Did Capturing Carbon from the Air Just Get Easier? (berkeley.edu) 101
"We passed Berkeley air — just outdoor air — into the material to see how it would perform," says U.C. Berkeley chemistry professor Omar Yaghi, "and it was beautiful.
"It cleaned the air entirely of CO2," Yaghi says in an announcement from the university. "Everything."
SFGate calls it "a discovery that could help potentially mitigate the effects of climate change..." Yaghi's lab has worked on carbon capture since the 1990s and began work on these crystalline structures in 2005. The innovative substance has lots of tiny holes, making it "great for storing gases or liquids, much like a sponge holds water," Yaghi said... While it could take one to two years for the powder to be usable in large-scale applications, Yaghi co-founded Atoco, an Irvine company, to commercialize his research and expand it beyond just carbon capture and storage.
"Capturing carbon from the air just got easier," says the headline on the anouncement from the university, which explains why this technology is crucial: [T]oday's carbon capture technologies work well only for concentrated sources of carbon, such as power plant exhaust. The same methods cannot efficiently capture carbon dioxide from ambient air, where concentrations are hundreds of times lower than in flue gases. Yet direct air capture, or DAC, is being counted on to reverse the rise of CO2 levels, which have reached 426 parts per million, 50% higher than levels before the Industrial Revolution. Without it, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we won't reach humanity's goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degreesC (2.7 degreesF) above preexisting global averages.
A new type of absorbing material developed by chemists at the University of California, Berkeley, could help get the world to negative emissions... According to Yaghi, the new material could be substituted easily into carbon capture systems already deployed or being piloted to remove CO2 from refinery emissions and capture atmospheric CO2 for storage underground. UC Berkeley graduate student Zihui Zhou, the paper's first author, said that a mere 200 grams of the material, a bit less than half a pound, can take up as much CO2 in a year — 20 kilograms (44 pounds) — as a tree.
Their research was published this week in the journal Nature.
And it's also interesting that they're using AI, according to the university's announcement: Yaghi is optimistic that artificial intelligence can help speed up the design of even better COFs and MOFs for carbon capture or other purposes, specifically by identifying the chemical conditions required to synthesize their crystalline structures. He is scientific director of a research center at UC Berkeley, the Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet (BIDMaP), which employs AI to develop cost-efficient, easily deployable versions of MOFs and COFs to help limit and address the impacts of climate change. "We're very, very excited about blending AI with the chemistry that we've been doing," he said.
Another potential use could be for harvesting water from desert air for drinking water, Yaghi told SFGate. But he seems very focused specifically on carbon capture.
"Another thing is that we need a strong determination among officials and industries to make carbon capture a high priority. Things have to change, but I believe that direct carbon capture from air is very doable."
"It cleaned the air entirely of CO2," Yaghi says in an announcement from the university. "Everything."
SFGate calls it "a discovery that could help potentially mitigate the effects of climate change..." Yaghi's lab has worked on carbon capture since the 1990s and began work on these crystalline structures in 2005. The innovative substance has lots of tiny holes, making it "great for storing gases or liquids, much like a sponge holds water," Yaghi said... While it could take one to two years for the powder to be usable in large-scale applications, Yaghi co-founded Atoco, an Irvine company, to commercialize his research and expand it beyond just carbon capture and storage.
"Capturing carbon from the air just got easier," says the headline on the anouncement from the university, which explains why this technology is crucial: [T]oday's carbon capture technologies work well only for concentrated sources of carbon, such as power plant exhaust. The same methods cannot efficiently capture carbon dioxide from ambient air, where concentrations are hundreds of times lower than in flue gases. Yet direct air capture, or DAC, is being counted on to reverse the rise of CO2 levels, which have reached 426 parts per million, 50% higher than levels before the Industrial Revolution. Without it, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we won't reach humanity's goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degreesC (2.7 degreesF) above preexisting global averages.
A new type of absorbing material developed by chemists at the University of California, Berkeley, could help get the world to negative emissions... According to Yaghi, the new material could be substituted easily into carbon capture systems already deployed or being piloted to remove CO2 from refinery emissions and capture atmospheric CO2 for storage underground. UC Berkeley graduate student Zihui Zhou, the paper's first author, said that a mere 200 grams of the material, a bit less than half a pound, can take up as much CO2 in a year — 20 kilograms (44 pounds) — as a tree.
