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Atmospheric carbon capture seems like an petroleum industry scam to me (check the 'Members' page of that website.) In principle it's what plants do, but plants
by robonerd 4y ago
Atmospheric carbon capture seems like an petroleum industry scam to me (check the 'Members' page of that website.) In principle it's what plants do, but plants do it using scale; there's a whole bunch of them. CO2 is under 500ppm in our air, and air isn't particularly dense in the first place; the amount of air you'd need to move through your capture plant is immense.
On the Costs & Outlook page of this site, they list their potential feedstocks; it's all biomass, except for the 'Technical Potential "Unlimited"' column, which mentions Power-to-Liquids. But how does that actually work and does it actually make sense?
Related parody of carbon capture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSZgoFyuHC8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSZgoFyuHC8
- PaulHoule 4y agoIt is possible, it’s just expensive. The U.S. navy is interested in a fuel synthesizer that works on co2, seawater and uranium and they can pay more than you per gallon because you don’t have to refuel an aircraft carrier in a war zone.
- usrusr 4y agoI fully agree with the bit about atmospheric carbon capture. What a pointless waste of energy. But if you start thinking of plant biomass not as the energy source, but just as the carbon provider for making carbohydrates from your hydrogen, then energy crops vs food crops conflict suddenly disappears, because the nutritious parts usually come alongside plenty of lower energy "plant waste" that should be good enough as a carbon provider for hydrogen "carbonation". Certainly much better for the task than atmospheric CO2. And all that plant carbon would soon continue it's cycle as atmospheric CO2 anyways, so it's just as good as atmospheric capture.