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Unlike many traditional carbon capture chemicals, the one we are using are both non-volatile and stable when they come into contact with air and heat. This mean

Unlike many traditional carbon capture chemicals, the one we are using are both non-volatile and stable when they come into contact with air and heat. This means that our chemicals will not float out of the top of a cooling tower with evaporating water and will instead stay in the water. After carbon capture happens in the cooling tower, we run the stream through a regeneration process to release the captured CO2 and to regenerate the starting carbon capture blend. The water is sent back through the tower, and round and round it goes.

ajb 6y ago
Hmm good so far. Presumably there will be at least some losses, since the system is open to the atmosphere. So you'll need good evidence for how safe the chemicals are. (I appreciate you may not want to tell us what they are yet)
- jsantos511 6y ago
  Yep - there will definitely be a few losses, specifically in cooling tower drift (water droplets blowing out the top) and blowdown (water being expelled from tower to improve water purity). Luckily, our chemicals are all found in every day uses and not shown to have adverse environmental impacts. We definitely need to do more testing on this front to continue to build up our datasets, but our specific chemicals were selected to enable safe and widespread usage in cooling towers around the world.
treis 6y ago
>regeneration process Is there an energy input here?
- URSpider94 6y ago
  There must be. Thermodynamics tells us that cyclic processes don’t happen without energy input. Beyond that, gathering and compressing the CO2 will require energy. The hope would be that you could build enough renewable energy capacity to power this process.
- jsantos511 6y ago
  There is an energy input here. The temperatures required to regenerate the CO2 from our captured solution are low enough to be produced using renewables, and this is what we're planning on doing.

ajb 6y ago

Hmm good so far. Presumably there will be at least some losses, since the system is open to the atmosphere. So you'll need good evidence for how safe the chemicals are. (I appreciate you may not want to tell us what they are yet)

jsantos511 6y ago
Yep - there will definitely be a few losses, specifically in cooling tower drift (water droplets blowing out the top) and blowdown (water being expelled from tower to improve water purity). Luckily, our chemicals are all found in every day uses and not shown to have adverse environmental impacts. We definitely need to do more testing on this front to continue to build up our datasets, but our specific chemicals were selected to enable safe and widespread usage in cooling towers around the world.

treis 6y ago

>regeneration process Is there an energy input here?

URSpider94 6y ago
There must be. Thermodynamics tells us that cyclic processes don’t happen without energy input. Beyond that, gathering and compressing the CO2 will require energy. The hope would be that you could build enough renewable energy capacity to power this process.
jsantos511 6y ago
There is an energy input here. The temperatures required to regenerate the CO2 from our captured solution are low enough to be produced using renewables, and this is what we're planning on doing.