Their research was published this week in the journal Nature.
And it's also interesting that they're using AI, according to the university's announcement: Yaghi is optimistic that artificial intelligence can help speed up the design of even better COFs and MOFs for carbon capture or other purposes, specifically by identifying the chemical conditions required to synthesize their crystalline structures. He is scientific director of a research center at UC Berkeley, the Bakar Institute of Digital Materials for the Planet (BIDMaP), which employs AI to develop cost-efficient, easily deployable versions of MOFs and COFs to help limit and address the impacts of climate change. "We're very, very excited about blending AI with the chemistry that we've been doing," he said.
Another potential use could be for harvesting water from desert air for drinking water, Yaghi told SFGate. But he seems very focused specifically on carbon capture.
"Another thing is that we need a strong determination among officials and industries to make carbon capture a high priority. Things have to change, but I believe that direct carbon capture from air is very doable."
Sounds like BS to me (Score:3)
"Zihui Zhou, the paper's first author, said that a mere 200 grams of the material, a bit less than half a pound, can take up as much CO2 in a year — 20 kilograms (44 pounds) — as a tree."
And what does it do with it?
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And how much CO2 is generated producing that 200 grams?
Re:Sounds like BS to me (Score:5, Interesting)
To answer the second question first: you heat it to 60C and it releases the CO2 -- which you then have to do something with.
The first question: I suspect that the 20Kg of CO2 is the total that is captured & released over many cycles in a year.
The two questions that I would like answered are:
1) how much energy does it take to run a capture/release cycle? Hopefully generating this energy produces much less CO2 than is captured by this process.
2) what can/do you do with the CO2 captured by this stuff ? How much energy does this take ?
Nuclear sub or spacecraft (Score:5, Insightful)
To answer the second question first: you heat it to 60C and it releases the CO2 -- which you then have to do something with.
Release it into the ocean or space.
how much energy does it take to run a capture/release cycle?
On a nuclear sub that isn't really a problem. On a spacecraft, I'm sure it can be made to work - solar is pretty good in space.
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Seriously? You've never heard of acidification? And you think (assuming the oxygen gets stripped off) those carbon ions won't come back down and make CO2 again? You're like the guy who leaves his fridge open to cool down his house.
OMFG
You do realize what the source of CO2 is for air scrubbing aboard nuclear submarines? It's the exhalation of the crew. That's an insignificant amount of CO2 to dump into the ocean.
Also notice that such exhalation is normally dumped into the atmosphere.
Also note that the CO2 of exhalation is carbon neutral, it a process that long predates industrialization.
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He's talking about life support CO2 scrubbing.
To answer the question you're actually asking, if you've got concentrated CO2 there are a bunch of things you can do to sequester it. Pump it into old mines or oil fields, turn it into carbonate salts and bury it, and yes, inject it into the ocean, although you best want to do that around basalt deposits that absorb it from the water, or into sediment in the very deep ocean.
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We've increased CO2 by over 50% with basically no change in CO2 uptake. Almost as if science has already studied this and found it doesn't work. CO2 isn't the limiting factor, it's nitrogen.
https://www.scientificamerican... [scientificamerican.com]
Even if it did, there's not enough arable land to grow enough trees...and grow our food. And, funny thing, forests are net carbon sources for the first 10-20 years of growth.
https://www.pbs.org/video/surp... [pbs.org]
They need multiple decades before becoming net carbon sinks. And then after 8
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You could use concentrated CO2 to supply greenhouses, but the demand is nowhere near enough. And if you actually want to remove net CO2 from the atmosphere you have to do something with all the plants. Plants aren't magic, they absorb CO2 during the day and respirate it at night the same way you do. Surplus is integrated into their tissues (the same way you do) and generally released back to the environment, eventually as CO2, the same way you are.
CO2 sequestration strategies are not short sighted, they're
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You should never release things into space that isn't offset of matter imported unto earth. if you start with a negative import/export of matter that will land you in a future bad place. Disregarding the problem of transporting it up the gravity well.
