Splitting Water For Fuel While Removing CO2 From the Air (arstechnica.com) 247
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A new study led by the University of California, Santa Cruz's Greg Rau highlights another tool for our CO2 removal toolbox: splitting seawater to produce hydrogen gas for fuel while capturing CO2 with ocean chemistry. In electrolysis, a device powered by electricity is used to split H2O, producing hydrogen gas. Several chemical modifications to this process have been proposed that can also grab CO2 from the atmosphere. Like the idea of using biofuels, this represents a "win-win" by producing an energy resource while capturing CO2, bringing the cost down. [T]he gist is that atmospheric CO2 goes into the ocean as bicarbonate -- which won't acidify the water or harm ecosystems. So if you power the electrolysis process with renewable energy, you can turn solar/wind/hydroelectric energy into hydrogen fuel while also removing CO2 from the air.
The new study focuses on a basic estimate of the cost and maximum potential of this technique. First, the researchers worked out its efficiency of CO2 capture -- about 0.3 tons captured per gigajoule of electricity input, including the losses from quarrying and crushing rock. That's around 10 times greater than biofuel schemes, but it depends on the assumption that there is demand for all the hydrogen fuel you make. The hydrogen can be used by vehicles, and there's the possibility of using hydrogen as a type of storage for the electric grid -- using excess power to make hydrogen that can run a power plant when needed. So it's not too farfetched that demand could rise to meet supply. The researchers' back-of-the-envelope estimate puts the cost of this system at between $3 and $161 per ton of captured CO2, depending on which type of renewable energy powers it. The study has been published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The new study focuses on a basic estimate of the cost and maximum potential of this technique. First, the researchers worked out its efficiency of CO2 capture -- about 0.3 tons captured per gigajoule of electricity input, including the losses from quarrying and crushing rock. That's around 10 times greater than biofuel schemes, but it depends on the assumption that there is demand for all the hydrogen fuel you make. The hydrogen can be used by vehicles, and there's the possibility of using hydrogen as a type of storage for the electric grid -- using excess power to make hydrogen that can run a power plant when needed. So it's not too farfetched that demand could rise to meet supply. The researchers' back-of-the-envelope estimate puts the cost of this system at between $3 and $161 per ton of captured CO2, depending on which type of renewable energy powers it. The study has been published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Bad Chemistry (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bad Chemistry (Score:5, Informative)
For example, one method uses special membrane filters to separate the hydrogen and hydroxide ions produced during electrolysis. Adding the hydroxide to water allows it to take up CO2 from the air, turning it into bicarbonate. If the hydrogen ions weren't separated, they'd push the chemical equilibrium away from bicarbonate and toward dissolved CO2. But when powdered carbonate rock is added, it can react with the dissolved (atmospheric) CO2 to produce a bunch of happy, stable bicarbonate. Combined, these reactions allow people to tune the hydrogen production and carbonate formation.
The CO2 is not being dissolved into the water to form carbonic acid, it is being added to hydroxide ions produced by electrolysis to form soluble alkaline bicarbonates.
Re:Bad Chemistry (Score:4, Funny)
"The CO2 is not being dissolved into the water to form carbonic acid, it is being added to hydroxide ions produced by electrolysis to form soluble alkaline bicarbonates."
And it will bind itself to the acid water and create CO2 and we'll get a bubbly ocean.
Re:Bad Chemistry (Score:4, Informative)
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while your average fish tank creature might not show signs of this being a problem, it certainly does make it so most cannot reporduce.
From eggs not being able to be fertilized, to the creatures not wanting to mate.
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Fingers crossed. Let's hope the people proposing this own one of those little books of litmus paper.
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Doesn't matter. What would matter is if people that actually commercialized their technology wanted to hire supertankers to haul bicarbonate out to a sufficient distance to diffuse the alkalinity, rather than just dumping it where it was produced. And we all know that profit-driven corporations are big fans of responsible behavior that hurts profits.
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We'll get an equilibrium. Some of it will react as you describe. Some of it won't. It depends on exactly how much bicarbonate we are shoving into how much ocean.
