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Catching CO2 from trucks and reducing their emissions by 90%
- blunte 7y agoTheir technology aside, I don't think it's a good idea to put 7% of their vehicle payload on the roof. That would measurably elevate the center of gravity, which is not ideal for any vehicle that turns.
- swiley 7y ago>Just convert the CO2 to fuel using renewable energy That’s a nice idea but I haven’t seen a reaction that reduces CO2 anywhere, I’m not a professional chemist though so maybe I’m missing something? EDIT: lol, yes I am [1]. I should just stick to software since I only mildly suck at that. Also all that crazy tech sounds a bit like overkill; alkali hydroxides absorb CO2 and are pretty cheap to produce. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrochemical_reduction_of_carbon_dioxide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrochemical_reduction_of...
- egdod 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrochemical_reduction_of_carbon_dioxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrochemical_reduction_of_c...
- gus_massa 7y agoIt is possible to convert the CO2 to methane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction but it is not as efficient as portrayed in the media. Conversion to gasoline or diesel fuel is much more difficult and inefficient.
- perfunctory 7y agoBrilliant. Now let's force the governments to put in place the right incentives. How do we do that?
- egdod 7y agoLet’s wait to see if it actually works before we start threatening to put people in prison for not using it.
- rfrey 7y agoI’m pretty sure the proposal is actually for on-the-spot extra-judicial executions of anybody who even criticizes the idea. Or maybe it’s just a call for a bit of regulation, I dunno.
- zapnuk 7y agoStart by proposing it to a goverment who is actually interested in facing cimate change
- hanniabu 7y agoNot sure why you're being downvoted. The US has a president that actively acts against such interests. He drops out of the Paris Agreement and has done tons of environmental protection rollbacks. One example: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/24/5-major-trump-climate-rollbacks-you-might-have-missed-in-2019.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/24/5-major-trump-climate-rollba... Just one example from there: > The new rules make it easier to take out protections for threatened animals and plants and allow federal agencies to conduct economic assessments when deciding whether to protect a species from things like construction projects in a critical habitat. The rules also remove tools used by scientists to predict future harm to species from climate change. As you can see, as with previous actions, he makes changes to benefit business because it's too difficult for businesses to thrive when they need to worry about the environment (paraphrasing of what he's actually said in the past).
- gus_massa 7y agoThis is too complicated and I'm not convinced, but the research paper has more details that make more sense that the short press release https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2019.00143/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenrg.2019.0014... They don't use the collected CO2 to make diesel fuel, they make methane. Some trucks may use methane as fuel. IIUC they don't expect every gas station to have a converted from CO2 to fuel, but to have the conversion in the operational bases of the trucks, or collect it and send it to a specialized facility. They use the heat from the exhaust gases to power the device, the calculations are in the paper. They say that in other projects, they use the same heat of the exhaust gases to improve the efficiency of the fuel in a 10%. So this is not totally "free". How does this compare to releasing the CO2 (and getting a 10% of efficiency) and collecting the CO2 from the air in a central location? How does this compare to using Hydrogen as fuel? I guess the difference is that most of this technology is buildable now, but Hydrogen storage is too difficult for now. How does this compare with a electric truck? I guess this system gives more autonomy, but all the chemical reactions to convert the CO2 to methane are less efficient that good batteries.
- karmakaze 7y agoOne reason why it should be much more efficient in energy expended for CO2 captured is that the concentrations from the truck exhaust is so much higher than in the atmosphere.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoOn the other hand, a central facility can often be more efficient (other things being equal) than a bunch of small facilities. (A central generating facility, for example, is more efficient than a bunch of car engines.) That said, my money is on the higher concentration of CO2 winning by far.
- catalogia 7y ago> They use the heat from the exhaust gases to power the device, the calculations are in the paper. Wouldn't this effect the efficiency of catalytic converters? As I understand it, those need to be hot to work well. Or is the heat taken out of the exhaust after it passes through the cat? Skimming through the paper, I don't see mention of this. Maybe it would make sense to shrink the engine's radiator and use some of the engine heat instead of exhaust heat.
- remote_phone 7y agoMaking electric trucks makes more sense. Then you can centralize the CO2 collection to the power plants and make it much more efficient.
- on_and_off 7y agoI don't think so. Building an electric car emits a ton of CO2 as well. The figure that is often used is that building your car generates just as much CO2 that what it will generate during its lifetime of driving. So even if your truck runs 100% on renewable energy (and that's a big if, not to mention that creating this system also generates pollution before becoming green), retrofitting existing vehicles with technologies such as this one should be studied seriously.
- CydeWeys 7y agoThat figure is flat-out wrong, though. It's a myth.
- tptacek 7y agoCan you link to an analysis?
- crca 7y agoHere’s a comprehensive study from the Union of Concerned Scientists. https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cleaner-Cars-from-Cradle-to-Grave-full-report.pdf https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/11/Cl...
- NickNameNick 7y agoIs that the one that was massively revised about a month ago, where all the 'worst-case' assumptions for ev production related emissions were dramatically reduced?
- tptacek 7y ago
- crca 7y agoYou recapture CO2 at the expense of increased fossil fuel consumption due to lower payload capacity. Is this really better than just going straight to electric transports? Edit: Assuming you can fuel the trucks with the product of the CO2 to fuel conversion, is it still better than electric?