If you have concentrated CO2 you might be able to use solar or windpower and some catalyst to split it into O2 and some solid carbon compound. Just storing it is not a solution.
And the oceans is already starting to reach their limit on amount of CO2 they can ta
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You should never release things into space that isn't offset of matter imported unto earth.
Umm....Srsly?
https://www.astronomy.com/scie... [astronomy.com]
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The main issue is that we haven't got a clue what will happen if we reach some tipping point of acidity of the oceans, how microbiology will fare that will break the food chain.
We do actually and it's quite bad. Shellfish farmers in the north west discovered crop losses back in the 2000s expressly due to the increasing acidity of the ocean. They had to actively add base PH to the water before putting it in their tanks.
https://e360.yale.edu/features... [yale.edu]
These are very tiny creatures that mimic the base food chain plankton that are also showing the affects of acidification.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com... [smithsonianmag.com]
My prediction is the oceans are going to be basically dead in 20-40 years. T
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You should never release things into space that isn't offset of matter imported unto earth.
Earth is constantly importing matter. It's constantly raining down upon us. Sometimes we can see it as a pretty streak of light.
As I started reading your first sentence I was expecting a lecture on a course alteration, so venting needs to be carefully balanced. But you went elsewhere, thanks for the surprise.
Disregarding the problem of transporting it up the gravity well.
I was kind of expecting the spacecraft to already be up there.
But just for submarine air scrubbing of the human exhaust, like other replies says, that is negligible.
I wasn't suggesting any else. Just that the tech could have CO2 scrubbing applications on subs and spacecraft.
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1) how much energy does it take to run a capture/release cycle?
Most of the energy is heat. At 60C, that can be waste heat, such as the steam exhaust from a nuclear power plant.
For comparison, the current DAC technique uses lye (sodium hydroxide) to absorb the CO2, forming Na2CO3. This is then reacted with lime (calcium oxide) to form calcium carbonate, which precipitates out of solution. The CaCO3 is then baked at 900C to convert it back to lime while releasing the CO2.
60C is a hecka lot better than 900C.
2) what can/do you do with the CO2 captured by this stuff ?
Enhanced oil recovery [wikipedia.org] is the only application for this technolog
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Here in Iceland, 60C is below even the temperature of the municipal water distribution system. Like, you could use the waste of power generation for municipal heating, and if you had a sufficiently high flow rate / low temperature drop, you could use the waste of that for CO2 absorbant regeneration.
Also, wells that produce 60C heating well, due to our high thermal gradient.
I think most people here would be more than happy to see Iceland gain an industry of becoming a major CO2 sequesterer for the world, wh
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Economically viable is definitely a problem.
For me the way you do that is you have governments 'borrow' against the savings of future reductions of disaster from climate change to fund it.
Governments are the only entity capable of doing that - they're the ones that eventually pay the disaster clean up.
And in our favor, governments are the only entity we can directly control. Of course we need people to vote and not be seduced by charlatans claiming it's a hoax or that we can't fix it so it's better to just
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Here in Iceland we actually have a borehole into a natural CO2 reservoir that we produce from. To repeat that: we're literally mining CO2 from the earth - to bottle it up for greenhouses to use. So, things like that are obvious uses, for limited quantities of CO2. As are other industrial processes - indeed, if oil prices went too high and/or energy prices sufficiently low, CO2 would be a viable feedstock for producing petrochemicals, as it can be converted to syn
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If you only need 60C then you can just use the sun to heat it, even in winter. Concentrated solar will easily get you to 60C. Alternatively, a heat pump running from cheap renewable energy when there is an excess of it available.
As for what to do with it, sequester it.
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Is it capturing co2 or just the carbon leaving the oxygen? A tree doesnt store compressed gas and the ratio of 20kg to 200g seems a bit intense for it to be gasses. If its pure carbon there would be a lot of graphite or graphene possibilities.
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They wait until AI can talk to the trees. Then they ask what to do with that "stored" co2....
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Literally anything other than heating the goddamn atmosphere. That's the point.