Re:Bad Chemistry (Score:4, Interesting)
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I really don't need to balance any equations. If it sounds to good to be true then it probably is.
Firstly hydrogen as a fuel source is more dangerous than a lot of other alternatives both in use and transport. Secondly in order to produce a sufficient amount to support replacing fossil fuels I don't think it matters if it does or doesn't raise the pH of the water that's a lot of CO2 and a change to the environment which will still have an impact on the marine life.
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Re:Bad Chemistry (Score:4, Informative)
Now we just need a billion women with mustaches (Score:2)
In electrolysis, a device powered by electricity is used to split H2O, producing hydrogen gas.
Yes but does it scale?
Re:Now we just need a billion women with mustaches (Score:5, Informative)
From the sub-heading of TFA:
"Technique could be practical enough to scale."
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"could be" doesn't indicate something is unlikely...
No. But, in this case, a basic understanding of thermodynamics does.
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We're talking about electrical energy, heat energy, and chemical energy so, yes, al
Too early (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're generating electricity, it's much more efficient to use that to charge electric cars, and reduce the amount of CO2 that goes into the atmosphere, rather than using inefficient methods to get it out.
Also, hydrogen fuel is a dumb idea. There is no infrastructure, conversion/storage is inefficient and it makes metals brittle. It's much better to focus on electric battery cars.
Re: Too early (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're generating electricity, it's much more efficient to use that to charge electric cars, and reduce the amount of CO2 that goes into the atmosphere
It depends on what your goals are. Even without looking at their numbers I can safely guess that this will be less efficient and therefore more expensive than just using batteries. So if your goal is to have the cheapest low-emission energy possible then yeah, batteries are better. On the other hand, if you're more worried about recapturing some of the carbon we've emmited over the last century or two and are willing to paya bit more towards that goal, then this technique might make more sense.
Whether or not it makes sense even in the latter scenario will depend on just how much more expensive it happens to be. We won't know that until they've done a lot more work on this tech.
Re: Too early (Score:5, Insightful)
That's why I said "too early". While we still have most cars producing CO2 from fossil fuels, it makes no sense to start recapturing. Recapturing combines an inefficient process at one end (cars generate a lot of CO2 for little energy output) using an inefficient process at the other end (use a lot of energy to recapture a small amount of CO2).
When all the low hanging fruit is gone, we can start worrying about recapture, preferably using a process that produces something more useful than hydrogen.
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Sadly natural gas is, in practice, a pretty terrible option. It could be a big improvement over coal and other hydrocarbons, but only if you can keep atmospheric leakage fairly low. I seem to recall that ~12% leakage is the break-even point where the much more potent greenhouse effect of methane counteracts the lower CO2 emissions. Unfortunately, in the U.S. at least, natural gas supply line leakage is at something like 30-40%, so using it contributes far more to climate change than even coal does.
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In order to avoid 2C of warming by 2100, we need to have negative annual CO2 emissions by 2050. That's on the most optimistic trajectories, too. More pessimistic ones say we've already locked in 2C of warming, and negative emissions by 2050 are required to avoid 4C of warming by 2100.
In other words, moving to electric cars by itself is not going to produce the negative CO2 emissions that we need. This sort of technology, in conjunction with electrics cars, could.
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In order to avoid 2C of warming by 2100, we need to have negative annual CO2 emissions by 2050
That may be true, but it will be challenging enough to convert most of our ICE vehicles to electric by 2050.
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Yeah, so lets do both, instead of just one, like you're suggesting.
A good idea in principle, except that we don't have the electricity to power both. It will be hard enough for electricity generation to keep up with the growth rate of electric cars that we need (as well as replacing other fossil fuel based applications such as home heating or cooking).
Also, even if we do both, we need a method that's not based on the idea of hydrogen fuel.
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It will be hard enough for electricity generation to keep up with the growth rate of electric cars that we need
Not really. Even if you limit yourself to photovoltaic installations, we currently install annually enough PV panels to enable the rollout of 35 million electric cars every year. Current wind installations seem to support a similar number of vehicles. 70M cars is what is currently being sold annually. So even today, we have enough generation growth to cover for extra electricity usage even if overnight somehow all car factories started magically producing BEV vehicles instead.
