World's First "Porous Liquid" Could Be Used For CO2 Sequestration (gizmag.com) 91
Zothecula sends word that scientists have developed the world's first "porous" liquid that can potentially be used to capture carbon emissions. Gizmag reports: "The Italians have a colorful expression – to make a hole in water – to describe an effort with no hope of succeeding. Researchers at Queen's University Belfast (QUB), however, have seemingly managed the impossible, creating a class of liquids that feature permanent holes at the molecular level. The properties of the new materials are still largely unknown, but what has been gleaned so far suggests they could be used for more convenient carbon capturing or as a molecular sieve to quickly separate different gases."
Prototype (Score:2, Funny)
This is a wonderful step towards engineering The Blob!
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The energy density of compressed hydrogen is bad enough as it is without making it even less dense by putting lots of liquid molecules in between. Remember the breakthrough isn't that this liquid can increase the density of stored carbon, it's that it can selectively capture CO2 from the air.
Of course there is already another way to store hydrogen very densely in liquid form at room temperature, but separating it from the oxygen is the tricky part :)
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So they've invented soda?
That's "Pop" up north and "Soda Pop" in between.
It's "coke" down south. Regardless of whether or not it's actually pepsi or RC.
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Americans. You call a liquid "gas" and now you call another liquid "coke".
Can't be any worse than referring to a flashlight as a torch.
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or underwear as pants...
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Americans. You call a liquid "gas" and now you call another liquid "coke".
Can't be any worse than referring to a flashlight as a torch.
One word: "Chips"
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Re:Soda (Score:5, Insightful)
The porosity in question is different, more like zeolite than a liquid with bubbles in it. Plus, the liquid in question has permanent porosity, unlike soda (or any liquid with bubbles in it) which has only temporary porosity.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:1)
95% of Australian rabbits think this is a fantastic idea. Let's YOLO this shit.
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No. I don't post AC.
Yo, Dawg, I hear you like liquids (Score:2)
So I'm putting some liquid in your liquid.
Total Waste of Funding (Score:1, Interesting)
First of all, CO2 is a trace gas, second it is the weakest of all GHGs, third it is absolutely essential to all plant life which means if should ever drop below 150 ppm, all life will die.
I'm all for reducing emissions in certain areas of industry for the sake of air quality - but sequestering it ourselves is fucking stupid.
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Methane on the other hand is the really worrisome one... Between the methane caltthrates and the farting cows, how you stop that shit, who knows? ;^)
Just burn it. Make it into CO2, and water and get useful energy out of it in the process.... Oh wait, that's what Natural Gas is....
Re:Total Waste of Funding (Score:4, Funny)
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>Hm. Try reading a source that disagrees with your cherished belief. Be brave.
I have next to me a publication, "Galveston Bay Geology" published by Houston Geological Society, 1969. I am looking at it now. There is a chart that shows that 22,000 years ago sea level was almost 450 feet below what it is today, and that 70,000 years ago sea level was 100 feet higher than it is now. When I hear winy sniveling out of snot-nosed south pacific islanders like, "What will the butterflies do?" I can only respon
Re:Total Waste of Funding (Score:4, Interesting)
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Let's say a business's activity is to shovel shit out of an area so that it can get somewhat clean and safe, without using motorized vehicles and tools.
Because you can't be 100% efficient, the people collecting shit and carrying it in carts or bags will produce as much shit if not more, by say shitting themselves while shoveling shit.
Riiiiight.
(Disclaimer : there was a hyperbole in that post. Workers can at least put aside their shovel, drop their pants and shit on the ground near them. But there is a minim
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Let's say that the humans involved, and their shits, are of a regular size. What you have described is a macroscopic process. Some things work differently at different scales. If you scale your humans down to the size of CO2 molecules then you are describing a microscopic process. It is known more commonly as Maxwell's demon, and it does not work. What you are describing is an attempt to fight entropy directly. The shit would not only win, it would probably hit the fan in the process.
On the macroscopic scal
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Everyone's down on CO2 (Score:2)
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No there is not.
Go back to school and get an education. You need to relearn the definition of poison and the benefits of CO2.
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I am a proud white man, who supports the New Black Panthers, and their drive to eradicate the white race. I hate myself so much, because even though I wasn't directly involved, us white people have brought SO MUCH pain and misery to non-whites, that we should voluntarily commit mass suicide. If you don't support gay rights, you are probably a fucking breeder, and you deserve to die.
I bet you think you're making some kind of amazing wry, insightful point with that big pile of bollocks.
