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Hi Gustaf, I read earlier that you are more interested in Direct Air Capture technologies than others. Do you have any specific reasons? I think another way we

by aoner 8y ago

Hi Gustaf, I read earlier that you are more interested in Direct Air Capture technologies than others. Do you have any specific reasons? I think another way we could look at things is finding "cheap" forms of carbon that would have otherwise been burned/left to rot and reprocess those into building materials.

tempestn 8y ago
Also other greenhouse gasses, like methane capture from landfills.
yazaddaruvala 8y ago
I'm not Gustaf, but I'll try to answer this. The return on investment for a lot of Carbon capture/sequestering is not lucrative (or at least the business models are not yet apparent). The long term VC angle for air to fuel seems straight forward. - Mars alone will be a huge market for such technology. Driving a lot of demand 100-200 years out (if not a big market in 20-40 years). - Shanghai, et-al, need air filters. Now imagine a filter which also generates a sellable resource; fuel. I imagine that machine would sell quite well in those markets. - With the right level of efficiency, a new era of "sail" boats could be powered by reclaimed fuel from air. Imagine the market for a cargo/cruise ship leaving port with an empty fuel tank, and days later reaching the destination port with a full tank and its goods delivered. - With the right level of efficiency, this only improves the efficiency of coal plants. Burning coal for electricity but also reclaiming the CO2 for fuel.
- Xixi 8y ago
  I don't see how you could make a "sail" boat powered by reclaimed fuel from air, as there is no fuel in the air. You will need a source of energy to convert the CO2 to fuel. In nature the most common (to my knowledge) CO2 -> fuel process is called photosynthesis, and is powered by the sun. CO2 -> fuel consumes energy (that is stored in the fuel). Fuel -> CO2 releases it.
  - yazaddaruvala 8y ago
    Sorry, in the case of "sail" boats, I worded it poorly before. Wind turbine-like "sails" could act as a propulsion source when the wind direction is correct, and generate energy and funnel the air into the CO2 -> fuel machine when the direction of wind is non-optimal for propulsion. I agree in all of the cases I mentioned there would always need to be some energy source.
gustaf 8y ago
The reason I'm so interested in Direct Air Capture is: - It's primarily a tech solution which allows for scale. If you build one Machine you can build a million. It won't actually require very much space, it need access to cheap energy and abilities to store/sequester the CO2 captured. - Technology have the benefit that can be optimized and optimized and optimized to the point where the cost is not very high. The less tech the less changes for optimization - There is a big risk many countries won't meet their responsibility. Getting wealthy democracies onboard is hard enough. We need a scalable way to solve this that doesn't require everyone to help because they prob won't after all - Any negative emission solution that requires a large land-mass will create other problems (dealing with land-owners etc).

by aoner 8y ago

tempestn 8y ago

Also other greenhouse gasses, like methane capture from landfills.

yazaddaruvala 8y ago

I'm not Gustaf, but I'll try to answer this. The return on investment for a lot of Carbon capture/sequestering is not lucrative (or at least the business models are not yet apparent). The long term VC angle for air to fuel seems straight forward. - Mars alone will be a huge market for such technology. Driving a lot of demand 100-200 years out (if not a big market in 20-40 years). - Shanghai, et-al, need air filters. Now imagine a filter which also generates a sellable resource; fuel. I imagine that machine would sell quite well in those markets. - With the right level of efficiency, a new era of "sail" boats could be powered by reclaimed fuel from air. Imagine the market for a cargo/cruise ship leaving port with an empty fuel tank, and days later reaching the destination port with a full tank and its goods delivered. - With the right level of efficiency, this only improves the efficiency of coal plants. Burning coal for electricity but also reclaiming the CO2 for fuel.

Xixi 8y ago
I don't see how you could make a "sail" boat powered by reclaimed fuel from air, as there is no fuel in the air. You will need a source of energy to convert the CO2 to fuel. In nature the most common (to my knowledge) CO2 -> fuel process is called photosynthesis, and is powered by the sun. CO2 -> fuel consumes energy (that is stored in the fuel). Fuel -> CO2 releases it.
- yazaddaruvala 8y ago
  Sorry, in the case of "sail" boats, I worded it poorly before. Wind turbine-like "sails" could act as a propulsion source when the wind direction is correct, and generate energy and funnel the air into the CO2 -> fuel machine when the direction of wind is non-optimal for propulsion. I agree in all of the cases I mentioned there would always need to be some energy source.

gustaf 8y ago

The reason I'm so interested in Direct Air Capture is: - It's primarily a tech solution which allows for scale. If you build one Machine you can build a million. It won't actually require very much space, it need access to cheap energy and abilities to store/sequester the CO2 captured. - Technology have the benefit that can be optimized and optimized and optimized to the point where the cost is not very high. The less tech the less changes for optimization - There is a big risk many countries won't meet their responsibility. Getting wealthy democracies onboard is hard enough. We need a scalable way to solve this that doesn't require everyone to help because they prob won't after all - Any negative emission solution that requires a large land-mass will create other problems (dealing with land-owners etc).