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Can we get off cars?
Sure Car pollution is a big problem. It is also what we feel the most, having to fuel up our cars.
But they are other problems too. Our homes which we are often not in for 8-16 hours a day, which is still being heated or cooled, while we spend time in other building that are being heated or cooled then we leave for home having this building not occupied.
While we may pay for metered electricity, the power plants cant just drop their generation by 0.000001% when you turn off your light when
Not just cars [Re:Too early] (Score:2)
Can we get off cars? Sure Car pollution is a big problem. It is also what we feel the most, having to fuel up our cars. But they are other problems too.
A good point.
Cars are one of the many systems in our culture producing carbon dioxide from fossil fuels. But there are many others.
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>While we may pay for metered electricity, the power plants cant just drop their generation by 0.000001% when you turn off your light when you go to bed. They are still generating power.
Actually, no. When you turn off your light he power company does indeed need to reduce its production accordingly, unless they have battery buffers involved somewhere. Every watt flowing into the system *will* flow back out again - as heat buildup and exploding infrastructure if nothing else. And the power company tend
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If you're generating electricity, it's much more efficient to use that to charge electric cars, and reduce the amount of CO2 that goes into the atmosphere, rather than using inefficient methods to get it out.
Cool you've solved cars. ... Now what? If you target a single group of emissions we won't ever achieve our goal of a cleaner future.
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Also, hydrogen fuel is a dumb idea. There is no infrastructure, conversion/storage is inefficient and it makes metals brittle. It's much better to focus on electric battery cars.
Hydrogen may (or may not) be a viable form of energy storage. Infrastructure, though, is perhaps the weakest argument against it. First, some of the infrastructure is already in place -- there are two hydrogen filling stations near my house for use by the hydrogen-powered cars that are already on the market. So there's that.
Second, you can make hydrogen (inefficiently, at present) with water and electricity.
You know what kind of infrastructure is really well developed in the world? Water and electricity.
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What's not mentioned in the summary is that aside from not harming the oceans with bicarbonate, it also might actually help by accelerating the amount of bicarbonate in the ocean that is already caused by natural weathering. Overall in a few generations this could prevent too much ocean acidification and thus prevent too much damage to the oceans from other acid sources.
For example, see House et al, "Electrochemical acceleration of chemical weathering as an energetically feasible approach to mitigating anth
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So first we burn coal to generate electricity (with loses), then we transmit electricity (up to 40% of losses on power lines), then we charge the batteries (again some small loses), then we transform electricity into motion (again with loses).
How about we burn fuel and we transform it directly into motion? (with loses of course, but much smaller).
EV cars are "green" only if y
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You say "electric" and "battery" as if that electricity came from air. It does not, in most countries it comes from burning coal.
For now that is true. But you seem to be forgetting that with EVs we gain the option to change that fact. I can and have charged an EV from solar generated electricity. We use coal fired plants because 40 years ago that was the only realistic option in many places. Times have changed and our cars need to change with them. Internal combustion engines are a technological and environmental dead end. We've ridden that horse as far as it will take us. Time to switch to a fresh new ride.
So first we burn coal to generate electricity (with loses), then we transmit electricity (up to 40% of losses on power lines), then we charge the batteries (again some small loses), then we transform electricity into motion (again with loses).
Powerline loses are
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You say "electric" and "battery" as if that electricity came from air. It does not, in most countries it comes from burning coal.
Wow! What an untruth about "in most countries it comes from burning coal." Clearly you don't live in France (75% Nuclear) or Norway (98% Hydroelectric). In many European counties Natural Gas fired power stations are dominant over coal such as in the UK where coal is on its last legs (will be gone by 2025). There are countries such as Poland that have a high level of coal usage for producing electricity.
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Your arguments against Hydrogen fuel seems a bit week.
No Infrastructure: If deemed a viable energy source one can be built. Normal Oil companies would probably like that idea, converting gas station to hydrogen stations. Unlike solar or "Home grown" or Grid energy they can keep their business model. They just change the energy source.
