3 ms·

1: CO2's already in the air. You gotta get it out somehow. If this (or some other approach) is sufficiently efficient, then I'm happy. 2: Solar is unreliable,

by esyir 5y ago

1: CO2's already in the air. You gotta get it out somehow. If this (or some other approach) is sufficiently efficient, then I'm happy. 2: Solar is unreliable, requiring tiding over on nights/cloudy days/etc. In theory, this would allow for excess energy -> fuel, or other things, since coke is also useful for a number of other industrial processes. 3: Does this scale? I have no idea. It's not quite burning gallium though, since from what I'm seeing, gallium can then be regenerated to elemental gallium (at the cost of more energy). This is more an engineering, rather than a research question though. 4: This is just one of many projects (with some nice characteristics), if something else better turns up, then so be it.

jiggawatts 5y ago
"Somehow" doesn't mean we should entertain options that are guaranteed to be futile. There are already better methods that have been devised an even tested at small industrial scales. This isn't a problem of scale, and the problem is that optimistic people just don't get this. There is no way to make this work, ever. It's like the old joke: "Sure, we're selling every unit at a loss, but we'll make up for it with volume!" You can't take a "business plan" that inherently loses money and try to scale it up to... what? Even greater losses? (In this case, this is both a thermodynamic and a financial loss. You're burning both energy and cash!)
- hackeraccount 5y ago
  That's like saying I lose money on lunch everyday. It's true - lunch never pays me, I don't make it up in volume and I won't even break even. My life is bigger then lunch though. Lunch enables me to do other things that do make money - so I take a loss on lunch with a view towards the other stuff.
  - jiggawatts 5y ago
    A human being can never use their energy gained from their food to reduce all of their exhaled CO2 back to carbon, no matter what technique they use. It’s impossible, of the perpetual machine variety. This is precisely analogous to this gallium example! You can’t unburn something without losing more energy in the process than the burning produced. It’s always over 100% overhead. ALWAYS!! The details and the path taken through the world of chemistry or electrochemistry are totally irrelevant and can never alter this.

by esyir 5y ago

jiggawatts 5y ago

"Somehow" doesn't mean we should entertain options that are guaranteed to be futile. There are already better methods that have been devised an even tested at small industrial scales. This isn't a problem of scale, and the problem is that optimistic people just don't get this. There is no way to make this work, ever. It's like the old joke: "Sure, we're selling every unit at a loss, but we'll make up for it with volume!" You can't take a "business plan" that inherently loses money and try to scale it up to... what? Even greater losses? (In this case, this is both a thermodynamic and a financial loss. You're burning both energy and cash!)

hackeraccount 5y ago
That's like saying I lose money on lunch everyday. It's true - lunch never pays me, I don't make it up in volume and I won't even break even. My life is bigger then lunch though. Lunch enables me to do other things that do make money - so I take a loss on lunch with a view towards the other stuff.
- jiggawatts 5y ago
  A human being can never use their energy gained from their food to reduce all of their exhaled CO2 back to carbon, no matter what technique they use. It’s impossible, of the perpetual machine variety. This is precisely analogous to this gallium example! You can’t unburn something without losing more energy in the process than the burning produced. It’s always over 100% overhead. ALWAYS!! The details and the path taken through the world of chemistry or electrochemistry are totally irrelevant and can never alter this.