5 ms·

To me this looks all like snake oil currently. The problem is, that carbon is not a pollutand (like fckw) but the energy carrier-source. So generally to take it

To me this looks all like snake oil currently. The problem is, that carbon is not a pollutand (like fckw) but the energy carrier-source. So generally to take it out from the athmosphere you need more energy then you got from putting it into the athmosphere (backed by the laws of thermodynamics). So it would only make senso if you have huge (i mean HUGE) amount of renewable energy which somehow is too far away from the industry to use it directly. We are not at that stage. The real problem is to generate enough renewables. Then you can first start to replace your fossil plants by those and then later down the line maybe this technology starts to make sense. For iceland they could just build more aluminium plants now and this would probably be better for the total CO2 reduction. An analogy: Its like we have a hydroelectric power plant, but people need so much power the water coming out of it is flooding towards the city to distroy it and there is an article 'scientists invented the 10 gallon bucket, allowing to move water back up the dam faster.'. I think this is also harmful, since these kind of successes might give people the wrong inpression where we actually stand.

jonstewart 6y ago
According to the article, they're building it right on top of a large existing geothermal power source in Iceland.
- andi999 6y ago
  Yes. But it is a solution that does not and cannot scale.
  - jonstewart 6y ago
    It doesn't have to scale to be the single solution to CO2 level management on the planet. It only needs to scale to countries party to the Paris Agreement as a portion of their emissions control portfolio, and is obviously attractive to such countries with abundant renewable power sources.
    - andi999 6y ago
      What are the countries with abundant renewable power sources?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
PaulHoule 6y ago
It is the word "significantly" that bugs me. It is "significant" for the individuals involved, but 4000 tons is not significant to the Earth system. Enthusiasm for carbon storage of various kinds is driven by the desperation of our situation. You've probably seen the IPCC projections to the year 2100 -- the models did not stop in 2100, rather the IPCC chooses only to show up until that point. You might look at the IPCC charts and think "easily survivable to 2100", see the curves go exactly where the eye wants to follow to 6.5 degree C in 2200. (At that point I don't think homo sap will be burning fossil fuels 'significantly') The economics look favorable to capture carbon from a fermentation process (think an ethanol plant in Brazil) then compress it to 1500 psi and inject it into a saline aquifer. You could capture more carbon if you burned the product and captured the CO2 there but either you have to strip the CO2 from the atmospheric nitrogen in the exhaust or remove the nitrogen before burning, say https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_looping_combustion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_looping_combustion but the economics of the first option are all too well known (chemical engineers solve problems like that before breakfast) while the latter is largely undeveloped. Despite all the talk, there has been very little implementation of the above BECCS technology even though the fermentation version did very well in trials. Germany has managed to "generate enough renewables" to harm the economics of fossil fuel generation that fills in the gaps when the sun does not shine and the wind is not blowing. Fossil fuel methane from Russia with love. Capital costs of the associated gas turbines are low and helped to put steam-turbine dependent coal and nuclear power plants out of business. The trouble is that removing that last entrenched bit will be very hard in a world where they burn methane as the well-head. (Nuclear power plants cannot win in terms of economics unless they ditch the steam turbine, that of course means developing a closed cycle gas turbine for nuclear use.) Personal transport (cars) can be reformed when the feeling of crisis hits, but the development of sustainable fuels for aviation is decades behind that for cars, they are still trying to make "the right hydrocarbons" via the boondoggle Fischer-Tropsch process rather than productizing some reasonable molecule such as 1-butanol. So hitting the braeks on CO2 output is not so easy, there is a case for carbon capture, my main concern is how you make the "apples and oranges" comparisons. Protecting rain forests is a great climate policy, but the economic value of CO2 captured by land use changes has to discount that the forest might get cut or burn up next year, that you can't measure it easily. Any kind of "carbon credit" will be colonized by Enron-style energy traders and directed towards things that look like they work as opposed to things that work.
scatters 6y ago
You'd be correct if this system was reducing CO2 to elemental carbon, but in fact it stores CO2 in the earth, not carbon (or hydrocarbon). So it's equivalent to burning fossil carbon, extracting the CO2 from the exhaust stream, and storing that waste underground. The enthalpy of combustion of the fossil fuel that went into the atmospheric CO2 doesn't need to be recovered for this process, it only needs enough energy to concentrate atmospheric CO2 and pump it below ground into geological storage.
- andi999 6y ago
  I am a bit suspect about storing co2 underground. I mean what is the common leakage rate? These storages will become the green house source of the future, or not?
  - scatters 6y ago
    They claim that it will react with basalt (specifically, the calcium in the basalt formations they are pumping it into) to form calcite minerals. Honestly, even if it's only sequestered for a hundred years (a geological eyeblink) that will give us some breathing space at least.
  - jacobr1 6y ago
    What if we stored it as a liquid rather than a gas. Hmmm ... I've heard some things about C8H18 ...

