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Energy engineering nerd here - naturally I've heard about it. Question that Vaclav Smil had raised as a potentially fatal obstacle to large scale carbon captur
by thow-58d4e8b 5y ago
Energy engineering nerd here - naturally I've heard about it.
Question that Vaclav Smil had raised as a potentially fatal obstacle to large scale carbon capture. All is nice and well when we're trying to sequester 1000 tons of CO2 per year as a pilot project. But once we scale up to ~100Mtons or even ~Gton per year - we'll very quickly run out of places to safely store it. How much is this a real physical constraint vs. Smil's skepticism being cranked up to 11/10?
- teruakohatu 5y agoThe solution would be to convert it to fuel, burn it again, then capture it again. Thereby creating carbon neutral fuel for air, shipping and road transport (as long as the energy going into the system is itself carbon neutral).
- dTal 5y agoAtmospheric carbon capture is a horribly inefficient way to convert clean energy into transportation fuel.
- teruakohatu 5y agoBut if you are capturing huge quantities already, the capture cost/efficiency is a sunk cost.