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This article dishes out too much hype. Photosynthesis may be 0.5% - 2% efficient, but this new technology is "roughly 1000x as efficient as photosynthesis", wh
by mchannon 9y ago
This article dishes out too much hype.
Photosynthesis may be 0.5% - 2% efficient, but this new technology is "roughly 1000x as efficient as photosynthesis", which must make it 1000% efficient.
Further, the comparison with photosynthesis is similarly awful. This new thing collects and concentrates CO2, hoping there's an application for it that doesn't involve letting it go again. Photosynthesis essentially destroys CO2.
The real lede I'm looking for is how much energy it consumes and how much CO2 it processes, either today or someday. Guess there wasn't enough room in the article for that.
- thinkling 9y agoYeah, the efficiency the article claims is "per square foot of space" which seems irrelevant. (Well, at least until you learn that they're going to need hundreds of thousands of these things to have a useful impact.) But even worse is the complete and utter lack of any mention of the amount of energy needed to capture a ton of CO2.
- hinkley 9y agoRight. There's a point where it's cheaper to store renewable energy to use later rather than capture carbon dioxide using the surplus.