First Successful Demonstration of CO2 Capture Technology 521
An anonymous coward writes "Global Research Technologies, LLC (GRT), a technology research and development company, and Klaus Lackner from Columbia University have achieved the
successful demonstration of a bold new technology to capture carbon from the air. The "air extraction" prototype has successfully demonstrated that indeed carbon dioxide (CO2) can be captured from the atmosphere. This is GRT's first step toward a commercially viable air capture device."
Re:How much coal to power this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Blueprints or it's bullshit!
It's a start... (Score:5, Insightful)
I assume that this is more energy efficient than the usual refrigeration based methods for generating pure CO2. This is a good thing. However, they don't say what they're going to do with the CO2 once they purify it. If you can't answer that question, you haven't solved the sequesteration problem.
The spice must flow. (Score:5, Insightful)
I find this idea somewhat concerning. All too often the human race is guilty of doing things because they can, before they learn whether or not they should. I'm all for reducing carbon emissions, but in all honesty, what the hell will we break if we start trying to extract too much carbon from the atmosphere.
Mind you, find a way to quickly and efficiently separate the carbon from the oxygen, install in long range space craft and you suddenly have near limitless air for deep space voyages.
Re:Uh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Also recycling paper is a load of crap, it adds to polution by needing all sorts of nasty chemicals to bleach the paper so it can be re-used, not to mention all the petrolum needed to cart stuff from peoples homes to recyling centres, here they use multiple trucks, one for waste one for recycling.
It costs the US$8bill a yr in subsidies to pay for recycling and cleaning up the chemical by-products, it costs much less to plant and cut down trees.
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can some provide a useful link? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can someone provide a link to something that answers the obvious questions:
1. How does it work?
2. How much energy does it take to extract it's 10 tonnes of CO2 per year?
3. How does this compare with refrigeration or plants as a means to reduce CO2 concentration?
4. What is it's likely cost?
Re:The spice must flow. (Score:1, Insightful)
GB.
Chemist.
P.S. to solve the AGW pseudo problem you better plan on removing most of CO2 from the oceans as well.
Re:It's a start... (Score:4, Insightful)
Google: "synthesizing hydrocarbons from water and carbon dioxide":
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox
Apparently they've been working on this technology for awhile. I think they were originally planning on using the exhaust gases from a coal plant or something as a source of raw carbon dioxide. But I don't see why you couldn't use this new technology!
http://www.inl.gov/videos/sc/syntrolysis.pdf [inl.gov]
http://www.kpk.gov.pl/images/i7pr/bb295736b8d250f
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/arti
I think this could work. Imagine a facility centered around a nuclear reactor. It draws water from a lake/river, uses what energy is needed to power an array of these atmospheric C02 extractors, and combines them to produce usable fuel! This could change everything. At our current level of technology, we don't have a problem with clean energy. If we had the will power, we could turn off all the coal plants, build a bunch of reactors, and remove that component of global warming overnight (relatively speaking). However, we would still need a source of portable power. A facility like this would be an "instant oil field." Any nation on Earth can become its own Saudi Arabia.
I really hope this CO2 extraction technology proves viable, because if it is, we have on our hands nothing less than the solution to the entire global warming problem.
What about the oxygen? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you start sequestering CO2 on a massive scale, it could work to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere - but at the same time you will permanently remove Oxygen from the atmosphere as well!
Now sure, at 21% there is plenty, but if removing CO2 is the plan, and it's a long term plan, slowly but surely there will be less and less oxygen in the air.
Mod GP up (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not hard to understand. Say five of us are living in a closed environment (i.e. earth). All five of us want to eat potatoes. Okay, so we'll plant a five foot wide garden. What if ten of us want potatoes? We'll planet a ten foot wide garden. What if ten of us want to eat twice as many potatoes? We'll plant a twenty foot wide garden.
Now say five of us want to use paper. We'll plant five trees. What if ten of us want paper? We'll plant ten trees. What if we want twice as much paper, even if we're just throwing half away? We'll plant twenty trees. What if we recycle half that paper? Oh, now we don't need twenty trees anymore; we'll only plant ten.