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I don't see it. (Score:4, Insightful)
So, we're going to synthesize even more products from oil (at who knows what contribution to the CO2 problem) to temporarily sequester the CO2 ... temporary because any molecule that is a better "fit" for the molecular cage will displace the CO2. Plus all the energy implementing the sequestration process by injecting it into the ground... Sort of like fracking ...
Why not just cut back on fossil fuel burning? Oh no's, can't have that, can we?
Re:I don't see it. (Score:5, Informative)
I hate to ask such a dumb question, but why do we refer to them as "fossil fuels"?
Actually, that's quite a reasonable question to ask and as your post appears genuine enough here you are...
Oil (petroleum) and coal are both the result of geological processes (heat/pressure) acting on the fossilized remains of ancient organic (carbon based) life. Plankton and algae in oil's case and trees for coal. Natural gas is usually found with or near the other two and formed with similar processes. A fossil is basically any trace of life preserved in rock which does include dinosaur bones...but also anything else that used to live on this planet. And alliteration is always catchy.
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And alliteration is always awesome.
FTFY
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FTFY
FFFF
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FTFY
FFFF
Fun For Four Fixes!
Re:I don't see it. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Why not just cut back on fossil fuel burning? Oh no's, can't have that, can we?
Actually, no we cannot cut back all that much. Unless you are figuring on systematically reducing the world's population, or hell, just starving them to death. You see, petro-chemicals are used extensively to create fertilizer, and if you stop doing that with oil people are going to starve. Of course we can all just go back to horse and buggy, whale oil lamps and the supportable population of the world we can support with that technology, but somehow I don't figure that the third world is going to accept
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(I'm not trying to be racist, but has anyone else noticed that non-black people have significantly more evolved cultures?
Clearly you don't have to try, well done you.
Re:I don't see it. (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not just cut back on fossil fuel burning? Oh no's, can't have that, can we?
Actually, no we cannot cut back all that much. Unless you are figuring on systematically reducing the world's population, or hell, just starving them to death. You see, petro-chemicals are used extensively to create fertilizer, and if you stop doing that with oil people are going to starve. Of course we can all just go back to horse and buggy, whale oil lamps and the supportable population of the world we can support with that technology, but somehow I don't figure that the third world is going to accept going backwards further....
Best we can hope for is to cut down *some* on fossil fuel use by developing other energy sources. Fusion comes to mind as a promising solution..... But that's decades out....Just figure that CO2 emissions are here to stay for your lifetime, because even if you are a baby, they are....
If we don't cut back population over the long term. we'll all starve to death. And let's be honest, oil is not an infinite resource. Even ignoring global warming, there comes a time when the well goes dry.
And the problem is not that far away [economist.com] 2050 projections:
NEW population forecasts from the United Nations point to a new world order in 2050. The number of people will grow from 7.3 billion to 9.7 billion in 2050, 100m more than was estimated in the UN's last report two years ago. More than half of this growth comes from Africa, where the population is set to double to 2.5 billion. Nigeria's population will reach 413m, overtaking America as the world's third most-populous country. Congo and Ethiopia will swell to more than 195m and 188m repectively, more than twice their current numbers. India will surpass China as the world's most populous country in 2022, six years earlier than was previously forecast. China's population will peak at 1.4 billion in 2028; India's four decades later at 1.75 billion. Changes in fertility make long-term projections hard, but by 2100 the planet’s population will be rising past 11.2 billion. It will also be much older. The median age of 30 will rise to 36 in 2050 and 42 in 2100—the median age of Europeans today. A quarter of Europe's people are already aged 60 or more; by 2050 deaths will outnumber births by 32m. The UN warns that only migration will prevent the region's population from shrinking further.
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And let's be honest, oil is not an infinite resource.
Well then there's the adibiatic theory (which has not been proven and in fact there is evidence against it) which would point to unlimited oil. But we had better hope that oil is limited, otherwise we really will end up poisoning ourselves. As it is the worst we can possibly do is put back all the CO2 that was originally in the atmosphere to begin with. What remains to be seen is if this is compatible with life.
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Because high CO2 is definitely compatible with life; the land plants and some animals will likely do very well with a CO2 level that kills off the human race.
Tim S.
And let's be honest, oil is not an infinite resource.
Well then there's the adibiatic theory (which has not been proven and in fact there is evidence against it) which would point to unlimited oil. But we had better hope that oil is limited, otherwise we really will end up poisoning ourselves. As it is the worst we can possibly do is put back all the CO2 that was originally in the atmosphere to begin with. What remains to be seen is if this is compatible with life.
