6 ms·

Elon Musk to offer $100M prize for 'best' carbon capture tech

38 points by danboarder 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ajit_singh 6y ago
I have that technology. Do plenty useful job in my backyard. We call it 'Tree'. Elon can go head and call it 'Treesla"
- JoshuaDavid 6y ago
  You joke, but if you have a solid idea of how to permanently¹ sequester carbon from trees in a cheap and scalable fashion, it might be worth submitting that proposal. If nothing else, it can serve as a baseline against which other proposals are judged (as in X tones more cost effective than the "plant some trees" approach). ¹ Some uses for wood, like as fuel, release the carbon back into the atmosphere. Likewise anything where the wood decomposes.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    Heating up the wood in an inert atmosphere until it decomposes to pure carbon would work. Where should I submit such a proposal?
    - guerrilla 6y ago
      What would be the point of that? Why not just cut down the trees, bury them and grow new ones?
      - babesh 6y ago
        Why bury them? Build more things from wood instead of plastic.
        guerrilla 6y ago
        That would be nice wouldn't it.
      - Kaibeezy 6y ago
        I think the point is that by removing the water, empty space and non-carbon it would be physically much smaller. Now, compress it under great pressure and heat and enter the Diamond Age.
        londons_explore 6y ago
        Then we can pour diamonds into our cars and burn them...
      - sudosysgen 6y ago
        If you simply bury them, there is a good chance the wood will be decomposed anaerobically, producing methane then carbon dioxide.
    - totalZero 6y ago
      Per the article, the details of that will be released next week. Seems like a cool idea.
- dimitar 6y ago
  This is true in the short to medium run. Trees and plants are net consumers of CO2 when they grow, but become neutral when they reach maturity, so they are more of a carbon buffer. The buffer can be freed when they burn or rot, both of which happen naturally. The best way to permanently take away CO2 from the atmosphere is to cut off the trees and somehow store them where the CO2 cannot escape (and to free space for new trees to grow). Some of the carbon from dead plants is stored in the soils, but this takes a lot of time to do. In the long run biofuels + carbon capture can be carbon negative.
  - bnegreve 6y ago
    > The best way to permanently take away CO2 from the atmosphere is to cut off the trees and somehow store them where the CO2 cannot escape I really don't understand this logic. The oil industry spends billions every year to extract oil (= fossilized biomass) buried deep underground, because burning biomass gives you cheap energy. If you cut down and store enough trees to compensate for the current CO2 emissions, you will have access to an immense volume of biomass, much easier to "extract" than oil is. What do you think is going to happen with this biomass? People are going to burn it to make cheap energy again.. Actually, why would you even go through the trouble of cutting down the trees in the first place? You could just, not extract the oil and end up with the exact same amount of energy you will have at the end of this complex process.
    - dimitar 6y ago
      One way to to store that carbon by burning the trees is and storing the CO2 underground - it will be costly to extract and worthless to do so and you will get some energy out of it.
      - bnegreve 6y ago
        To burn the trees, you need oxygen. You want to use oxygen from the atmosphere, and bury it underground?
  - nuodag 6y ago
- mlindner 6y ago
  A tree is actually a very poor method of carbon capture. It's not durable and doesn't last ages. It can catch fire. And it takes decades. If you're gonna do organic methods then blue-green algae is way better. But I think the idea here is to come up with a technology that's even better than that.
  - totalZero 6y ago
    Decades are not very long, in the grand scheme of things. I would argue that the first step would be to combat deforestation.
totalZero 6y ago
Of course Mr. Musk wants to hype up the impact of carbon emissions....Tesla Motors wouldn't turn a profit without the ability to sell ZEV regulatory credits to other automakers. If Mr. Musk really cared about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, he wouldn't fire rockets around up there every few days.
- ryzvonusef 6y ago
  this is less "tesla" Musk and more "spacex" Musk idea. he isn't doing it for the green, he is doing it because he wants it for mars
- JaggedJax 6y ago
  Not flying those rockets will have no effect. A single launch puts out about as much CO2 as a single full transatlantic flight. Consider how many of those fly every single day, let alone the shorter flights.
  - totalZero 6y ago
    Setting aside other pollutants in rocket soot (of which there are many) and only looking at CO2: Which rocket are you saying produces that much CO2, and where did you get that convenient number? Falcon 9 weighs like half a million kg. Falcon Heavy is about three times that. Starship will weigh like 5 million kg. I hope you're not under the impression that all rockets uniformly produce the same emissions. It depends on a few different factors. Falcon 9 burns RP-1 kerosene, and uses twice as much of that fuel as Soyuz. Falcon Heavy burns 440 tons of RP-1 kerosene. A 747-8i can carry 60,755 gallons of jet fuel (similar distillate), weighing 407 thousand lbs, or 203 tons. Its range at maximum take-off weight is 9,210mi. A flight from Boston to Glasgow is about 3k miles, so that's three transatlantic flights per tank, or 6.5 transatlantic flights per Falcon Heavy flight. I wonder if Mr. Musk would support forcing spaceflight companies to offset their carbon emissions by paying for reforestation. Somehow, I doubt it. Furthermore, rocket emissions deliver gases directly to the middle and upper atmosphere, so their pollution is more impactful pound-for-pound than aircraft emissions. And in fact, Mr. Musk wants to replace air travel with rocket travel. Check out this SpaceX video from 2017. It's not just one or two flights we're talking about. He wants to fly thousands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0
ryzvonusef 6y ago
this is less about earth and the green tech, and more about mars, as his reply to EverydayAstronaut's query about the viability of the Sabatier process hints: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1352413001068896258 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1352413001068896258 > It’s a good path for fully renewable rocket energy, so solves part of problem, but longer chain hydrocarbons than CH4 are needed to be solid at room temp This also links up with spacex not only buying two oil rigs to turn into starship platforms abut also buying a gas well for in house methane production
jl2718 6y ago
When CO2 is pumped underground, the high pressure makes carbonic acid in any moisture which reacts with calcium to make calcium carbonate. In the ocean, marine life catalyze this reaction to make skeletons, shells, and coral. In shallow bodies of water, the organic material gets mixed in and packed under this lime and sand, and becomes oil and gas. In swamps, plant material gets packed under itself until it becomes coal, and yes, some of it escapes as gas. On dry land carbon fixation is very complicated with many life forms, mostly insects which have skeletons too, but actually the big carbon fixer is fire. There isn’t enough oxygen in a massive fire to oxidize all of the carbon, so you end up with reactions that create large amounts of carbon charcoal and water vapor. Charcoal is biologically useless, so it is fixed, but the minerals in the ash are great fertilizer. Life on earth has been doing this for about 3 billion years now, regardless of us, because the earth is constantly burping up huge amounts of carbon in volcanic eruptions (in addition to great mineral fertilizer). Could we do it better? Maybe, but probably not. I think if you look into any of the new technologies for this, the total carbon cost of production and operation is far far greater than the amount sequestered. I doubt it will ever reach significantly greater carbon:carbon efficiency than nature. There may be something to gain by speeding up the natural processes, but almost certainly more by simply reducing negative interference.
RightTail 6y ago
850,000,000 acres of empress trees and we would have 0 carbon in atmosphere in under 50 years. I think a genetically engineered varietal or perhaps another organism that would grow ontop of the ocean will be the winner.
jelliclesfarm 6y ago
Grassland is better way to sequester carbon than trees. That and reducing world population.