Conversion is ineffective: Efficiencies is rather over rated concept. Especially if you can be inefficient for cheap.
Storage makes metals brittle: Too bad we don't have othe
Re:Too early (Score:5, Interesting)
They want hydrogen cars to be big because they missed the boat on battery electric and a lot of the basic tech is now owned by other companies. They are facing either having to delay their EVs to wait out the patents or pay royalties, and all the while need to do their own EV R&D to avoid falling further behind.
Battery electric has already won. We already have 99% of the infrastructure in place.
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They want hydrogen cars to be big because they missed the boat on battery electric and a lot of the basic tech is now owned by other companies. They are facing either having to delay their EVs to wait out the patents or pay royalties, and all the while need to do their own EV R&D to avoid falling further behind.
Battery electric has already won. We already have 99% of the infrastructure in place.
Maybe in Hipster Central, SoCal... But out here in the real world 1% of the infrastructure isn't even in place.
Also my time isn't free. Spending an hour recharging just go to the 5 miles to home is a huge waste. If someone manages to produce hydrogen from seawater cost effectively, battery cars are effectively dead.
Re:Too early (Score:5, Insightful)
They want hydrogen cars to be big because they missed the boat on battery electric and a lot of the basic tech is now owned by other companies. They are facing either having to delay their EVs to wait out the patents or pay royalties, and all the while need to do their own EV R&D to avoid falling further behind.
Battery electric has already won. We already have 99% of the infrastructure in place.
Maybe in Hipster Central, SoCal... But out here in the real world 1% of the infrastructure isn't even in place. Also my time isn't free. Spending an hour recharging just go to the 5 miles to home is a huge waste. If someone manages to produce hydrogen from seawater cost effectively, battery cars are effectively dead.
The most common place to charge your EV is at your home. Generally, unless you are taking a road trip its difficult to need to charge anywhere else. You don't have electricity at your residence? In cities where you might only have street parking EVs are more of a problem. In suburbs or rural areas you have plenty of your own parking and likely have an outdoor plug already available. The only real infrastructure is something like the supercharger network where its available along major transportation routes. I still think it wouldn't be that practical to use an EV as your only car if you take road trips but we are getting much closer and if and when EVs reach more market share, you will see charging popup to fill the demand.
As for hydrogen, we are basically nowhere when it comes to infrastructure and it introduces a huge inefficiency into the energy cycle.
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What part of the "real world" do you live in that doesn't have grid electricity in your house?
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Infrastructure needed for EV charging:
- Distributed large scale generation, check
- Nationwide electricity grid, check
- Transformer substations for local distribution, check
- Wiring to every building, check
- Wiring to streets, check (i.e. street lighting, traffic lights, signage etc.)
- EV charging points, in progress
So basically 99% of the infrastructure is there, we just need to add some special charging sockets and some rapid charging stations to finish it off. Not even the last mile, the last few metres f
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Maybe in Hipster Central, SoCal... But out here in the real world 1% of the infrastructure isn't even in place.
Oh? I take it you don't live in a house with power?
Also my time isn't free. Spending an hour recharging just go to the 5 miles to home is a huge waste.
Tell me about it. All those idiots spending 10 minutes at a petrol station when instead they could own a car which charges in your home and is always at full capacity ready to go. If you value your time, you'd go electric.
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Maybe in Hipster Central, SoCal... But out here in the real world 1% of the infrastructure isn't even in place.
Your house doesn't have electricity?
Also my time isn't free. Spending an hour recharging just go to the 5 miles to home is a huge waste
What are you doing when your car is parked overnight? 'Cause that's when it will be recharged >95% of the time.
If someone manages to produce hydrogen from seawater cost effectively, battery cars are effectively dead.
Storage. Hydrogen leaks through everything. It even leaks through the metal that the fuel tank is made of. This isn't a solvable problem, since it's basic physical properties of the relevant molecules.