I'm not saying recycling is bad, but the allegation that we're chopping down the rain forests is just plain wrong; it's sensationalism. We've been planting tree farms for over fifty years, and that's what we use today to make paper. That's why the amount of trees in North America has been steadily growing over the past hundred years. There are more trees today than there has ever been, and the simple reason is because we use a lot of paper.
Re:Uh... (Score:3, Insightful)
We replant native species here and the forest area in the country has not changed in twenty years despite a thriving forestry industry.
Seriously, do you think any fancy process that involves heating things to 900 degrees that we come up with is going to be more efficient at absorbing carbon than a forest? A GROWING forest since a mature one doesn't absorb net carbon.
Re:Dude, it's a CROP, ffs (Score:2, Insightful)
Good points well made.
Two issues issue you are missing however:
- recycling reduces VOLUMES of trash. Glass is not a raw material problem, but a landfill one.
- burning paper in incinerators (Europe style) effectively releases into the atmosphere all the CO2 that the trees absorbed.
Re:Mod GP up (Score:3, Insightful)
(and the process of modernization and industrialization of previously subsistence populations into a global economic framework. Basically a lot of people became really poor and desperate to make money once neo-liberal policies forced the integration of local economies into the global market. Survival instincts quickly take over and once the race to the bottom takes full swing. Who can make deals with corrupt officials the fastest and stake a claim to land & burn the most rain frost possible, grow your net worth, integrate indigenous populations into a profitable business. Have them work for you instead of for themselves in a system outside of global capitalism.
Ofcourse even the boss won't make shit compared to the corporate execs, pushing the deals, pushing the neo-liberal reforms, and "new" economic models of production... but that is the beauty of capitalism makes selling out/buying in much more attractive than the actual participation.
For the majority at the bottom, raising beef simply becomes much more particle when local means of substance are debased via privatization of previously subsistence resources such as land, watter and the flooding of the local food markets with foreign subsidized imports eliminating diversity in local economies and pushing people into the global market where burning Rainforst is simply the best they can offer.
And what to do... We live in a culture where the aesthetics of consumption is hole-heartily disconnected from the means of production. Consuming the bigMac brand and animal caucus is completely disconnected from torching the Rainfroest and watching the last family of a particular species of some fury creature [wikipedia.org] in a failed attempt to escape a fiery inferno.
But I imagine most people understand from since childhood when they first see a picture of earth from outer space at night and bother to ask what are all those lights doing in the Rainforest Mommy? That's the rain forest burning for progress, economic growth and global market integration honey, now finish your bigMac or you won't get a frosty (or whatever the fuck they call their ice cream now) :P
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Modding that post as 5, Informative doesn't make any sense unless it was to illustrate popular misconceptions and propaganda.
Lumber companies, like any other farmers, would prefer to plant in places where the crops will grow and can be harvested for a profit and new crops grown. Rain forests are particularly POOR places to grow trees. The primary reason the U.S. imports so much lumber is because of Clinton-era restrictions on tree harvesting.
The myth of clear-cutting as a lumbering practice is also crazy. Think about it, the infrastructure needed to process and move the crop would have to be continually rebuilt. How many farmers do that? They will rotate the harvest areas as a way to let the soil regenerate but they don't strip the surface and continually move on.
Recycling paper, FWIW, yields a far inferior product in many, many ways. The more paper fibers are handled, the shorter they become. Compare an American corrugated box to one from China or Southern Europe. You'll find the recycled paper does not have the same strength. New fiber must be added or you eventually end up with a useless substance.
The idea that only one species of tree is planted by lumber companies is pure propaganda and incredibly naive. Like any other plant, different types of trees have different types of fibers. Different types of fibers are used to make different types of papers. It would no more be feasible to plant only one type of tree than it would to plant only one type of any other crop because the soil would become depleted. Paper companies are lumber companies. Are all the boards at a lumber store the same type of wood? Of course not.
Lumber companies are farmers. Remember that and use it as a way to filter out the propaganda. You might be interested to learn the opinion of one of the founders of Greenpeace: http://www.corrugatedmachines.com/2007-04-09%20BC
His comment that people should fight the auto and oil industries is more than a little whacked. Imagine what it would be like without plastics and the internal combustion engine. We'd be living the same as people did before the industrial revolution which would be a far shorter lifespan and much, much harder lives...burning coal and wood which genreate far more pollution/energy but that's a whole different topic...