38 points by danboarder 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ajit_singh 6y ago

I have that technology. Do plenty useful job in my backyard. We call it 'Tree'. Elon can go head and call it 'Treesla"

JoshuaDavid 6y ago
You joke, but if you have a solid idea of how to permanently¹ sequester carbon from trees in a cheap and scalable fashion, it might be worth submitting that proposal. If nothing else, it can serve as a baseline against which other proposals are judged (as in X tones more cost effective than the "plant some trees" approach). ¹ Some uses for wood, like as fuel, release the carbon back into the atmosphere. Likewise anything where the wood decomposes.
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  Heating up the wood in an inert atmosphere until it decomposes to pure carbon would work. Where should I submit such a proposal?
  - guerrilla 6y ago
    What would be the point of that? Why not just cut down the trees, bury them and grow new ones?
    - babesh 6y ago
      Why bury them? Build more things from wood instead of plastic.
      - guerrilla 6y ago
        That would be nice wouldn't it.
    - Kaibeezy 6y ago
      I think the point is that by removing the water, empty space and non-carbon it would be physically much smaller. Now, compress it under great pressure and heat and enter the Diamond Age.
      - londons_explore 6y ago
        Then we can pour diamonds into our cars and burn them...
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      If you simply bury them, there is a good chance the wood will be decomposed anaerobically, producing methane then carbon dioxide.
  - totalZero 6y ago
    Per the article, the details of that will be released next week. Seems like a cool idea.
dimitar 6y ago
This is true in the short to medium run. Trees and plants are net consumers of CO2 when they grow, but become neutral when they reach maturity, so they are more of a carbon buffer. The buffer can be freed when they burn or rot, both of which happen naturally. The best way to permanently take away CO2 from the atmosphere is to cut off the trees and somehow store them where the CO2 cannot escape (and to free space for new trees to grow). Some of the carbon from dead plants is stored in the soils, but this takes a lot of time to do. In the long run biofuels + carbon capture can be carbon negative.
- bnegreve 6y ago
  > The best way to permanently take away CO2 from the atmosphere is to cut off the trees and somehow store them where the CO2 cannot escape I really don't understand this logic. The oil industry spends billions every year to extract oil (= fossilized biomass) buried deep underground, because burning biomass gives you cheap energy. If you cut down and store enough trees to compensate for the current CO2 emissions, you will have access to an immense volume of biomass, much easier to "extract" than oil is. What do you think is going to happen with this biomass? People are going to burn it to make cheap energy again.. Actually, why would you even go through the trouble of cutting down the trees in the first place? You could just, not extract the oil and end up with the exact same amount of energy you will have at the end of this complex process.
  - dimitar 6y ago
    One way to to store that carbon by burning the trees is and storing the CO2 underground - it will be costly to extract and worthless to do so and you will get some energy out of it.
    - bnegreve 6y ago
      To burn the trees, you need oxygen. You want to use oxygen from the atmosphere, and bury it underground?
- nuodag 6y ago
mlindner 6y ago
A tree is actually a very poor method of carbon capture. It's not durable and doesn't last ages. It can catch fire. And it takes decades. If you're gonna do organic methods then blue-green algae is way better. But I think the idea here is to come up with a technology that's even better than that.
- totalZero 6y ago
  Decades are not very long, in the grand scheme of things. I would argue that the first step would be to combat deforestation.