Having your fuel tank drain itself while you're on vacation and your car is parked for a couple weeks is a rather inconvenient thing. Self-discharge on a ba
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You must be kidding. The biggest EV battery makers are Chinese. There is no magic battery "tech" anyway. Tesla certainly doesn't have any.
That's only true if you aren't looking at things YOY. Most people look at things YOY and for 2018 Tesla will be the world's largest EV battery maker. And reread the model 3 teardown, you will learn that they use far less Cobalt than other makers which gives them a cost savings due to the issues with getting Cobalt in large quantities. Better close your positions today, time is getting short.
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There is no magic battery "tech" anyway.
That's only because once a tech becomes commercial, we no longer notice it's magical.
Compare batteries today with those of 30 years ago (or prices of photovoltaics of today with those of 30 years ago). They really are f'ing magic
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There's also refillable batteries to consider - several people are working on various liquid-electrolyte batteries where the spent electrolyte could be easily replaced with fresh, fully-charged electrolyte, allowing the spent electrolyte to be leisurely recharged at the fueling center.
The US Navy Has Experimented With These Processes (Score:5, Informative)
To possibly produce jet fuel from sea water [huffingtonpost.com] on aircraft carriers while underway. In addition to obtaining hydrogen and oxygen from electrolysis of sea water you also liberate some of the carbon dioxide that's dissolved in solution as part of that sea water. The combination of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide can, with sufficient energy input, most likely from the nuclear reactors [wikipedia.org] that power the ship, be converted to a mixture of carbon monoxide, hydrogen and some carbon dioxide in a mixture known as SynGas or "synthesis gas" [wikipedia.org]. From there it can be converted via the Fischer Tropsch Process [wikipedia.org] into heavier hydrocarbons and eventually into a mixture of longer chain hydrocarbons approximating JP-5 jet fuel [wikipedia.org].
Why aren't we already doing this on land you might ask? Well, in a word, because it's expensive in both industrial plant and equipment and also from an energy input perspective. Much more expensive than simply pumping crude oil out of the ground and refining it. However, that matters less on a ship underway at sea, away from land supplies, and with nuclear energy to spare where cost is less of a factor than ease of supply, which is militarily advantageous.
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I heard about that. One scenario that they were looking at was putting a small nuclear reactor (like you would find in a submarine) at a base in Afghanistan and produce diesel-compatible fuel. Sure, the cost would be huge, but you would eliminate the need for lots of trucks that are being shot at. Obviously they would have to secure the reactor, as it would be a high priority target, but reducing dependencies on supply lines is a massive logistical win.
Generating fuel with excess electricity on an aircra
Seriously... (Score:3)
"cost of this system at between $3 and $161 per ton of captured CO2". With a range like this, who wants to read the article?
Re:Seriously... (Score:4, Informative)
Because then you might learn why the range is so large (spoiler: cheap input energy = cheap captured CO2; expensive energy = expensive captured CO2).
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Carbon neutral fuels (Score:4, Insightful)
If renewable energy such as off-shore wind farms were used we could achieve carbon neutral hydro-carbon fuel, we could even pump the spare fuel into natural crude oil reservoirs for carbon capture.
We get to keep our gas guzzlers with a clear conscience.
this is publishable? (Score:5, Informative)
I wish I'd known this was publishable. I wrote up a report on this years ago while working for the Navy... they actually funded someone to try this out, I think.
Short version: it's expensive. Slightly longer version: chlorine is a problem. If you think you're electrochemically evolving hydrogen gas strait from sea water, you're probably just going to kill a lot of people instead. Catalysts are the answer. Bonus detail: the ocean (for a few reasons) concentrates carbon. There's a lot of carbon in there, and the core of this idea is very good.
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I wish I'd known this was publishable.
Everything is publishable. You just have to convince someone to publish it.
while working for the Navy
Or more importantly you'll need to convince people to LET you publish it.
Finally a good use for hydrogen? (Score:3)
As much as I love Tesla I feel using Li-Ion batteries for grid storage is a bad idea as you don't have the same space/weight concerns for grid storage that you do in an EV and therefore such batteries are better deployed for EVs where they bring the most benefit.