My only concern.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Is that if we deploy this, people may think it's okay to keep polluting instead of continuing to cut back and reach net zero.
It's still worth doing but this is only part of the equation and it has to be coupled with continued advancements in numerous technologies.
Still pretty cool progress in this area and hopefully they can expand it to water capture in the desert as mentioned at the end of the summary.
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I agree, but it's a worthwhile risk. The lag between a reduction in CO2 output and a reduction in atmospheric CO2 is too long to wait, and the lag between a drop in atmospheric CO2 and global temperature is even longer.
It's taken us over 100 years to get to this point; I don't think we want to wait another hundred to get things back to where they were - and no matter what it appears we're going to keep on pumping out CO2 like our lives depend on it anyway.
And you know what? If we can deploy this solution
Re: My only concern.. (Score:4, Insightful)
We will never be able to capture and store carbon at the same rate as it gets produced.
The industrial and economic incentive to produce carbon vastly exceeds the ability of our governments to raise funds to capture it.
The idea that it would be easier and cheaper to capture carbon after we produce it is mind bogglingly stupid.
Re: My only concern.. (Score:3)
That's why you need government to fix the failures markets can create. For example car emission control systems. They aren't what the market would create left to its own devices.
Re: My only concern.. (Score:5, Insightful)
On its own, the market would still have us using leaded fuel.
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It still does in aviation. I just filled up with 100 "low lead" aviation fuel yesterday. The commercial business case for unleaded aviation fuel has never been made, hence it has never been produced in quantity.
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>The idea that it would be easier and cheaper to capture carbon after we produce it is mind bogglingly stupid.
I disagree. If there's a material that sponges up CO2 from the air and all you have to do is leave it lying about (the atmosphere mixes itself so the CO2 essentially comes to you, though only in small amounts at a time)... so long as the manufacturing, deployment, and storing of such material does not cause the release of more CO2 than it sequesters, then it's a good idea.
It doesn't necessarily
Re: My only concern.. (Score:1)
So you think that if we tax, let's say, $1 per kg of CO2, that we'll be able to capture carbon for less than $1 per kg?
Strictly speaking that might not be a violation of the laws of thermodynamics, but I find it to be pretty close to magical thinking that the economics would work out that way.
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There's a lot of energy that has been stored in oil for free by nature. It would not surprise me (much) to find out that it is possible to include the cost of capturing one of the products of hydrocarbon combustion while keeping the overall process economically viable.
But I never said make the tax $1/kg or any such thing - I said make it whatever the cost of capturing the carbon would be. I consider being carbon-neutral mandatory for a sustainable planet (or at least only marginally above the natural back
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Natural sequestration processes are so slow we can consider them to be more or less zero compared to the rate at which we dig carbon up and return it to the atmosphere.
I would argue that it will never be cheaper to sequester carbon than it is to dig it up and burn it. We've gotten too good at doing the latter. Now, people usually respond to this "but never say never, humans are smart" and I agree, but then we're back to magical thinking: We're relying on humans at some future point in time inventing some cu
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One caveat - OLD forests are carbon sinks. New forests are often carbon sources. It takes a couple decades before the photosynthesis overtakes the other parts of forest ecosystem respiration processes. Then there's the 80 year problem of having to plant 2x as many trees to keep increasing the sequestration.
We should all plant a tree (or five) in our yards and along any paved surface. Use trees for shade and wind blocks to lower our AC and heating needs. Forests are great theory but not great in the re
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Easier and cheaper than what? In the case of airline travel, carbon capture is the only existing way to make it carbon neutral.
When it gets to the point of only tripling the cost of the trip, Taylor Swift should offset 110% of her private jet's emissions with CO2 sequestration just to be first and burnish her image.
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Easier and cheaper than what? In the case of airline travel, carbon capture is the only existing way to make it carbon neutral.
