Lets Make Carbon Removal Easy

https://www.upgradingoptimism.com/p/lets-make-carbon-removal-easy

by mchusma • 4 years ago

2 4 4 years ago

upgradingoptimism.com

mchusma• 4 years ago

Returning the world to pre-industrial CO2 levels is likely cheaper than you think.

PaulHoule2• 4 years ago

"Tesla and Impossible burgers are good examples of this technique"

Really?

A Tesla is a nice car but it's not as affordable as an economical gas car.

An impossible burger costs more than a beef burger. I wouldn't say that it tastes like cardboard (it's better than a beef burger from a school cafeteria or Friendly's or Sonic or the new burger joint in Collegetown but those are all awful burgers). but I don't see it as a real advance over fake burgers we had 20 years ago like Boca Burgers.

I don't know where that $152/ton number for CO2 removal come from. There is talk of getting it down to $100/ton but so far real installations are more like $500-$600 a ton

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.iecr.0c04839

and they aren't doing it at any scale which makes a difference.

Ekaros• 4 years ago

If capture could be that that cheap. Is there any reason to stop most of emissions? Just capture it back.

PaulHoule2• 4 years ago

There are three kinds of capture.

One of them is to capture CO2 from a source with is free of nitrogen from the atmosphere. You can get this from fermentation processes (byproduct of making ethanol from corn or sugarcane) or some other industrial processes. This is very low cost but not very scalable.

Another is to capture CO2 from a powerplant, which means either capturing it from the waste gas with an aimine stripper

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/81103601.pdf

or maybe separating CO2 from the fuel before it is burned or burning the fuel in pure oxygen which makes the separation easier. In theory you could burn coal or natural gas this way and the technology is a bird in the hand but nobody will do it unless they get paid to do it.

Then there is direct air capture, which, I'm afraid, is a step backwards. If it worked it could be a step forwards but it's enabled the new "net zero" phrase which is a codeword for "we'll pump as much carbon into the air as much as we can now because someday somebody can take it out again".

Lets Make Carbon Removal Easy

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