5 ms·

Is it possible to create a man-made process to convert carbon into oxygen? Do we need to rely on plants?

by nirmel 12y ago

ectopic_cheeto 12y ago
Maybe a man-assisted process - like skyscraper-sized water gardens full of algae.
themgt 12y ago
It requires energy - plants use photosynthesis to harness sunlight, and then use the carbon to build more of themselves, a great positive feedback loop. We have no current technology that has anywhere near the ability to be as net-carbon negative as a plant Now, if we had something like insanely-cheap fusion power, this would probably be a solvable problem. Otherwise I think some serious advances in nanotech would be required - you're talking about needing to pull 32.3 billion metric tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere per year just to offset our current emissions, much less pull the atmospheric ppm down from the dangerously high (and likely unstable) spot it's already at. tl;dr the problem isn't getting carbon out of the atmosphere, the problem is being net-carbon for the entire process lifecycle while doing it
- codecamper 12y ago
  I'm about 40. Do you realize that people have been heralding nanotechnology as the solution to all these problems since I was 17? Same goes for fusion. I remember reading in Scientific American that fusion was just a few years off. that was over 20 years ago.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    They keep fusion in the news as marketing for the uneconomical nuclear fission power that we're actually forced to use. "Any day now, we won't be producing all this noxious waste!"
    - Ygg2 12y ago
      I'm sorry, but what noxious waste? You mean coal, right?
      - crpatino 12y ago
        He meant the radioactive waste from nuclear fission (with an I) plants. If I picked up the argument correctly, fusion was never meant to work, it was just a smoke screen so that people would not look too closely at what the nuclear industry was actually doing. I don't share that opinion, though I think nuclear fusion power production - at least in the scales that would matter for the project of human civilization - turned out to be much more harder to achieve than what anyone had expected 50 years ago; and that some hard questions about the practical feasibility of that option went unasked for far too long. Out of normal human nature, of course. No need to cry conspiracy!
  - Retric 12y ago
    We have really dropped the ball on fusion research. JET the current best fusion reactor was built between 1978-1982 (Q ~= 0.7). So from 1982 to now there has been zero count it zero actual progress with a physical device. (They waited to 1991 to actually start using it for fusion not just plasma experiments and the record comes from 1997.) Arguably, if we had been building a new state of the art device every 5 years we would have had a working fusion reactor in the late 1990's. Though computer models suggested it would not be cost effective. PS: Yes, the world’s best fusion reactor was designed in 1977 and people wonder why progress is so slow. Hmm, I wonder.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - jessriedel 12y ago
    My comment from a few months ago might interest you then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8307584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8307584
- codecamper 12y ago
  I remember reading that they figured out that photosynthesis' energy transport operates at the quantum level. whatever that means -- but I think that means that photosynthesis is way more complex than we can currently figure out.
  - patrickdavey 12y ago
    Yip, quite a good episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage also talked about it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052hptj http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052hptj "What is the point of plants"
justizin 12y ago
I'll defer to another commenter about the challenge of doing this without generating more carbon to generate the required power. Also, plants don't, "Convert Carbon into Oxygen", they separate the Oxygen from the Carbon and release it. FWIW the Ocean processes like 3-4x as much carbon as the rainforest. It is of concern that the rainforest is losing its' capacity to, but perhaps it has been overloaded as dead spots in the ocean expand. Sylvia Earle's project, "Mission Blue", is trying to help the ocean regenerate by fighting overfishing and other practices. There's a great film on Netflix by this name that includes a lot of dive footage from decades ago, and from present day.
- ars 12y ago
  > Also, plants don't, "Convert Carbon into Oxygen", they separate the Oxygen from the Carbon and release it. They don't do that either. They separate Oxygen from Carbon Dioxide which is not the same thing as carbon. Carbon pollution is soot - like from a diesel. The stuff they are talking about here is carbon dioxide.
samatman 12y ago
Carbon is converted into oxygen in the heart of stars. You presumably mean converting carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen. Yes, we can do this. Plants are currently more energetically efficient at it, and they just grow, which is tough to beat.
Gustomaximus 12y ago
A man made process that uses nature. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization

Is it possible to create a man-made process to convert carbon into oxygen? Do we need to rely on plants?