Nonsense. It might be the only *economical* and *practical* way to make it carbon neutral, but there are electric helicopters and electric airplanes that are commercially available. The passenger count is small, which means the huge increase in the number of pilots would be utterly infeasible (without full automation, anyway), but it is at least possible, with the exception of intercontinental flights, and even for longer flights, it's still mostly a cost issue. Airlines don't want to spend that much on
Re: My only concern.. (Score:5, Insightful)
A possible path to zero carbon long range aviation is hydrogen generated by solar/wind. There are already existing technologies that can use fuel cells or hydrogen combustion to power short to medium haul flights, with long haul flights probably only a few years of development away.
The only thing stopping it from happening sooner is the economics, and the only reason the economics is stopping it is because we are STILL not pricing the cost of the environment into our economy.
It boils down to market failure, really.
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The only thing stopping it from happening sooner is the economics
Not really. You're skipping a lot of technical and safety issues as well. So far all demonstrations of hydrogen flights wouldn't be considered viable even if the fuel was free. Hydrogen's density compared to liquid fuel is 14% that of kerosene ... when the former is pressurised to 700bar. The thing with pressurisation is you need pressure vessels for it and the way to make pressure vessels is to use a cylindrical shape as it is able to withstand the stresses most readily. That precludes using the wing, so y
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Hydrogen can also a significant greenhouse gas.
https://newatlas.com/environme... [newatlas.com] the benefits may outweigh the costs but it's not a panacea.
It's not a drop in replacement unfortunately. Significant infrastructure refit is required.
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Cheaper than CO2 neutral fuel.
The main point is that taking something concentrated that's not in the air, i.e. oil and burning it into the air - capturing it back to concentrated liquid/solid not in the air is *always* going to be significantly more expensive - literally just from the physics of concentrated solid/liquid vs widely dispersed low concentration gas.
Tech like this article *might* make that cheaper but it's fighting against physics which is generally an expensive endeavor. The key is finding/d
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The idea that it would be easier and cheaper to capture carbon after we produce it is mind bogglingly stupid.
Cheaper? No. Easier? Well yes. Sure we have an abundance of emissions from activities which we could do in an environmentally friendly way. But we also have a lot of emissions that are simply not substitutable in any practical form. Also not yeeting carbon into the sky now doesn't actually solve one of the big lingering problems either : there's already too much of this shit in the atmosphere.
We absolutely need to reduce carbon emissions first and foremost. But when we're done practically doing that we also
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... worthwhile risk. The lag ... appears we're going to keep on pumping out CO2 like our lives depend on it anyway. ... [then] what's so bad about CO2 emissions? sequestering it as fast as we release it seems fine to me.
Link. [investopedia.com] (Oooh, look! Commas in the primary article!)
.. 11,397 ........ 5,057 ..... 2,830 ...1,652 ... 1,054
China
US
India
Russia
Japan
So: If numbers 2-5 completely use this completely, then we've cut CO2 pollution by half...with effectively nowhere left to go except Big C.
Half is great, but maybe we can talk to them after a successful demonstration and/or in production and see if they'll patriciate?
So this might help, but at all not solve the problem. Besides, it'll then suddenly be another
Re: My only concern.. (Score:1)
Americans: We are the world leaders!
Also Americans: We won't do something that's clearly the smart thing to do until China does it first.
Re:My only concern.. (Score:2)
Get real!
By 2035 China will be doing over 15,000. India well over 5,000. Russia and Japan about what they are doing now, maybe up a bit. The other developing countries will have increased. Think Indonesia, for instance.
They are not, any of them, going to reduce, and they are not going to go in for carbon capture. Because, very simply, they do not believe in any climate crisis or emergency. You can see this at every COP they attend. They invariably either block or dilute real reduction measures, and w
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Fun fact: In 2023 alone China installed more solar than the US has ever installed. 217 GW in 2023, US *has in total* 175 GW.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/da... [carbonbrief.org]
Another fun fact: China is laying more concrete in 3 years than the US did in 20th century
https://www.forbes.com/sites/n... [forbes.com]
Third Fun Fact: They're building high speed rail with it so they won't have most short haul air travel that the US won't give up.
https://brilliantmaps.com/high... [brilliantmaps.com]
We won't get started on how much faster and cheaper their EV indus
What's your goal? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that if we deploy this, people may think it's okay to keep polluting instead of continuing to cut back and reach net zero.
Quick question: what's your goal here?
