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Piping ch4 would lead to release from all the inevitable pipe line leaks and limit the reduction in carbon emission.
by thatcat 4y ago
Piping ch4 would lead to release from all the inevitable pipe line leaks and limit the reduction in carbon emission.
- kragen 4y agoI think it would reduce the reduction in carbon emission by some percentage, but since we're talking about direct air capture rather than point-source capture, it wouldn't limit the reduction in carbon emission.
- pawsforthought 4y agoMethane’s much higher global warming potential (versus carbon dioxide), implies that there’s a threshold of methane leaks above which the warming would be worse than if you did nothing at all.
- dhsysusbsjsi 4y agoDoing the math, methane is around 30x worse than CO2. So say you pulled down 30 units of CO2 and 1 unit of Methane leaked (3%), you’re back to square one. Not to mention the Methane will be burned into CO2 again so this closed cycle isn’t so closed. This study suggests up to 9% is leaked currently: https://news.stanford.edu/2022/03/24/methane-leaks-much-worse-estimates-fix-available/ https://news.stanford.edu/2022/03/24/methane-leaks-much-wors...
- kragen 4y agoThis is a good point: you need to get your methane leakage rate below 3% in order for synthetic methane to improve the climate-change situation rather than making it worse. Probably the easiest way to do that is to convert it into a liquid fuel, like methanol as I suggested upthread, kerosene as I suggested in a different comment, or ethanol. At the point where you are doing enough direct air capture of CO₂ to supply a substantial fraction of the world fuel demand, you're also doing enough direct air capture to capture a substantial fraction of world CO₂ emissions. At that point you can just pump some of it into natural gas fields instead of converting it to CH₄.