- rzzzt 7y agoSounds like an inverse rocket equation problem.
- on_and_off 7y agoit can be way better if that system can be retrofitted on existing trucks.
- mhandley 7y agoSeems like this might be a better solution for shipping than for trucks. Batteries are not really a viable solution for shipping, except on short routes. They're probably stuck with hydrocarbon fuels, but this might work, and the extra mass of CO2 carried wouldn't really be a big deal for a ship. Probably won't work with current dirty bunker fuel though, as I expect that contains too many contaminants; it would need the fuel to be cleaned up a lot first so I wouldn't expect the shipping industry to be overly enthusiastic.
- crca 7y ago77% of semi truck routes are 250 miles or less, a distance easily covered by today’s EV technology.
- njarboe 7y agoWhat fraction of the total semi truck traveled miles are on those short routes?
- bobthepanda 7y agoAlso, what percentage of semi trucks are only utilized on these short routes? A big thing in fleets is flexibility, and if you're requiring a much larger fleet, or two fleets, to do the same job that's not workable in many cases.
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoThe range of the Tesla semi is supposed to be 500 miles. Others can be expected to be similar. That's enough that if you're even partially charging every time you stop to eat or sleep you'll never run out.
- sp332 7y agoA modern EV sedan can do 250 miles, but how far can that tech drive a semi truck? I'm guessing it's quite a lot less.
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- finphil 7y agoWow! I'm surprised by the number of comments.
- joe_the_user 7y agoWow, umh, hmm This and technologies like it sound like something that could literally save the planet. If this sort of thing could be used for trucks, it could be used for trains, ships and stationary engines. As far as I can tell, the approach involves recycling the CO2 into other fuels and I assume eventually burning everything in a fashion that creates other pollutants but I assume much less CO2. I assume that at greater cost, you could just sequester the CO2 also. So what's stopping this?
- Iv 7y ago"So what's stopping this?" In US? Climate denialism. In EU. Not much, this is after all something reasearch in Switzerland that has already done other CO2 extraction research, despite scorn and cynicism by misguided ecologists. I think the time for this tech has finally come. There used to be an argument that if we talk too much about these, emissions habits may never change. Now it is clear that simply cutting down emissions will bring us to +2C degrees at best. Every additional tech we can have to cut down emissions or extract CO2 from atmosphere is welcomed.
- perfunctory 7y ago> In US? Climate denialism. Hm, not sure. "The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing." -- Albert Einstein
- H8crilA 7y agoBasic maths on joules (or TWh): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
- tyfon 7y ago> This and technologies like it sound like something that could literally save the planet. The planet itself will be fine, it's the humans that are at risk from global warming. However I don't think this is good enough, we need to go carbon negative which means electrification, clean energy sources and CO2 capture/storage (CCS) at large scale, and a whole lot of other changes. Unfortunately there are a couple of countries in the world that will piss in the well for the rest of us in this respect so I don't have much hope of actually fixing the problem.
- thereisnospork 7y agoWhat a stupid idea[0]. Massive distributed capital expenditure for the express purpose of collecting CO2 for an uneconomic (but technically feasible) conversion to methane. If converting CO2 to methane made sense in any form[1], it would happen first at point sources (e.g. breweries) long before this Rube Goldberg-esque inanity. [0] No really, it's awful. Might as well try and collect the water cars emit to try and reduce our dependence on bottled water. [1]It, as a rule, doesn't per thermodynamics and Coloumb's constant.
- adrianN 7y agoConverting CO2 to Methane makes a lot of sense if you want to store large amounts of power. Every country already has the infrastructure for storing and distributing gas and turning it into electricity and heat.
- thereisnospork 7y agoNot compared to doing pretty much anything else with that power. Which includes easy things like pumping water uphill, charging lithium batteries, or just making H2 and distributing that into the gas grid directly. To make CH4 from CO2 takes 8 electrons at (near enough) 2V, giving 1 / (96450 * 8) moles CH4 per amp second. Per tonne, that works out to roughly 1000$/tonne CH4 or 2900$/tonne CO2. Assm 4c/kwh. So with an exceptionally efficient process requiring negligible capital expense or labor it is possible to convert 3000$ and one tonne of CO2 into 200$ of natural gas. Short of making rocket fuel on Mars, I'm not smelling even the slightest whiff of an application: which is why I am so derisive of the article's proposal - charitably it is at best proposing the equivalent of solar roadways.
- adrianN 7y agoHydrogen is a lot harder to store than Methane, and afaik you can't substitute 100% Hydrogen for natural gas without changing large chunks of the heating infrastructure. But you're of course right that making hydrogen has a much better efficiency.
- sidneys 7y agowhy would you want to reduce CO2 emissions? it is required by all plant life to thrive.
- H8crilA 7y agoThis will probably not work because the joules maths does not add up: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption It's a cool student project though, and could possibly work on a large scale if we actually had a solution for the fundamental energy problem.
- hhjj 7y agoI don't follow your logic. Could you explain your thoughts a bit more please ?
- H8crilA 7y agoIt's okay to collect the CO2, but what source of energy will be used to reverse the C -> CO2 reaction? Renewables and even nuclear are by far insufficient. Global warming is fundamentally a problem of sourcing enough energy in a different way than we used to. And the world/technology is nowhere near ready.