Is it to force people to "cut back" on their standard of living? Or is it to solve the climate change problem?
Because if it's *not* to solve the climate change problem, then I don't want to hear about it.
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Is that if we deploy this, people may think it's okay to keep polluting instead of continuing to cut back and reach net zero.
Quick question: what's your goal here?
Is it to force people to "cut back" on their standard of living? Or is it to solve the climate change problem?
Because if it's *not* to solve the climate change problem, then I don't want to hear about it.
This. I'm really tired of the faux environmentalism that focuses on conservation for conservation's sake. If there's a reason to conserve something, fine, but if there are other ways to have the same effect that don't require a significant lifestyle impact, then conserving unnecessarily would be pure stupidity.
Ask me what I think about water conservation. It's a way to keep politicians from having to burn political capital on the desalination plants that should have been built thirty years ago.
Ask me wha
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"so that businesses or governments don't have to spend money to fix longstanding problems"
When business or government end up fixing the problems it will ultimately be you that pays for it.
Re:What's your goal? A: don't feed climate trolls (Score:4, Informative)
Is that if we deploy this, people may think it's okay to keep polluting instead of continuing to cut back and reach net zero.
Quick question: what's your goal here?
Is it to force people to "cut back" on their standard of living? Or is it to solve the climate change problem?
Because if it's *not* to solve the climate change problem, then I don't want to hear about it.
This. I'm really tired of the faux environmentalism that focuses on conservation for conservation's sake. If there's a reason to conserve something, fine, but if there are other ways to have the same effect that don't require a significant lifestyle impact, then conserving unnecessarily would be pure stupidity.
Ask me what I think about water conservation. It's a way to keep politicians from having to burn political capital on the desalination plants that should have been built thirty years ago.
Ask me what I think about power conservation. It's a way to keep power companies from having to use actual financial capital to build the low-carbon power production that should have been built thirty years ago.
Most conservation seems to be pressuring the public to give up something they care about so that businesses or governments don't have to spend money to fix longstanding problems, so I can't roll my eyes hard enough when anyone suggests conserving unless there's an imminent threat (e.g. "We're going to run out of water before the end of the summer), and even then, only to the minimum extent necessary to survive that threat, because if you go too far and conserve too much, it gives the people who should have acted to prevent that threat from happening in the first place adequate cover to not do what they should be doing.
So, let me get this straight: your argument is that conservation measures are "faux environmentalism" because they’re a cover for big institutions to avoid responsibility? That’s a flimsy excuse to ignore action.
Here’s the thing: climate issues and resource shortages aren't just political footballs—they’re real. Desalination and carbon-free power aren't simple or cheap fixes, and even if they were fully operational tomorrow, that doesn't mean conservation isn't essential. These are complex, global problems that need multifaceted solutions, including conservation.
Your logic is conveniently defeatist. It’s easier to sit back and criticize conservation than admit it’s a necessary part of addressing issues right now. Painting conservation as an anti-progress cop-out is just cynicism masquerading as realism.
Inaction is the only thing guaranteed to give corporations and governments the "cover" to keep doing nothing. So, instead of dismissing conservation, maybe consider that it’s one critical piece in a much larger puzzle—one that demands more than just pointing fingers at politicians and companies.
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Most conservation seems to be pressuring the public to give up something they care about
Your complaint would be more relevant if the lifestyles of the top polluters wasn't woefully wasteful. You label this as "something they care about" but the reality is most people couldn't give a shit, they care about something else. I.e. they care about being able to drive to work, not about making sure they do so with a 5L V8 engine in an oversized tank. You can substitute and reduce emissions without your lifestyle being affected.
That's just one example, but there are many. Batshit crazy house designs th
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Quick question: what's your goal here?
Is it to force people to "cut back" on their standard of living? Or is it to solve the climate change problem?
Because if it's *not* to solve the climate change problem, then I don't want to hear about it.
The one thing requires the other. For example car culture is unsustainable, especially if expanded to a greater percentage of the world's population. Even if we solve the tailpipe emissions problem we still have the tires.
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Is that if we deploy this, people may think it's okay to keep polluting instead of continuing to cut back and reach net zero.