Economies of scale (Score:2)
Hydrogen powered cars have annoyed me for years as I am convinced are not practical and mainly funded to muddy the waters around the development of pure EVs.
Certainly. They aren't a terrible idea but the fueling infrastructure problem alone pretty much dooms hydrogen fuel cells to power cars before they even get started. BEVs have their problems too but they have the one HUGE advantage that there already is a fuel infrastructure (the electric grid) in place. Needs some upgrades but we're not starting from scratch.
As much as I love Tesla I feel using Li-Ion batteries for grid storage is a bad idea as you don't have the same space/weight concerns for grid storage that you do in an EV and therefore such batteries are better deployed for EVs where they bring the most benefit.
The flaw in your logic there is that you are presuming using Li-Ion batteries in cars somehow precludes their use in grid applications. In reality
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Unfortunately, as soon as electric cars start going mainstream, they will easily consume all available production for decades - we can always build more battery production plants (and recycling - that's going to be a huge factor too), but the economies of scale will begin to diminish rapidly. And it's not at all clear that there's enough lithium on the planet to satisfy the demand for a global conversion to EVs, especially if harvested in an ecologically responsible manner.
Using Li-Ion batteris for the gri
Means to an end (Score:2)
Unfortunately, as soon as electric cars start going mainstream, they will easily consume all available production for decades - we can always build more battery production plants (and recycling - that's going to be a huge factor too), but the economies of scale will begin to diminish rapidly.
That could only be true if there was a limitation on some of the components. And even if your scenario did play out that's not actually a problem as far as grid utilization goes. We don't HAVE to use Li-Ion for grid applications if there is enough demand elsewhere (cars etc) to get to minimum efficient scale.
And it's not at all clear that there's enough lithium on the planet to satisfy the demand for a global conversion to EVs, especially if harvested in an ecologically responsible manner.
There is quite a lot of lithium according to the USGS. The problems for the next several decades will be most likely a series of short term shortages while we fully utilize existing sources and have
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Chicken vs egg (Score:2)
I think you are seriously overstating the problem... we already have a network of fueling stations everywhere that can distribute hydrogen instead of or in addition to gasoline.
No we do not. Not on the sort of scale needed to actually get the general public to actually buy hydrogen powered vehicles anyway. Converting existing gas stations is a HUGE expense with a difficult chicken and egg problem. No gas station is going to install a hydrogen pump without there first being hydrogen powered cars. Nobody is going to buy a hydrogen powered car until the fuel infrastructure is already available. So unless you plan to convince the government to subsidize the problem it just isn't
It's all about cost (Score:2)
A new study led by the University of California, Santa Cruz's Greg Rau highlights another tool for our CO2 removal toolbox: splitting seawater to produce hydrogen gas for fuel while capturing CO2 with ocean chemistry.
So what? That's nifty and all but the obstacle to doing any of this is COST. It doesn't really matter what we can do if we cannot do it economically.
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This is stupid (Score:3)
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I haven't read it... yet (Score:2)
For example, an array of solar panels big enough to be used for massive-scale desalinization would likely put out more CO2 during the pro
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The article did address this.
The ideal solution is probably to use nuclear and freeze the output water rather than putting back into the ocean. Just do the whole process at the poles.
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Did TFA address that?
About that hydrogen... (Score:2)
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"Sure ethanol is carbon neutral"
You must not do any fermentation, do you? You release CO2 into the air as a matter of organic process generating ethanol via biological means.
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You must not do any fermentation, do you? You release CO2 into the air as a matter of organic process generating ethanol via biological means.
But it's less CO2 than the plants took up in the first place to make the sugar. The rest is emitted when you digest the alcohol. So it's catbon *neutral* as in after a complete cycle there's no net change.
Forgetting about the carbon from the ground (Score:2)
hence ethanol is carbon neutral.
Not when you are burning diesel fuel from oil pumped out of the ground to manufacture it which is basically what happens in industrial scale farming. Ethanol production for fuel is mostly nothing more than a subsidy to farmers cloaked in a misleading lie about being eco friendly.
