
Australian researchers set record for carbon dioxide capture - pseudolus
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-australian-carbon-dioxide-capture.html
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sudhirj
There was an article a while ago asking why stock prices have not priced in
climate change, and I think this is why. As much as we hate to admit it, the
solution to climate change will be as industrial as the industries that caused
it.

I'm planting trees whenever I can, but on a planetary scale I think this is
going to be fixed only by manufacturing zero emission transport, and negative
emission machines, all of which will increase stock prices of industrial
companies with factories.

Fusion will be the ultimate solution to all problems if it happens – we'll
have enough effectively free energy to scrub the atmosphere to our exact
specifications with this or any other halfway efficient method, and enough
cheap energy to flood all land including deserts with desalinated water.

We engineered our way into this problem, I don't think we can kumbayah our way
out of it.

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dan-robertson
You don’t necessarily need fusion or nuclear power to remove carbon dioxide
from the atmosphere. At least theoretically, you get more energy from burning
hydrocarbons than is necessary to capture the released CO2 from the
atmosphere. So you can (in theory) burn hydrocarbons while capturing the
emissions and still producing energy.

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posix_me_less
> _So you can (in theory) burn hydrocarbons while capturing the emissions and
> still producing energy._

I like this theory, any example of trying it in practice?

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ZeroGravitas
Theres working examples, however they use the captured CO2 to get more oil out
of nearly exhausted oil wells, so its a bit of a non-solution.

We will probably need to capture carbon but it'll be cheaper to use renewables
or nuclear to provide the energy than burn oil.

Even if you use fossil fuels as an input (say because youre capturing methane
that would otherwise escape i to the atmosphere), you can do stuff like break
them down into grapgite and hydrogen so you getha clean burning fuel and
useful material.

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vajrabum
Here's the actual paper which has a lot more information including
possibilities for improving the process. [https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-
physical-science/fulltext/...](https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-physical-
science/fulltext/S2666-3864\(20\)30023-0#secsectitle0065)

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opportune
Wait a sec.

Coal produces about 24 MJ/kg and this only takes 1.29 MJ/kg of CO2, or 4.73/kg
of carbon. Even if coal were pure carbon this means we could burn coal to
capture ~5x as much carbon as it generates. That’s amazing!

I’m assuming there are significant energy costs in scaling production of these
materials up to any scale at which it could have an environmental impact
though.

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DennisP
With global CO2 emissions of 36 gigatonnes annually, it would take 1.4
terawatts or about 7% of total annual energy consumption (i.e. not just
electricity) to absorb all our emissions. That's a lot but fixing a problem
for just 7% of the energy we used to make the problem strikes me as pretty
good.

A gallon of gasoline produces 9 kg CO2, requiring 3 kWh to absorb, at a cost
of 30 cents. There'd also be capital cost.

Avoiding emissions will often be cheaper, but for many sectors that's not so
easy, so direct air capture could end up being an important part of the
solution. We've also got a lot of excess CO2 right now that we'd be better off
removing.

Sequestering CO2 seems to be a solved problem by injecting into basalt
formations, where it turns into rock in about a year.

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Scarblac
Is the problem of injecting CO2 solved to the point where we can do it at a
rate of 36 gigaton per year, indefinitely? And how much energy does that cost?

~~~
DennisP
I'm not advocating we do that much, just that we use it for the amount of
emissions that's less practical to avoid. There's enough basalt for a very
large amount, and energy to pump gas underground wouldn't be a major factor.

Another option though is to turn the CO2 into liquid fuels. That wouldn't
reduce ambient CO2 but to whatever extent we keep using liquid fuels (e.g. for
airliners), it'd be nice if they were carbon neutral.

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pfundstein
I'm amazed to see the organization that invented wifi is still pushing the
envelope after suffering so many budget cuts at the hands of the "Liberal"
(conservative) government.

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orwin
In most countries, liberals are considered at least center, if not rightwing
and conservative. I don't know about australian politics but it seems like its
the same there. By Liberal they mean liberal economically (small government,
no regulations) and conservative socially.

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dmos62
As someone coming from a political environment that doesn't use the term, I
seem to periodically forget what is meant by liberal. Your concise definition
is very useful.

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Myce
I am not a native English speaker and the article seems to use a decent amount
of scientific language.

Therefore I've might have missed it, but what do they do with the captured
carbon?

Can it be used for new materials or products, or will it need to be stored
indefinitely?

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jabirali
Here are relevant links to Wikipedia on CO2 storage:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage#Seq...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage#Sequestration)

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

To curb global warming, the best option is likely to store it underground,
e.g. in reservoirs previously used for oil or gas production.

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foobar_
A packet of seeds is 5$. I think what is needed is exact monitoring of
emissions and policy to replenish it. I'm still not sure how efficient carbon
capture technology is in terms of number of trees.

If we go by the most common sci-fi themes, the 0.1% can give little to two
shits of the climate, escape to mars and use earth as a mining colony. The
military sheep will serve the 0.1% and enforce the apartheid happily. This is
exactly how the 1st world uses the third world anyways, earth would just be
the third planet.

From a programming perspective ... how costly will it be to get rid of COBOL
code ? Well machines that use oil are the same thing.

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plerpin
Am I reading this right? 1.29 megajoules for one kilo captured? Uh, this
doesn't seem feasible at scale.

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mkj
1kw of solar panels could do 5 tonnes a year. That seems feasible. 1000kw *
3600 * 5hr/day / 1.29e6 * 365

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chrisco255
How does this compare with just planting trees?

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lgrebe
Trees will die, decompose and release the CO2 back into the atmosphere. "Keep
it in the ground" will need to become "Put it back in the ground"

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tom_mellior
My reading of the article is that actual storage of the carbon is not part of
this work either.

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canofbars
Wouldn't this captured carbon be a burnable fuel? Surely if you put it back
underground a mining company would just dig it up and burn it again.

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mhandley
No, this captures carbon dioxide. Turning carbon dioxide back into carbon is
not part of the process. You still need a way to store the CO2 permanently.

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Sabinus
Tell me why this won't work.

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dukoid
It will never be cheaper than avoiding co2 in the first place (or at least
catching at the source) so while it might have applications, it seems
impractical for making significant progress towards saving the planet at this
point.

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posix_me_less
What do you mean by "saving the planet"? Do you mean keeping the population
numbers and saving the western way of life at the same time? What would make
significant progress towards that goal?

