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MIT engineers develop a new way to remove carbon dioxide from air (2019)
- weissbier 4y agoJust noting, this article is from 2019
- jpm_sd 4y agoThe spin-out is off and running. They won a carbon removal X-Prize last year. https://verdox.com/ https://verdox.com/ https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220422005027/en/Verdox-Wins-1M-XPRIZE-Carbon-Removal-Award-Together-with-Partner-Carbfix https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220422005027/en/Ver...
- scaredginger 4y agoIs there a need for software engineers in developing direct air capture tech? I'd be interested in working in the field
- capableweb 4y agoOf course, people writing the software for the control systems and monitoring is always needed :) I think the area is hard to get into unless you have education and some sort of certification in it though, can't just jump into it like when building web apps (as an example, don't know your background obviously).
- kolinko 4y agoThere is a very limited need. There's a ton of co2 calculators and energy markets out there, but supply of those outstrips demand. The only other part that would really require software devs is heavy duty physics simulations perhaps. Some things you just can't fix with software :) (Having said that - of course every hardware project needs some sort of software - be it microcontroller programming, or a website. But it's such a small part that it can be outsourced to a generic software house really)
- the_mar 4y agoNot DAC but CO2 capture nonetheless, Thalo Labs is a startup in NYC and they are hiring. https://jobs.lever.co/thalolabs/73ca7b6c-50ff-4902-9d32-8c8617386a18 https://jobs.lever.co/thalolabs/73ca7b6c-50ff-4902-9d32-8c86...
- osigurdson 4y agoSoftware is needed to accurately simulate CO2 injection into saline aquifers and depleted gas reservoirs. It is complex stuff - simulations typically run for 100s/1000s of years into the future, modelling chemical reactions, cap rock integrity, etc. Measurements are regularly obtained from the site which are fed back into the simulation. There are definitely jobs in this space.
- throw_away1525 4y agoThe developers working on these types of simulations typically have a background in a more traditional engineering field like petroleum engineering or chemical engineering. Not saying that it isn't possible to break into the field with a different background, just sharing my experience.
- osigurdson 4y agoIt is necessary to run thousands of simulations, collect and analyze data, etc. The scale can be enormous. There are definitely software engineering roles.
- xwdv 4y agoVery limited, better to buy simulators off the shelf if building simulations isn’t your core focus.
- joxel 4y agoI wonder what the extra energy required to take this "pure stream of ejected CO2" into the ground is compared to using a different style of removing CO2 that just requires extra energy during capture. I'm definitely not an engineer but I feel like injecting CO2 directly into the earth has to use a ton more energy.
- kolinko 4y agoYou are comparing to something that doesn't really exist. Most - if not all - existing solutions have two separate parts - capture and storage.
- joxel 4y agoThe only solution I've been somewhat familiar with is basically putting porous clay pellets into smoke stacks that capture some of the CO2.
- D13Fd 4y agoIsn’t that true of this system as well?
- kolinko 4y agoYes, this system handles carbon capture. For storage there are other systems. Carbon capture cost is half of the equation - if this sytem can be scaled and deliver it with less price, then the price of the whole ccs gets lower. Personally - having spent some time in the CCS field, I am very excited about this technology. If they manage to scale up the production (which is not certain), it will be extremely energy efficient to capture carbon with their method. The alternatives require pressure or temperature swing - so they waste a lot of energy either compressing gasses, or heating up sorbents.
- epistemer 4y agoI would think it all depends on the initial energy source. This is just one of the myriad of ways our malinvestment in cheap nuclear energy condemns us to try to build a type of perceptual motion machine.
- heywhatupboys 4y agoWhen I see "MIT engineer" in some pop sci news article, I know 99 % of the time it is bullshit.
- tacocataco 4y agoIsn't pushing boundaries wading through 99% of bullshit to get to that 1%?
- heywhatupboys 4y agosure, doesn't mean that popular news sites write "MIT" akin to bad money ads writing "Harvard Business School teaches you THIS trick to get money!!"
- OliverJones 4y agoGood. Invent things. Try things. But keep this in mind: plants evolved lignin to make their structures (trunks, branches, all that) hundreds of millions of years before bacteria and other microorganisms evolved the ability to break down that lignin. So, for hundreds of millions of years, plants captured carbon dioxide by photosynthesis and sequestered it. That's what changed earth's atmosphere from reducing to oxidizing. Fossil carbon is the geological remains of that carbon capture. It's hard to imagine carbon-capture tech that has the longevity of those planet-wide lignin forests.
- moffkalast 4y agoThat's all well and good, but natural selection has the tendency to only find a good enough solution that happens to work in a niche, not an optimal one for all cases. There may very well be a technique that doesn't work as well in small individual plant-sized systems but can become far more efficient when scaled up. I suppose it is somewhat unlikely though.
- JoshuaRogers 4y agoAs I was reading your comment, I couldn’t help but laugh as it reminded me of the quote “Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands.”
- dopidopHN 4y agoScaled up at the continental level, like say, the Amazonian basin?
- moffkalast 4y agoScaled beyond a single tree-sized entity I mean. Sure you can put a lot of trees together to do more, but each tree has to do its own small scale sourcing of water, sun, air, etc. You can take each part of that and make a sizable facility that's dedicated to only handling a specific part very efficiently. As an example, if the process needs electricity you could set up small self contained solar panel units, or you can produce a few magnitudes more with one nuclear powerplant. No point in digging a hole with a thousand spoons when an excavator can do it in one swoop.