Re:E85 (Score:5, Informative)
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Sure ethanol is carbon neutral (not negative)
Sure. If you put 200MW of solar power and energy storage next to each bioethanol plant then it's carbon neutral.
I see Trump is subsidising coal power stations to try to prop up the coal industry, but coal fired vehicles went out with the steam age.
Trump can subsidise all he wants. In 2017 despite him giving a lifeline to the industry coal consumption in the USA dropped by 2.2%. So did oil and natural gas energy generation. All the while hydro went up slightly and other renewables went up 15%. Regardless of how much of and idiot you've elected, the world will proceed to get better despite his efforts.
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We could also build Rube Goldberg machines where we push dominoes that trigger a ball that rolls down a pipe that scares a bird that pecks a remote control that turns the TV on. Or we could not waste a bunch of resources and just press the remote button directly.
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Insightful)
So assuming the low-end cost of $3 per ton of CO2, we're talking a mere $3,030,000,000,000 to mitigate anthropogenic CO2 emissions Sounds like just the type of pragmatic negative emissions technology we so desperately need!
Until you can quantify the costs of *not* mitigating anthropogenic CO2 emissions or identify the value of this method relative to that of other mitigation techniques it is impossible to gage the absolute value of this particular method.
Re:Awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
$3 trillion is a drop in the bucket and sounds way too good to be true, so I think you've got your numbers wrong. Climate change is projected to cost the world economy $33 trillion a year [independent.co.uk] by 2050, and already costs the USA alone $300B a year [nationalgeographic.com] (couldn't find a figure for current worldwide annual cost, but you can assume that it must in the trillions).
Water vapor (Score:2)
Water vapor indeed is the main greenhouse gas in the Earth's atmosphere. But it has a temperature-dependent equilibrium in the atmosphere. If you add more, it removes itself from the atmosphere quickly-- that's called "rain". The amount that the atmosphere can hold increases with temperature.
So, water vapor in the atmosphere is driven by planetary temperature. It's a feedback cycle.
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...If the atmosphere can hold more water vapor as the temperature increases, and more water will evaporate as the temperature increases, it seems we have a control mechanism for ocean levels.
No, it's too small an effect, I'm afraid. It would take a lot of water in the atmosphere to reduce ocean levels by an amount high enough to make a difference in sea level-- once you get to the runaway greenhouse effect (i.e. Venus), sure, but it's only a small effect on Earth. (And despite what you may think from what popular media sometimes says, Earth conditions remain far from thermal runaway. Anthropogenic emissions tweak the temperature enough to notice on human scales, but that's because we live i
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Yes, water vapor can store more heat than dry air at the same temperature - which actually means it lowers the temperature for the same amount of heat. That's not the problem.
The problem is that greenhouse gasses scatter thermal infrared radiation, slowing the rate at which heat can be radiated from the planet's surface away into space by bouncing much of it back at the surface to be reabsorbed. That causes the temperature of the surface to slowly increase until the rate of radiated energy escaping the at
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I estimate you'd need on the order of 3 trillion gigajoules of electricity to return the Earth to average interglacial concentrations of atmospheric CO2.
This is not really a remediation system. It's a way to get some hydrogen we can use as a non-CO2-releasing fuel, with a bonus of some CO2 capture.
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Unfortunately, plants grown in elevated-co2 environments are considerably less nutritious. Lots of energy-rich carbohydrates produced from all that CO2, but "not enough calories" isn't exactly a problem with most of the worlds diet.
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Ocean water is naturally slightly alkaline (pH about 8.2). The problem we're currently facing is misleadingly called "acidification", which is the oceans becoming more neutral when they should be more basic. Estimates are that ocean pH has dropped by 0.1 pH since the start of the industrial revolution, and that's already stressing sea life; it's expected to drop by a further 0.3 or more, even if we cut carbon emissions.
The reason so much acidification is in our future is that CO2 enters the ocean at a lim
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I would agree with the Nukes but we should be smart about it and build them as deep ocean or arctic installations. Things can and will eventually go wrong, most likely because of someone being cheap or lazy.
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