Re:Uh... (Score:3, Insightful)
so is this a new kind of (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What about the oxygen? (Score:3, Insightful)
We are changing the atmosphere by raising the concentration of the second most important greenhouse gas by 30%. That's what you were trying to say, right ?
Re:Rainforest != paper farm (Score:3, Insightful)
You need to re-read the parent first. He's talking about rainforests. How much rainforest does the US have ?
Some grasses sequester AND give fuel (Score:3, Insightful)
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Get off carbon: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Insightful)
So the plan is actually to stick this stuff in barrels and bury it?
Here in Canada, we've been hearing a lot about how the Conservatives plan to focus on capturing and sequestering carbon instead of actually reducing emissions, and living up to our Kyoto obligations. I think it might be a tiny bit shortsighted to think we can continue pumping this crap into the atmosphere at ever increasing rates, then capture it and stick it underground along with the nuclear waste and other garbage that we bury.
wake me later (Score:2, Insightful)
(and John McCain as well)
Re:Uh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More nonsense from scientists. (Score:3, Insightful)
Commercially viable? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that what we should call this is potentially commercially feasable and reserve viability for things that increase economic activity.
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Solar power for what you pay for coal power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Re:And for one very simple reason (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of us think that pollution should be reduced because it sucks to breath pollution. If it helps a spotted owl, then thats good, too. Water should be clean because I drink it. Hunting should be allowed but regulated because it helps manage populations. We believe minimum gas mileage standards for cars is at least as important for national security as it is for the environment. Some people like myself actually believe that "Global Warming" is likely overstated, but if you phase in carbon reduction gradually and provide some tax incentives, you can actually IMPROVE the economy and make our own immediate environment nicer. Oh yea, and the whole lower CO2 thing as a bonus.
Of course, everyone has different opinions. It doesn't matter. If people would bother finding common ground on environmental issues instead of pointing fingers, I might enjoy some better fishing, and you might enjoy whatever is important to you. Then again, for some people on the fringes, it isn't about getting the net result, it is about CONTROL over others.
Re:It's a start... (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Burn oil like mad.
2) Using nuclear energy, extract the resulting CO2 from the atmosphere.
3) Using more nuclear energy, synthesize oil out of it.
3) Burn that oil like mad.
The problem is, steps 2 and 3 are incredibly inefficient, which means we'd probably be using five times more nuclear energy than if we simply powered all our activities with nuclear power in the first place.
Without knowing precisely how much energy it takes to sequester a given amount of CO2 in this fashion, you can't really run the numbers. But it's safe to say that, if you hooked a square mile grid of these extractors up to a coal-fired plant, you'd be raising atmospheric CO2 levels dramatically. Lesson: It's far, far better to not burn the coal in the first place. Derived lesson: If we're going to build new nuclear plants, it's more effective to replace current energy usage, rather than cleaning up after previous energy usage.
To put it another way: Assume that every joule of energy produced by burning fossil fuels commits us to using ten joules of energy to undo those CO2 emissions in the future. Is there any point at all in running these machines before we've completely eliminated fossil fuels from our energy system? It doesn't seem like it.
Re:Dry ice (Score:3, Insightful)
Argon is a valuable inert gass used in welding and manufacturing. Oxygen is valuable in medical, manufacturing and welding. By comparison CO2 and Nitrogen are surplus gasses left over from the manufacturing process. CO2 and water must be removed ahead of time so the solids do not plug the plumbing. (Helium comes from natural gas. It's too rare in the atmosphere to distill commercialy. It is present in natural gas as a by-product of radioactive decay.)
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-4/Oxygen.html [madehow.com]
"Most commercial oxygen is produced using a variation of the cryogenic distillation process originally developed in 1895. This process produces oxygen that is 99+% pure. More recently, the more energy-efficient vacuum swing adsorption process has been used for a limited number of applications that do not require oxygen with more than 90-93% purity."
"Because this process utilizes an extremely cold cryogenic section to separate the air, all impurities that might solidify--such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, and certain heavy hydrocarbons--must first be removed to prevent them from freezing and plugging the cryogenic piping."
Re:Uh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Confusion (Score:3, Insightful)
You're confusing weather forecasts with climate prediction. They're two very different things.