by nirmel 12y ago

Is it possible to create a man-made process to convert carbon into oxygen? Do we need to rely on plants?

ectopic_cheeto 12y ago

Maybe a man-assisted process - like skyscraper-sized water gardens full of algae.

themgt 12y ago

It requires energy - plants use photosynthesis to harness sunlight, and then use the carbon to build more of themselves, a great positive feedback loop. We have no current technology that has anywhere near the ability to be as net-carbon negative as a plant Now, if we had something like insanely-cheap fusion power, this would probably be a solvable problem. Otherwise I think some serious advances in nanotech would be required - you're talking about needing to pull 32.3 billion metric tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere per year just to offset our current emissions, much less pull the atmospheric ppm down from the dangerously high (and likely unstable) spot it's already at. tl;dr the problem isn't getting carbon out of the atmosphere, the problem is being net-carbon for the entire process lifecycle while doing it

codecamper 12y ago
I'm about 40. Do you realize that people have been heralding nanotechnology as the solution to all these problems since I was 17? Same goes for fusion. I remember reading in Scientific American that fusion was just a few years off. that was over 20 years ago.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  They keep fusion in the news as marketing for the uneconomical nuclear fission power that we're actually forced to use. "Any day now, we won't be producing all this noxious waste!"
  - Ygg2 12y ago
    I'm sorry, but what noxious waste? You mean coal, right?
    - crpatino 12y ago
      He meant the radioactive waste from nuclear fission (with an I) plants. If I picked up the argument correctly, fusion was never meant to work, it was just a smoke screen so that people would not look too closely at what the nuclear industry was actually doing. I don't share that opinion, though I think nuclear fusion power production - at least in the scales that would matter for the project of human civilization - turned out to be much more harder to achieve than what anyone had expected 50 years ago; and that some hard questions about the practical feasibility of that option went unasked for far too long. Out of normal human nature, of course. No need to cry conspiracy!
- Retric 12y ago
  We have really dropped the ball on fusion research. JET the current best fusion reactor was built between 1978-1982 (Q ~= 0.7). So from 1982 to now there has been zero count it zero actual progress with a physical device. (They waited to 1991 to actually start using it for fusion not just plasma experiments and the record comes from 1997.) Arguably, if we had been building a new state of the art device every 5 years we would have had a working fusion reactor in the late 1990's. Though computer models suggested it would not be cost effective. PS: Yes, the world’s best fusion reactor was designed in 1977 and people wonder why progress is so slow. Hmm, I wonder.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- jessriedel 12y ago
  My comment from a few months ago might interest you then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8307584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8307584
codecamper 12y ago
I remember reading that they figured out that photosynthesis' energy transport operates at the quantum level. whatever that means -- but I think that means that photosynthesis is way more complex than we can currently figure out.
- patrickdavey 12y ago
  Yip, quite a good episode of the Infinite Monkey Cage also talked about it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052hptj http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b052hptj "What is the point of plants"

justizin 12y ago

I'll defer to another commenter about the challenge of doing this without generating more carbon to generate the required power. Also, plants don't, "Convert Carbon into Oxygen", they separate the Oxygen from the Carbon and release it. FWIW the Ocean processes like 3-4x as much carbon as the rainforest. It is of concern that the rainforest is losing its' capacity to, but perhaps it has been overloaded as dead spots in the ocean expand. Sylvia Earle's project, "Mission Blue", is trying to help the ocean regenerate by fighting overfishing and other practices. There's a great film on Netflix by this name that includes a lot of dive footage from decades ago, and from present day.

ars 12y ago
> Also, plants don't, "Convert Carbon into Oxygen", they separate the Oxygen from the Carbon and release it. They don't do that either. They separate Oxygen from Carbon Dioxide which is not the same thing as carbon. Carbon pollution is soot - like from a diesel. The stuff they are talking about here is carbon dioxide.

samatman 12y ago

Carbon is converted into oxygen in the heart of stars. You presumably mean converting carbon dioxide into carbon and oxygen. Yes, we can do this. Plants are currently more energetically efficient at it, and they just grow, which is tough to beat.

Gustomaximus 12y ago

A man made process that uses nature. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization