4 ms·

Cool to see this research continued. I've spoken to the authors of a very similar paper, also based in Australia: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10

Cool to see this research continued. I've spoken to the authors of a very similar paper, also based in Australia: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/adma.202105789 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/adma.202105... One thing I learned is that these experiments are generally done with a pure CO2 stream. The reactions taking place often compete with other molecules (especially O2), making this approach best for capturing carbon from tailpipes and smokestacks. There's still a lot of work to be done to get this sort of thing to work reliably for direct air capture (which IMO will be needed to actually draw down carbon from the atmosphere). Anyway, this research is being commercialized via a company called LMPlus (https://lmplus.com.au https://lmplus.com.au). While I appreciate that the technology is being brought to market, it probably means that future breakthroughs will occur in private labs, protected by patents and trade secret laws. We have a an urgent need to conduct more of this kind of research out in the open and to make breakthrough carbon capture technology available to everyone, for free. If you're interested in helping out on this front, please consider joining me in the OpenAir Collective discord (https://openaircollective.cc/ https://openaircollective.cc/).

Confiks 5y ago
> One thing I learned is that these experiments are generally done with a pure CO2 stream. According to this comment three months ago [1] "they used 6%-20% CO2 mixtures with balance nitrogen and some water to try and approximate different exhausts including flue gas". [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28873458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28873458
- elil17 5y ago
  I.e. no oxygen. It would probably not be suitable for direct air capture.
  - _nalply 5y ago
    But perhaps it will be possible to filter out oxygen by a different process and let the remainder gas be filtered.
    - lstodd 5y ago
      It's quite simple: burn excess incoming O2 with a bit more carbon.
      - alkyon 5y ago
        We don't want to deplete oxygen in the atmosphere. Plants are much better suited to capturing CO2, IMHO, as they also produce oxygen.
        dataflow 5y ago
        CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere. Oxygen is 21%. We're not going to run out of oxygen.
        alkyon 5y ago
        I don't understand the downvotes. The idea of turning excess oxigen into CO2 which I replied to is plainly stupid just because of this proportion. How much coal (and oxygen) would we use up to bring down CO2 levels to 0.03?
        _nalply 5y ago
        I don't understand your question. GP proposed to filter out O2 by burning carbon. This will create a CO2-rich gas, perhaps at about 30% (depends of the density of CO2 compared to O2). GP didn't mean that we deplete oxygen in the athmosphere, but that this is an intermediate step inside the CO2 scrubbing apparatus. Perhaps that's why you got downvotes. The burnt carbon will be gained back by the Gallium process, however this might not work out anyway because the process needs to be very efficient in filtering out CO2, as someone else already pointed out. In my opinion the idea of burning hydrogen seems a lot better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994000
        typ 5y ago
        >Plants are much better suited to capturing CO2 I do wonder if it would be much cheaper to capture CO2 by investing technology and capital into 'building' forests. What if we can irrigate Sahara and cultivate some fast-growing plants like bamboos there? Maybe that has ecological consequences but it doesn't seem to be much different than the agricultural land expansion that has happened in rainforests in the first place.
  - yetihehe 5y ago
    If you burn carbon, you can just decrease your air input to furnace. It is not done today because it causes lots of CO, which is very poisonous. If you don't care about CO like in this process, you an put O2 sensor (lambda sensor, used in all new cars to alter how much air is used) and almost eliminate oxygen from your output.
    - progre 5y ago
      I wonder if it might be possible to add a separations stage (centrifugal gas separator perhaps) and redirect any remaining oxygen back to the furnace?
      - yetihehe 5y ago
        Technically yes, but practically no. It's much easier to just let in less air, you just set your blower to slightly less power, controlled by sensor.
  - midjji 5y ago
    It works fine for any degree of oxygen blend too, it just requires proportionally more Gallium. 400 times more or so for atmospheric blend. The problem is the energy required to then reduce the gallium.
tomrod 5y ago
> it probably means that future breakthroughs will occur in private labs, protected by patents and trade secret laws. This does well to incentivize the inventors; perhaps they could be purchased rather than nationalizing the successful innovation models.
- dylan604 5y ago
  I would almost suggest that gov't should be funding this, but it is primarily private corps doing the polluting. Maybe have gov't fund it, then force polluters to pay gov't back from actual carbon tax?
  - api 5y ago
    Have government fund it, then limit or tax net emissions and now there is tech on the market to capture carbon to reduce your net emissions.
- nandhinianand 5y ago
  Ah.. independant invention without significant capital/money based support is very rare in the modern day world. So I'm sure it will support only inventors at an organizational level and at that level, there are lots of skewed incentives for the CXO level peeps to do more marketing that inventing and ensuring most value is captured for the organization than passed on.
anonporridge 5y ago
> One thing I learned is that these experiments are generally done with a pure CO2 stream. That's probably why these kinds of things will likely only be super effective if taking the immediate exhaust of carbon fuel burning. So... 1. Legally require all fossil fuel plants capture the carbon from their exhaust, which will have the knock on effect of increasing the economic cost of burning fuel, which means economic forces will naturally start to more strongly prefer carbon free sources, because they're cheaper. 2. Keep pushing for the migration to full BEVs and possibly have a similar requirement of carbon capture devices added to industrial vehicles that can't reasonably be EVs. I could see things like mining and construction vehicles go out with a tank full of fuel and return with a tank full of captured carbon to leave at a dump.
ummonk 5y ago
Focusing scrubbing smokestacks (where large amounts of new CO2 is concentrated) should be exactly where the focus should be. Direct open air capture really only makes sense once we've learnt to deal with the low hanging fruit.

Confiks 5y ago

> One thing I learned is that these experiments are generally done with a pure CO2 stream. According to this comment three months ago [1] "they used 6%-20% CO2 mixtures with balance nitrogen and some water to try and approximate different exhausts including flue gas". [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28873458 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28873458

elil17 5y ago
I.e. no oxygen. It would probably not be suitable for direct air capture.
- _nalply 5y ago
  But perhaps it will be possible to filter out oxygen by a different process and let the remainder gas be filtered.
  - lstodd 5y ago
    It's quite simple: burn excess incoming O2 with a bit more carbon.
    - alkyon 5y ago
      We don't want to deplete oxygen in the atmosphere. Plants are much better suited to capturing CO2, IMHO, as they also produce oxygen.
      - dataflow 5y ago
        CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere. Oxygen is 21%. We're not going to run out of oxygen.
        alkyon 5y ago
        I don't understand the downvotes. The idea of turning excess oxigen into CO2 which I replied to is plainly stupid just because of this proportion. How much coal (and oxygen) would we use up to bring down CO2 levels to 0.03?
        _nalply 5y ago
        I don't understand your question. GP proposed to filter out O2 by burning carbon. This will create a CO2-rich gas, perhaps at about 30% (depends of the density of CO2 compared to O2). GP didn't mean that we deplete oxygen in the athmosphere, but that this is an intermediate step inside the CO2 scrubbing apparatus. Perhaps that's why you got downvotes. The burnt carbon will be gained back by the Gallium process, however this might not work out anyway because the process needs to be very efficient in filtering out CO2, as someone else already pointed out. In my opinion the idea of burning hydrogen seems a lot better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29994000
      - typ 5y ago
        >Plants are much better suited to capturing CO2 I do wonder if it would be much cheaper to capture CO2 by investing technology and capital into 'building' forests. What if we can irrigate Sahara and cultivate some fast-growing plants like bamboos there? Maybe that has ecological consequences but it doesn't seem to be much different than the agricultural land expansion that has happened in rainforests in the first place.
- yetihehe 5y ago
  If you burn carbon, you can just decrease your air input to furnace. It is not done today because it causes lots of CO, which is very poisonous. If you don't care about CO like in this process, you an put O2 sensor (lambda sensor, used in all new cars to alter how much air is used) and almost eliminate oxygen from your output.
  - progre 5y ago
    I wonder if it might be possible to add a separations stage (centrifugal gas separator perhaps) and redirect any remaining oxygen back to the furnace?
    - yetihehe 5y ago
      Technically yes, but practically no. It's much easier to just let in less air, you just set your blower to slightly less power, controlled by sensor.
- midjji 5y ago
  It works fine for any degree of oxygen blend too, it just requires proportionally more Gallium. 400 times more or so for atmospheric blend. The problem is the energy required to then reduce the gallium.

tomrod 5y ago

> it probably means that future breakthroughs will occur in private labs, protected by patents and trade secret laws. This does well to incentivize the inventors; perhaps they could be purchased rather than nationalizing the successful innovation models.

dylan604 5y ago
I would almost suggest that gov't should be funding this, but it is primarily private corps doing the polluting. Maybe have gov't fund it, then force polluters to pay gov't back from actual carbon tax?
- api 5y ago
  Have government fund it, then limit or tax net emissions and now there is tech on the market to capture carbon to reduce your net emissions.
nandhinianand 5y ago
Ah.. independant invention without significant capital/money based support is very rare in the modern day world. So I'm sure it will support only inventors at an organizational level and at that level, there are lots of skewed incentives for the CXO level peeps to do more marketing that inventing and ensuring most value is captured for the organization than passed on.

anonporridge 5y ago

> One thing I learned is that these experiments are generally done with a pure CO2 stream. That's probably why these kinds of things will likely only be super effective if taking the immediate exhaust of carbon fuel burning. So... 1. Legally require all fossil fuel plants capture the carbon from their exhaust, which will have the knock on effect of increasing the economic cost of burning fuel, which means economic forces will naturally start to more strongly prefer carbon free sources, because they're cheaper. 2. Keep pushing for the migration to full BEVs and possibly have a similar requirement of carbon capture devices added to industrial vehicles that can't reasonably be EVs. I could see things like mining and construction vehicles go out with a tank full of fuel and return with a tank full of captured carbon to leave at a dump.

ummonk 5y ago

Focusing scrubbing smokestacks (where large amounts of new CO2 is concentrated) should be exactly where the focus should be. Direct open air capture really only makes sense once we've learnt to deal with the low hanging fruit.