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Can’t use just reduce the gallium oxide with renewable energy when it is available? So your process looks something like: 1. Emit carbon when there is no wind
by elil17 5y ago
Can’t use just reduce the gallium oxide with renewable energy when it is available? So your process looks something like:
1. Emit carbon when there is no wind or sun and capture it with gallium.
2. Reduce the resulting gallium oxide when clean energy is available.
That makes this essentially a gallium/CO2 battery.
Also, it’s not true that cycles like this necessarily require more energy than is generated from the CO2 source. I can’t speak to this one in particular, but there are carbon capture techniques that use less energy than is generated by the combustion source. That’s because the carbon ends up in an energy state that’s lower than it’s energy state in the fuel source (e.g. solid carbon is higher energy than CO2 gas but lower energy than hydrocarbons) and because carbon isn’t the only molecule oxidizing in the combustion reaction, hydrogen is too.
- denton-scratch 5y ago> Can’t use just reduce the gallium oxide with renewable energy when it is available? Renewable energy is not available. It's needed now, in much greater quantities than are available, to supplant hydrocarbons and coal.
- scotty79 5y agoIt's not needed in peak production periods. Energy price then drops below zero. Real trouble is that as long as this excess energy is useless there's no economic incentives to build more renewables.
- tenuousemphasis 5y agoMine bitcoin with the excess energy. That makes it immediately valuable.
- elil17 5y agoI’m not sure if that’s meant as a joke. Adding more hash rate to the blockchain does not create value for society.
- scotty79 5y agoIncentivising people to build more solar and wind turbins creates value for society.
- elil17 5y agoYeah but why not incentivize them to use them to use the excess electricity for something useful like carbon capture?
- scotty79 5y agoBecause that would require political action. So it won't happen because it doesn't benefit the rich. Meanwhile crypto is doing that whether anyone likes it or not.
- elil17 5y agoI think there’s good political backing for DAC because it’s a solution that doesn’t really interfere with power structures. The issue is we have limited capacity on the CC infrastructure side, not the energy side. If we had the CC infrastructure you could already sell CC credits in California.