Quick question: what's your goal here?
Is it to force people to "cut back" on their standard of living? Or is it to solve the climate change problem?
Because if it's *not* to solve the climate change problem, then I don't want to hear about it.
Spot on. I'd mod you up if you weren't already at 5. Which also gives me an excuse to weigh in on this sub-thread -- I hate trolls, especially climate trolls... :)
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Is that if we deploy this, people may think it's okay to keep polluting instead of continuing to cut back and reach net zero.
Or it may be adapted so people don't need to pollute to run their existing polluting machines such as cars or burners. You may need to empty your carbon when filling up at a gas station. We may not have to get rid of the fireplace.
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We may not have to get rid of the fireplace.
If its wood burning we shouldn't need to get rid of it either way, it's carbon neutral already. Its not geologically sequestered carbon (petroleum), its just temporarily sequestered while the tree is alive, before its consumed and CO2 is release from bacterium, mold, termite farts or naturally occuring fires.
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The bigger issue with wood burning is the pollution. The particle emissions degrade air quality quite severely in the local area.
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The bigger issue with wood burning is the pollution. The particle emissions degrade air quality quite severely in the local area.
When I smell a wood burning fireplace from a neighbor I think of good times in the woods with a campfire. YMMV.
Tech can avoid compromising comforts (Score:2)
Is that if we deploy this, people may think it's okay to keep polluting instead of continuing to cut back and reach net zero.
What IF it is really good and we can reach net zero, or go a little negative to clean things up, without cutting back on our creature comforts? Can't the developing peoples of the world enjoy some creature comforts that energy provides?
That's where your carbon is coming from today, not so much US and EU. Which is why, globally, we are producing more CO2 than pre-covid. Further cuts in the US and EU are providing diminishing returns. Either the developing world makes sacrifices or there is no net zero. Or
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"Continuing to cut back."
Pretty funny!
*crying emoji*
Re:My only concern.. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm tired of tree huggers not getting the message: You're pissing into the wind if you keep telling people to "cut back". That's not a solution and not going to happen. You're just being annoying.
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I'm tired of tree huggers not getting the message: You're pissing into the wind if you keep telling people to "cut back". That's not a solution and not going to happen. You're just being annoying.
If “cutting back” annoys you, try facing the actual fallout of doing nothing—your whining won't hold up against real-world consequences.
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Is that if we deploy this, people may think it's okay to keep polluting instead of continuing to cut back and reach net zero.
Why would that be a problem, if it actually solved the problem? Really, why?
That's what I find most interesting; it's like a religion for so many people.
If we did have a magic wand we could just wave and make the excess CO2 just disappear, that would be bad because ... why? Not enough penance involved? Offending the climate change gods? Why, exactly?
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...As you can see from the other comments here, there are plenty of people who are never going to do that anyway. We can't wait for the world to become enlightened. The climate crisis is not the turning point in the social history of humanity that will create a Star Trek utopia; even Roddenberry thought that would need a global thermonuclear war. Compared to alternatives like filling the sky with sulphur to block sunlight, this is a pretty amazing path back toward equilibrium.
Accepting science means accepting its solutions (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a scam by the oil industry to make us think that there is a ready-made solution that doesn't involve using less of their product.
Or science and engineering will solve the oncoming Malthusian crisis, YET AGAIN.
Embracing science does not solely mean accepting the data of bad news, it also mean accepting the technical solutions that are emerging.
It already did (Score:1)
Eventually we're either going to realize that and begin to transition at scale or we're going to degenerate into some sort of nasty techno feudal hellscape.
Right now I think it's 50/50 which one we pick.
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In the form of solar energy, wind a bit of geothermal some batteries and walkable cities.
Great, and here's another possible contributor.
Eventually we're either going to realize that and begin to transition at scale or we're going to degenerate into some sort of nasty techno feudal hellscape.
Again, I expect such Malthusian sentiments to fall to science and engineering. We've barely considered removal and sequestration, artificial cooling (ex sunshades), etc. In other words mostly prevention, little cleanup. I'm saying work on the cleanup too.
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Embracing science does not solely mean accepting the data of bad news, it also mean accepting the technical solutions that are emerging.
