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There's already a highly efficient solar-powered process for extracting carbon dioxide from seawater called "growing seaweed." It would be far more efficient
by blacksqr 7y ago
There's already a highly efficient solar-powered process for extracting carbon dioxide from seawater called "growing seaweed."
It would be far more efficient
simply to collect seaweed from the ocean and put it through fermentation and dry distillation processes to produce ethanol and other fuel products. No new technology breakthroughs required.
- blix 7y agoI do believe there is work being done on this. That said, removing carbon from the oceans, burning it and releasing it back into the atmosphere feels a little bit counterproductive to me.
- EugeneOZ 7y agoAt least it will slowdown oceans acidification until people find how to give enough power to the planes without liquid fuel. In this particular idea I don't like the ship - it will pollute the ocean while transferring the fuel.
- afiori 7y agoI ear a lot of talk about airplane pollution, is it actually a significant contribution?
- T-A 7y agoAbout 2% of CO2 emissions, according to this: https://www.atag.org/facts-figures.html https://www.atag.org/facts-figures.html
- EugeneOZ 7y agoDoesn't matter. Point is: while we need airplanes, we need to power them. While we can't power them using "green" sources of power, we should use liquid fuels. And while we need them, this idea (topic-starter) sounds reasonable.
- blacksqr 7y ago>removing carbon from the oceans, burning it and releasing it back into the atmosphere feels a little bit counterproductive to me That's the plan in the OP, isn't it?
- xbmcuser 7y agoNot really as it will stop increase of carbon dioxide. Ocean carbon dioxide also comes from the atmosphere a system where carbon dioxide is just recycled through the atmosphere and oceans system will mean we won't be adding more carbon in the system. That is the current problem the world is producing more and more carbon each year first we need to stop the growth at least reversing it can come once we stop increasing it.
- neltnerb 7y agoI've been thinking about this particular one a lot, and I think the difference is that it still displaces carbon that would have come from the ground otherwise. Plus in a magical future where energy is cheap and no fossil fuels are used at all, the methanol can be easily used to synthesize many useful chemicals.
- petre 7y agoAnd it also doesn't litter the oceans with broken solar panels, since a hurricane will probably destroy these islands.
- pfdietz 7y agoGrowing anything is not "highly efficient". I doubt the efficiency of sunlight => chemical energy of methanol using seaweed would be higher than 1%. This is the terrible downside of biomass energy: the enormous areas that are needed because the efficiency is so low.
- blacksqr 7y agoEfficient or not, seaweed is already growing in the enormous area of the oceans and washing up on beaches worldwide. All that needs to be done is go get it.
- seunosewa 7y agoHow do you turn seaweed into liquid fuel efficiently?
- blacksqr 7y agoFermentation and dry distillation. Seaweed contains a lot of cellulose and starch, just like land-based plants. It can be processed with acids or enzymes to convert these into sugars, just as is done to convert corn starch into corn syrup. The sugary byproduct can be fermented to produce ethanol. Dry distillation is heating biomass without oxygen. It produces a range of gaseous and liquid fuel byproducts, plus charcoal. Solar heat can of course be used.
- neltnerb 7y agoI imagine this idea works, but to compare some orders of magnitude... solar cells may have efficiencies of 15%. 70% for electrolysis, unclear for desalination (depends on how pure it has to be), unclear for methanol production but probably >50%... maybe you get 3% net in the product? It's not amazing, but special engineered algae in perfect environments do what, 10% to biomass in a miracle situation? Isn't a major energy input to dry distillation the drying part, especially in this case? And the energy lost during fermentation is more yes? Maybe they are in the same range, but I think my bet would be on the solar system over a system requiring collecting algae from the open ocean.