totalZero 6y ago

Of course Mr. Musk wants to hype up the impact of carbon emissions....Tesla Motors wouldn't turn a profit without the ability to sell ZEV regulatory credits to other automakers. If Mr. Musk really cared about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, he wouldn't fire rockets around up there every few days.

ryzvonusef 6y ago
this is less "tesla" Musk and more "spacex" Musk idea. he isn't doing it for the green, he is doing it because he wants it for mars
JaggedJax 6y ago
Not flying those rockets will have no effect. A single launch puts out about as much CO2 as a single full transatlantic flight. Consider how many of those fly every single day, let alone the shorter flights.
- totalZero 6y ago
  Setting aside other pollutants in rocket soot (of which there are many) and only looking at CO2: Which rocket are you saying produces that much CO2, and where did you get that convenient number? Falcon 9 weighs like half a million kg. Falcon Heavy is about three times that. Starship will weigh like 5 million kg. I hope you're not under the impression that all rockets uniformly produce the same emissions. It depends on a few different factors. Falcon 9 burns RP-1 kerosene, and uses twice as much of that fuel as Soyuz. Falcon Heavy burns 440 tons of RP-1 kerosene. A 747-8i can carry 60,755 gallons of jet fuel (similar distillate), weighing 407 thousand lbs, or 203 tons. Its range at maximum take-off weight is 9,210mi. A flight from Boston to Glasgow is about 3k miles, so that's three transatlantic flights per tank, or 6.5 transatlantic flights per Falcon Heavy flight. I wonder if Mr. Musk would support forcing spaceflight companies to offset their carbon emissions by paying for reforestation. Somehow, I doubt it. Furthermore, rocket emissions deliver gases directly to the middle and upper atmosphere, so their pollution is more impactful pound-for-pound than aircraft emissions. And in fact, Mr. Musk wants to replace air travel with rocket travel. Check out this SpaceX video from 2017. It's not just one or two flights we're talking about. He wants to fly thousands. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0

ryzvonusef 6y ago

this is less about earth and the green tech, and more about mars, as his reply to EverydayAstronaut's query about the viability of the Sabatier process hints: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1352413001068896258 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1352413001068896258 > It’s a good path for fully renewable rocket energy, so solves part of problem, but longer chain hydrocarbons than CH4 are needed to be solid at room temp This also links up with spacex not only buying two oil rigs to turn into starship platforms abut also buying a gas well for in house methane production

jl2718 6y ago

When CO2 is pumped underground, the high pressure makes carbonic acid in any moisture which reacts with calcium to make calcium carbonate. In the ocean, marine life catalyze this reaction to make skeletons, shells, and coral. In shallow bodies of water, the organic material gets mixed in and packed under this lime and sand, and becomes oil and gas. In swamps, plant material gets packed under itself until it becomes coal, and yes, some of it escapes as gas. On dry land carbon fixation is very complicated with many life forms, mostly insects which have skeletons too, but actually the big carbon fixer is fire. There isn’t enough oxygen in a massive fire to oxidize all of the carbon, so you end up with reactions that create large amounts of carbon charcoal and water vapor. Charcoal is biologically useless, so it is fixed, but the minerals in the ash are great fertilizer. Life on earth has been doing this for about 3 billion years now, regardless of us, because the earth is constantly burping up huge amounts of carbon in volcanic eruptions (in addition to great mineral fertilizer). Could we do it better? Maybe, but probably not. I think if you look into any of the new technologies for this, the total carbon cost of production and operation is far far greater than the amount sequestered. I doubt it will ever reach significantly greater carbon:carbon efficiency than nature. There may be something to gain by speeding up the natural processes, but almost certainly more by simply reducing negative interference.

RightTail 6y ago

850,000,000 acres of empress trees and we would have 0 carbon in atmosphere in under 50 years. I think a genetically engineered varietal or perhaps another organism that would grow ontop of the ocean will be the winner.

jelliclesfarm 6y ago

Grassland is better way to sequester carbon than trees. That and reducing world population.