jonstewart 6y ago

According to the article, they're building it right on top of a large existing geothermal power source in Iceland.

andi999 6y ago
Yes. But it is a solution that does not and cannot scale.
- jonstewart 6y ago
  It doesn't have to scale to be the single solution to CO2 level management on the planet. It only needs to scale to countries party to the Paris Agreement as a portion of their emissions control portfolio, and is obviously attractive to such countries with abundant renewable power sources.
  - andi999 6y ago
    What are the countries with abundant renewable power sources?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]

PaulHoule 6y ago

It is the word "significantly" that bugs me. It is "significant" for the individuals involved, but 4000 tons is not significant to the Earth system. Enthusiasm for carbon storage of various kinds is driven by the desperation of our situation. You've probably seen the IPCC projections to the year 2100 -- the models did not stop in 2100, rather the IPCC chooses only to show up until that point. You might look at the IPCC charts and think "easily survivable to 2100", see the curves go exactly where the eye wants to follow to 6.5 degree C in 2200. (At that point I don't think homo sap will be burning fossil fuels 'significantly') The economics look favorable to capture carbon from a fermentation process (think an ethanol plant in Brazil) then compress it to 1500 psi and inject it into a saline aquifer. You could capture more carbon if you burned the product and captured the CO2 there but either you have to strip the CO2 from the atmospheric nitrogen in the exhaust or remove the nitrogen before burning, say https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_looping_combustion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_looping_combustion but the economics of the first option are all too well known (chemical engineers solve problems like that before breakfast) while the latter is largely undeveloped. Despite all the talk, there has been very little implementation of the above BECCS technology even though the fermentation version did very well in trials. Germany has managed to "generate enough renewables" to harm the economics of fossil fuel generation that fills in the gaps when the sun does not shine and the wind is not blowing. Fossil fuel methane from Russia with love. Capital costs of the associated gas turbines are low and helped to put steam-turbine dependent coal and nuclear power plants out of business. The trouble is that removing that last entrenched bit will be very hard in a world where they burn methane as the well-head. (Nuclear power plants cannot win in terms of economics unless they ditch the steam turbine, that of course means developing a closed cycle gas turbine for nuclear use.) Personal transport (cars) can be reformed when the feeling of crisis hits, but the development of sustainable fuels for aviation is decades behind that for cars, they are still trying to make "the right hydrocarbons" via the boondoggle Fischer-Tropsch process rather than productizing some reasonable molecule such as 1-butanol. So hitting the braeks on CO2 output is not so easy, there is a case for carbon capture, my main concern is how you make the "apples and oranges" comparisons. Protecting rain forests is a great climate policy, but the economic value of CO2 captured by land use changes has to discount that the forest might get cut or burn up next year, that you can't measure it easily. Any kind of "carbon credit" will be colonized by Enron-style energy traders and directed towards things that look like they work as opposed to things that work.

scatters 6y ago

You'd be correct if this system was reducing CO2 to elemental carbon, but in fact it stores CO2 in the earth, not carbon (or hydrocarbon). So it's equivalent to burning fossil carbon, extracting the CO2 from the exhaust stream, and storing that waste underground. The enthalpy of combustion of the fossil fuel that went into the atmospheric CO2 doesn't need to be recovered for this process, it only needs enough energy to concentrate atmospheric CO2 and pump it below ground into geological storage.

andi999 6y ago
I am a bit suspect about storing co2 underground. I mean what is the common leakage rate? These storages will become the green house source of the future, or not?
- scatters 6y ago
  They claim that it will react with basalt (specifically, the calcium in the basalt formations they are pumping it into) to form calcite minerals. Honestly, even if it's only sequestered for a hundred years (a geological eyeblink) that will give us some breathing space at least.
- jacobr1 6y ago
  What if we stored it as a liquid rather than a gas. Hmmm ... I've heard some things about C8H18 ...