- netfl0 4y ago[flagged]
- romusha 4y agoWow its been 3 years, where did all these great tech go? I thought they were supposed to solve the climate problems
- sebzim4500 4y agoIIRC they won a portion of that prize than Elon Musk funded last year.
- DennisP 4y agoAlso they started a company in 2019, and got $80 million invested in 2022, including from Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures. They're improving the tech and are working with their first commercial client. https://news.mit.edu/2022/cracking-carbon-removal-challenge-verdox-0915 https://news.mit.edu/2022/cracking-carbon-removal-challenge-...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- macspoofing 4y ago>Wow its been 3 years, where did all these great tech go? The fundamental problem with carbon capture is that 1) carbon comprises a tiny fraction of Air, and 2) requires energy input in some form. This means whatever methodology you use, will require you to expand energy to move huge volumes of air to remove a small number of particles (i.e. ~400 particles of Carbon, for 1 million Air particles).
- hedora 4y agoAlthough this is a big problem, air tends to mix itself. Most solutions that are being commercialized are targeting $100/ton at scale. Due to convenient unit conversions, this translates to $1.00/gallon of gasoline burned. This tells us a few things about the energy efficiency of those processes, but, as importantly, they would be economically viable in that price range. (A $1/gallon gas tax would have much less economic impact than the war in Ukraine, or prior wars in the Middle East.)
- oh_my_goodness 4y agoMIT's press office is on the case! We're saved!
- prvt 4y agoMIT engineers invent something -> it becomes talk of the town -> every one forgets about it the next day/week.
- DennisP 4y agoNot quite everyone. Last year they got $1M from the Musk Foundation and $80M from investors including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, and they're working with their first commercial client. https://news.mit.edu/2022/cracking-carbon-removal-challenge-verdox-0915 https://news.mit.edu/2022/cracking-carbon-removal-challenge-....
- stevespang 4y ago[dead]
- jeejay 4y agoI have an impression that in recent years MIT produces much ado about nothing. In that particular case, capture method requires energy input from, let me guess, coal burning? Moreover, you can't trick chemistry: more efficient capture implies higher affinity of CO2 towards this "CO2 battery". Higher affinity means that more energy would be required for regeneration of the "battery". From chemistry point suggested process is indistinguishable from the following process: pass air over CaO or Ca(OH)2 solution to turn it into CaCO3. Heating of CaCO3 will release CO2 thus regenerating CaO, which could be reused again. This process would require energy input — like MIT tech. Excess of CO2 in atmosphere is not necessarily bad thing. More CO2 in atmosphere means more carbon will be available for capture by plants, which means more crops and trees.
- DennisP 4y agoIt only means more crops and trees if you magically don't get other effects like drought, heat stress, erosion from drought followed by torrential rainfall, loss of icecap melt for irrigation, invasive insects and disease, and forest fires, all of which we're seeing quite a bit. And of course we have ways to produce energy now without burning fossil fuels.
- jeejay 4y agoI should admit that my specialty is chemistry and not environmental science so it is hard to make arguments here. Just a few comments: - it should be proven that these other effects are the causes not correlations. - what invasive diseases you are talking about? smallpox or syphilis? - drought was always a thing, e.g. great famine of 1921 in USSR was caused by it. That was way before modern levels of global warming. - There were at least 5 ice ages. Are the humans responsible for their endings? I am convinced that climate is changing — just not fully convinced what is the human role in it.
- DennisP 4y agoSince you have a science background, I'll strongly recommend the recent short book The Physics of Climate Change by Lawrence Krauss, which details how our CO2 emissions change the planet's temperature. It's fairly basic thermodynamics and was predicted with decent accuracy over a century ago. Also there are several chapters in Hansen's book Storms of My Grandchildren that go into the geological record, with multiple lines of evidence that all point to a similar sensitivity of the planet's average temperature to CO2 levels. (Regarding invasive diseases, I meant primarily things affecting forests.)
- hacker934 4y agoBurying old trees underground seems like the simplest solution to this issue. An old tree represents hundreds of years of removing carbon dioxide out of the air and converting it into a form that is convenient for storage. We only need to do the last step of making sure that invested carbon sequestration is not put back into the atmosphere through decomposition or fire. Here's a link to a relevant publication (from a university that unfortunately doesn't have the prestige or marketing team of MIT): doi.org/10.1186/1750-0680-3-1
- DennisP 4y agoIt sounds simpler but would involve a lot more logistics. You'd be moving lots of heavy stuff around, building new roads for it, monitoring to make sure the logging companies really are gently removing sustainable bits here and there instead of just clearcutting valuable ecosystems, etc. Where with MIT's method, you put a machine next to a good spot for geological storage and turn it on. According to articles I've seen on similar methods (Climeworks etc), it would be about a thousand times more efficient in terms of land area.
- cat_plus_plus 4y agoCool, but isn't it better to use naturally occurring alkaline minerals so that energy doesn't have to be expanded to re-release CO2? I suppose that energy to mine and pulverize minerals could exceed energy to cycle this battery. But minerals can potentially be put to dual use during or after capture, for example for construction or erosion control.
- xiphias2 4y agohttps://news.mit.edu/2022/cracking-carbon-removal-challenge-verdox-0915 https://news.mit.edu/2022/cracking-carbon-removal-challenge-...
- egberts1 4y agoSo the world’s bottling plants can too be CO2 scrubbers, get on with it!