Ah, but see that wouldn't feel as good as condemning and blaming, and it definitely wouldn't be as politically useful.
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I understand you put emphasis on mouths although since it's obviously the first thing you think of given your own life experience.
The openings that trees breathe through are called stoma. Why don't you try looking up the etymology and then don't get back to us?
Because I'm trying to keep the discussions simple (Score:2)
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Introducing vocabulary that isn't really necessary to the conversation just makes the conversation more complicated decreases the number of people who will understand that my message.
If you actually cared about people receiving your messages, you'd do some editing of the gobbledygook that results from whatever input method you're using now.
Plant a tree- on Venus. (Score:1)
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No (Score:2)
The Rule (Score:2)
I think the rule for headlines like this is that the answer is almost always "No"
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Betteridge's law of headlines?
QUIT cutting down trees, nature's best air filter (Score:2)
I have no need for a protocol droid (Score:2)
Another potential use could be for harvesting water from desert air for drinking water, Yaghi told SFGate.
Uncle Owen : I have no need for a protocol droid.
C-3PO : Of course you haven't, sir, not in an environment such as this. That's why I have been programmed...
Uncle Owen : What I really need is a droid who understands the binary language of moisture vaporators.
Next steps? (Score:2)
So you have a material that captures CO2. That's only one tiny step. Given that the material is expensive, you then need to extract the CO2 in a controlled fashion capture it in (probably) tanks, transport it, and then sequester it in some fashion.
So far, none of the schemes for doing all of this have gone beyond greenwashing. The energy required to produce the needed materials, to manipulate the CO2, and to sequester it produce far more CO2 than is actually removed from the atmosphere.
IMHO this is a dumb
But is it even a good idea? (Score:1)
I am not entirely sure I support this style of carbon capture mechanisms, as all they seem to do is introduce something which competes with plants without providing any of the other benefits which plants do, but introducing costs in complex manufacturing among others. This latest crystalline powder which looks like it pulls 100% of CO2 out of the air is basically a suffocation based defoliant. I'd prefer a solution which doesn't open an avenue of attack on the human food chain.
greenwashing? (Score:2)
No AI was harmed here (Score:1)
It was all sounding good until they added "and also AI." There's no artificial intelligence. LLMs are useful in synthesizing raw data into easily understandable things, but it's not intelligence and it doesn't invent things.
AI. Blockchain. Quantum. Next-Gen. WHATEVER. If you can capture carbon from the air and make our planet better, DO IT. If your goal is to use irrelevant buzzwords to get money from suckers (er, "investors") then just repeat the word salad above.
Blockchainingly quantumingly bit-br
What do you do with it once captured? (Score:2)
A tiny sliver of of Earth's atmosphere (Score:2)
Once that 0.04% of Earrth's atmosphere is totally scrubbed away, plant life on Earth becomes totally extinct.
Their MOF-808 failed the last time (Score:2)
This group created a MOF called MOF-808 that was too facile and the regeneration process too energy intensive to be commercially usable. The new molecule this time is called COF-999.
Two years ago, his lab created a very promising material, MOF-808, that adsorbs CO2, but the researchers found that after hundreds of cycles of adsorption and desorption, the MOFs broke down. These MOFs were decorated inside with amines (NH2 groups), which efficiently bind CO2 and are a common component of carbon capture materi
Berkeley air? (Score:2)
Glad (Score:2)
I'm glad to know that carbon capture will solve all our problems. Now I no longer need to worry about spewing CO_2 into the atmosphere.
Test it on Venus (Score:2)
Build a floating version of it and set it loose in the Venusian atmosphere.
How much air can pass through carbon scrubbers? (Score:2)
I haven't yet found any information regarding the fraction of the Earth's atmosphere that can pass through carbon scrubbers in, say, a year. That would seem to be a key factor limiting the value of scrubbers. Sufficiently efficient scrubbers will probably be cost effective contributors to reduction of the greenhouse effect, but it would be nice to know their limits.
Presumably, carbon scrubbers are much more effective when deployed at the sites of CO2 emissions. I would also like to see a discussion of how a