Re: I don't see it. (Score:1)
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but the absolute number of people in extreme poverty has dropped.
As many as 1 billion people are homeless, squatters, or living in a refugee shelter - all lacking proper housing. Just search for world homeless population.
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What about clean water? What about all the pollution they create?
We have already far exceeded the number of people that the earth can sustain without great suffering for the poorest third of the earth.
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Actually widespread horse transportation may be unsubstainable. I guess the solution was that most people didn't and never traveled at all in their whole lives ; horse riding tended to be associated with nobility and knighthood.
On the other hand, with the second industrial revolution we developed a vehicle that's much cheaper and less energy intensive, that's the bicycle (less energy intensive during use than walking)
Likewise, perhaps LED lighting is a better idea than whale oil lamps, although I hope somet
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Why not just cut back on fossil fuel burning? Oh no's, can't have that, can we?
You first. Start by recycling that power burning collection of polymers and rare earths you use to post things. Takes a lot of Chinese coal to make those.
Didn't think so.
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Your tone indicates any debate with you is a lost cause but to anyone else, environmental friendliness and modern lifestyles don't have to be mutually exclusive. OP's computer is already built but going forward its easy enough to start being smarter about the environment. In many places its already cheaper to use solar than coal. And batteries are almost cheap and big enough to alleviate all the "but what if it's cloudy" fears for most places outside the Arctic circle.
As for me first... I have a 7.8kW solar
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You are going to buy carbon offsets and you want to be taken seriously?
You have bought in to the religion... I feel sorry for you.
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Why not just cut back on fossil fuel burning? Oh no's, can't have that, can we?
You first. Start by recycling that power burning collection of polymers and rare earths you use to post things. Takes a lot of Chinese coal to make those.
Didn't think so.
The rare earths will be recycled (we already do this because we are not producing enough to meet demand). Recycling of all electronics is mandatory, and we pay an environment tax to subsidize it, same as we do with tires.
My modes of transport are, in preference, walk, bicycle, bus. We're planning to switch over to electric buses (powered by hydro) in the next decade (we've been testing them since 2008). The goal is an all-electric fleet.
Everyone has a recycling box (no sorting needed, so as to encourage u
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That is pretty cool.
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Always a rational why you aren't supposed to be on the list for "using less." Two others just like you; "I already use less, so I'm exempt. Make someone else use less." Always the same self-serving story.
Yeah, well, naturally. (Score:3, Funny)
I mean, this is like the core principle of homeopathy. You make permanent holes in the water, and the holes are just the right size for the class of toxins you're dealing with. Then if you want more holes, you dilute the water to make the holes split (obviously you want to be careful with this in practice).
I thought everyone knew this? How did you guys all think homeopathy worked? Magic?
"Sequeseter" and just pass it on (Score:2)
First off, this seems far away from applicable but already the sequester CO2 hope arises.
Do those holey liquids exist in nature or is it another hydrogenated fat flop?
Now about sequestration, why is it hyped?
Probably less offensive methods, looking at planting more carbon dumps or grooming or reviving recently destroyed one's are less hip in those rogue capital/profit short time-driven systems?
Is the radiation loaded nuclear waste with half-times into the multiple mill
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Molten salt reactors are said to have, in theory, fuel remnants with storage needs of a few centuries rather than tens of millennia.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Molten salt reactors are said to have, in theory, fuel remnants with storage needs of a few centuries rather than tens of millennia.
Any MSR's producing except experimentals?
http://www.jonathonporritt.com... [jonathonporritt.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Ma - megaannums, million years
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The main experiments were back in the 1960s. There are some proof-of-concepts for future commercial plants from what I've heard and read. There are some being used to provide power to high-use single users like high-energy research labs I think.
Nobody's producing power to sell just yet. It's supposed to be soon, though. A Canadian company has a design they're putting into pre-licensing review in the coming months to hopefully be online around 2020. The US DoE which first developed MSRs (a program which Nixo
The Italians ... (Score:2)
The Italians have a colorful expression – to make a hole in water – to describe an effort with no hope of succeeding
Clearly no Italian has ever owned a boat.
2030: Human Extinction b/c of Methane in Arctic (Score:1)
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C'mon - we're not even TRYING! (Score:2)
Holey Water? (Score:2)
Well, what else can you call water with holes in?
More effective method (Score:2)
If you want to help sequester carbon, buy two Christmas trees. 100% of the carbon in the trees comes from the air (is it actually 100%? well, close to 100% anyway) and when the tree goes into the landfill, you have successfully sequestered the carbon. Make sure not to burn your Christmas tree.