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Bioreactor Captures as Much Carbon as an Acre of Trees
- danieltillett 7y agoIs this anything other than vapourware?
- seren 7y agoAny article I have seen are showing the same 3D renderings, so I would tend to agree. If you have a working prototype, show it. The whole company Hypergiant looks like a joke too. From A.I. to Space faring, they cover everything..
- wcoenen 7y agoIndeed, articles claiming miraculous technology without technical details don't belong on the front page. Flagged.
- tyingq 7y agoTheir homepage doesn't mention the product anywhere. https://www.hypergiant.com/ https://www.hypergiant.com/ I can't tell what it is they generally do either. Edit: Found the product page: https://www.hypergiant.com/green/ https://www.hypergiant.com/green/
- LifeLiverTransp 7y agoIts worse - its concious soothing ware, to prevent vapourware like co2 cars getting more flak
- goatinaboat 7y agoWhy do we need this? Just plant some trees!
- ben_w 7y agoYou can put this in the Sahara or on the space station, but yeah trees are probably easier 99% of the time.
- jwr 7y agoBut we are not planting some trees. I decided I will not criticize any attempt at carbon sequestration, because whatever the initiatives are, doing something is better than doing nothing, which is what we are currently busying ourselves with.
- viach 7y agoInteresting, how much CO2 is released producing this? And there is no mention of what electricity supply should be? How both of these factors are comparing to just planting an acre of trees?
- iamgopal 7y agoElectricity supply will be as much as acre of solar cell.
- Gibbon1 7y agoAdvanced low cost molten salt thorium rectors will provide cheap electricity to power these.
- acqq 7y ago> Advanced low cost molten salt thorium rectors will provide cheap electricity ...that still don't exist. Those that we know how to make have still so serious problems that they aren't being made for anything but the research: "Basically, MSRs are underdeveloped and require a lot more research (especially in corrosion) before they can surely take off as the world’s fleet of power plants." https://whatisnuclear.com/msr.html https://whatisnuclear.com/msr.html Also: "The problem with MSRs, then, is that the fuel is already completely cut open and melted. You’re halfway to a bomb already" By the same state of availability, it can be said "the advanced fusion reactors will provide cheap electricity." EDIT: in reply to the argument below (as I can't answer there, the moderators like it that way): > Thorium is ... also closer than wind and solar. How? Both wind and solar are already available and usable today to every individual who has the property to install them, everywhere in the world. Who can buy and install his own thorium reactor on his property, and where?
- ThomPete 7y agoThorium is potentially closer than fusion or fuel cells which means also closer than wind and solar. But yeah we are still not even close to having it ready and it might take decades. So we are going to be stuck with fossil fuels for a very long time.
- rapsey 7y ago400 trees is not that much. And they require no electricity
- julienfr112 7y agoThere is a sodium anode, that is consumed by the process. You have to build another "clean" process to produce it : https://www.intechopen.com/books/recent-improvements-of-power-plant https://www.intechopen.com/books/recent-improvements-of-powe...
- ginko 7y agoSodium is already commercially produced through electrolysis, so if you use carbon-neutral electricity for that you should be good.
- VierScar 7y agoIf we're using clean power to power extraction of CO2, wouldn't it just be better to connect that clean power directly to the grid and thus reduce the required production of CO2 at other power plants? Otherwise we'll be having massive efficiency losses.
- wffurr 7y agoDo both. We are at or close to the point where we need negative emissions to stave off catastrophic climate change.
- Yetanfou 7y agoIs that really the case though? I mean the 'catastrophic' part, not the 'climate change' part as that has been clear from the get-go - climate change is happening and has been happening for as long as the planet has had an atmosphere. We're in an interglacial, on the far end of the high point (the 'interglacial optimum') on the curve and with that on the way down to a new glacial in a few thousand years. The interglacial optimum is the period within an interglacial that experiences the most 'favourable' climate and often occurs during the middle of that interglacial. For the present interglacial, the Holocene (which started about 11.700 years ago) the climatic optimum occurred during the Sub-boreal (~3000 BCE - 500 BCE) and Atlanticum (7000 BCE - 3000 BCE) [1]. Our current climatic phase following this climatic optimum is still within the same interglacial. That warm period was followed by a gradual decline until about 2000 years ago, with another warm period until the Little Ice Age (1250–1850). The current interglacial is actually relatively cool compared to the previous known ones, the maximum Antarctic temperature during the previous interglacial was about 6°C higher than that registered during the current one [2]. Can you point us at some non-politicised sources which can refute these findings, which prove that anthropogenic climate change is such a strong force that it counteracts the natural glacial cycle? For those who wonder why I ask this question please note that this is a serious request. The debate around climate change has been so polluted by politics that it is nigh impossible to find objective sources. Those objective sources which I know off fail to show the climate catastrophe which we're all being warned about. [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.png
- anonymfus 7y agoThe forest is more than trees. Forest stores much more carbon in the soil and the soil covering than in the wood.
