converting CO2 to methane made sense in any form[1], it would happen first
at point sources (e.g. breweries) long before this Rube Goldberg-esque
inanity.

[0] No really, it's awful. Might as well try and collect the water cars emit
to try and reduce our dependence on bottled water.

[1]It, as a rule, doesn't per thermodynamics and Coloumb's constant.

~~~
adrianN
Converting CO2 to Methane makes a lot of sense if you want to store large
amounts of power. Every country already has the infrastructure for storing and
distributing gas and turning it into electricity and heat.

~~~
thereisnospork
Not compared to doing pretty much anything else with that power. Which
includes easy things like pumping water uphill, charging lithium batteries, or
just making H2 and distributing that into the gas grid directly.

To make CH4 from CO2 takes 8 electrons at (near enough) 2V, giving 1 / (96450
* 8) moles CH4 per amp second. Per tonne, that works out to roughly
1000$/tonne CH4 or 2900$/tonne CO2. Assm 4c/kwh.

So with an exceptionally efficient process requiring negligible capital
expense or labor it is possible to convert 3000$ and one tonne of CO2 into
200$ of natural gas. Short of making rocket fuel on Mars, I'm not smelling
even the slightest whiff of an application: which is why I am so derisive of
the article's proposal - charitably it is at best proposing the equivalent of
solar roadways.

~~~
adrianN
Hydrogen is a lot harder to store than Methane, and afaik you can't substitute
100% Hydrogen for natural gas without changing large chunks of the heating
infrastructure. But you're of course right that making hydrogen has a much
better efficiency.

~~~
thereisnospork
Britain is/was looking into just that with some moderate seriousness[0]; a
quick google suggests as much as 30% enrichment. Though as I recall they
wanted to use SMR/ATR on natural gas and bury the resulting CO2 in the north
sea as opposed to electrolysis.

[0]
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180611133412.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180611133412.htm)

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joe_the_user
Wow, umh, hmm

This and technologies like it _sound_ like something that could literally save
the planet. If this sort of thing could be used for trucks, it could be used
for trains, ships and stationary engines.

As far as I can tell, the approach involves recycling the CO2 into other fuels
and I assume eventually burning everything in a fashion that creates other
pollutants but I assume much less CO2. I assume that at greater cost, you
could just sequester the CO2 also.

So what's stopping this?

~~~
Iv
"So what's stopping this?"

In US? Climate denialism.

In EU. Not much, this is after all something reasearch in Switzerland that has
already done other CO2 extraction research, despite scorn and cynicism by
misguided ecologists.

I think the time for this tech has finally come. There used to be an argument
that if we talk too much about these, emissions habits may never change. Now
it is clear that simply cutting down emissions will bring us to +2C degrees at
best. Every additional tech we can have to cut down emissions or extract CO2
from atmosphere is welcomed.

~~~
perfunctory
> In US? Climate denialism.

Hm, not sure.

"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because
of those who look on and do nothing."

\-- Albert Einstein

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crca
You recapture CO2 at the expense of increased fossil fuel consumption due to
lower payload capacity. Is this really better than just going straight to
electric transports?

Edit: Assuming you can fuel the trucks with the product of the CO2 to fuel
conversion, is it still better than electric?

~~~
on_and_off
it can be way better if that system can be retrofitted on existing trucks.

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perfunctory
Brilliant. Now let's force the governments to put in place the right
incentives. How do we do that?

~~~
nothrabannosir
With a carbon tax. It will automatically make fossil fuels more expensive,
while this device produces a fuel not subject to the tax.

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TheRealPomax
The problem is that people focus on the word "carbon" and then ignore what the
word "tax" means: tax is collected into a single account. Where it came from
is irrelevant, and what's done with it is in no way tied to where it came
from, so if you want a carbon tax, you better damn well also have some system
in place that forces X% of a munipal/state/provice/federal/whatever budget to
first be formally declared as reserved for spending on this particular issue.
Otherwise that carbon tax goes to basically everything before it goes to
"augmenting cars".

~~~
nothrabannosir
A carbon tax is a pigovian tax which works by disincentivising the undesired
behaviour. It makes burning fossil fuels more expensive, thereby making
everything else cheaper; in that sense you could also call it a "green
subsidy".

What you do with that money is irrelevant. Turn it into a big paper boat and
float it down the Hudson. The effect is in the levying of the tax, not in what
is done with it.

See for example Canada, who directly deposits the revenue back to its
residents.

The "augmenting cars" bit comes from people who don't want to pay the (now
high) price of fossil fuels anymore, and instead want to avoid that tax by
going green. That's how pigovian taxes work. See the UK who introduced a
carbon tax, and promptly saw a huge shift in energy production to green energy
and lower CO₂ emitting fuels.

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whatshisface
You could also have a dollar-neutral carbon tax by lowering, say, income tax
to exactly offset the revenue from the carbon tax. The population as a whole
would not lose any money, but low-carbon behavior would be incentivised.

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finphil
Wow! I'm surprised by the number of comments.