- murkle 7y agoAre you sure that's measuring the right thing? Doesn't a mature forest reach a steady state where carbon in = carbon out when dead trees rot etc?
- anon4242 7y agoBut the carbon isn't released into the atmosphere when trees rot. Dead trees turn into soil. Most of a dead tree's carbon will be bound to the ground as soil.
- ac29 7y agoThe fungi that grow on dead trees perform cellular respiration, which releases CO2 (sugar + O2 -> CO2 + water + energy).
- kjeetgill 7y agoHuh, I had also heard (vaguely, from somewhere!) that most of the carbon does get released back into the air on rotting. Where does it go after the soil? The carbon that makes up a plant is definitely sourced from the air not the soil. If the carbon was still in the soil I'd imagine fossil fuels wouldn't need to mostly come from the Carboniferous period, right?
- Yetanfou 7y agoThere are two carbon cycles, the biological one (fast) and the geological one (slow). In the biological cycle carbon enters food chains through autotrophs (self-feeders, nearly all of them photosynthesising organisms like algae and plants) which capture carbon dioxide from air or bicarbonate ions from water and use them to make organic compounds such as glucose. These in turn get eaten by heterotrophs (other-feeders) such as animals who consume the organic molecules and break them down through cellular respiration where carbon in the molecules is released as carbon dioxide. Decomposers (fungi and bacteria) also release organic compounds and carbon dioxide when they break down dead organisms and waste products. Rinse, repeat.
- aaron695 7y agoThis is a lie, obviously. But if you like this sort of LARPing Science Fiction original link here - https://www.hypergiant.com/green/ https://www.hypergiant.com/green/
- z3phyr 7y agoThe oceans and maturing forests are the best carbon sinks, and as of now it is more economical to just conserve them
- ollybee 7y agoThese kinds of ideas just don't seem to make sense given the scale of the problem. It's as if some people imagine you could set up a few plants of for each power station and we'd be all square. When in fact: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/the-crazy-scale-of-human-carbon-emission/ https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/life-unbounded/the-craz...
- krzat 7y agoExactly. I think we need to find a biologic solution. Maybe genetically modified trees / plants that spread quickly and capture carbon efficiently, terraform sahara, that kind of thing.
- LoSboccacc 7y agoin $current_year? there will be "save the desert" groups springing everywhere, fighting for the rights of the horned vipers or smth
- pbj5679 7y agoOne of these machines could sequester about 10 tons of Co2 per annum. (1) According to the linked article we have roughly 25 billion tons of Co2 emissions yearly. If we take 5k cities in the world (2), and each had just one machine you could cut emissions down to about 500k tons per year, that is a 1e6 factor magnitude difference. If each city had a single "farm" of 20 of these (they are 3x3x7 after all for roughly 400 m^3 of space) you'd be down to 25k tons of Co2 per year. 1. https://projects.ncsu.edu/project/treesofstrength/treefact.htm https://projects.ncsu.edu/project/treesofstrength/treefact.h... 2. https://www.quora.com/How-many-towns-and-cities-are-there-in-the-world https://www.quora.com/How-many-towns-and-cities-are-there-in...
- kebman 7y agoI wonder how much CO² you could sequester from the atmosphere per year by removing just one cargo ship.
- magicalhippo 7y agoSo what does it do with the carbon? Turns it into more algae? If so, what do you do with the algae to prevent it from returning to the atmosphere?
- kebman 7y agoThis just in: Flying algae seen returning to the atmosphere!!1 :D
- wcoenen 7y agoEventually excess algae would have to be removed. If you then just let them rot or convert them into food which is then eaten (both being the slow biological equivalent to burning), then the captured CO2 returns to the atmosphere.
- kebman 7y agoYou guys have no sense of humour. Methane, on the other hand...
- kebman 7y agoBut can it make diamonds? ;)