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Earlier this week, Y Combinator, which has backed companies like Airbnb and Reddit, put out a request for startups working on technology that can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
"It's time to invest and avidly pursue a new wave of technological solutions to this problem — including those that are risky, unproven, even unlikely to work," Y Combinator's website says.
Y Combinator is looking for startups working on four approaches that they acknowledge "straddle the border between very difficult to science fiction" — genetically engineering phytoplankton to turn CO2 into a storage-ready form of carbon, speeding up a natural process in which rocks react with CO2, creating cell-free enzymes that can process carbon, and flooding Earth's deserts to create oases.
Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, acknowledged that these ideas are "moonshots," but said that he wants to take an expansive approach to the issue.
Related: Negative Emission Strategy: Active Carbon Capture
Storing Carbon Dioxide Underground by Turning It Into Rock
A Startup is Pitching a Mind-Uploading Service That is "100 Percent Fatal"
Carbon Capture From Air Closer to Commercial Viability
Y Combinator Spreads to China
Lab-Made Magnesite could be Used for CO2 Capture
NASA Announces CO2 Conversion Challenge, With Up to $750k Awards
(Score: 1) by Michael on Monday October 29 2018, @08:24PM
Burning off the hydrogen-rich volatiles to leave charcoal would give you a bury-able substance which doesn't decay for centuries. It's also a phenomenal soil amendment for holding water and nutrients, which is likely to give extra carbon capture by increasing biomass in/on soil. Even in a relatively small and poorly insulated system, wood produces more combustable volatiles than are required to heat it to charcoal forming temperature. (A coffee can plastered with perlite and a wood gas burner directed back
Could probably sell charcoal packaged for gardeners and farmers. Make it out of wood, twigs, straw, husks, hulls, shells, cobs, chaff, pretty much anything dry and brownish.
Far as lawn mowing, seems like the carbon content should havea bit more than linear relationship to length. Older stalks get more woody, especially just before seeds form. Let it get that long and you'd create opportunity for extra wildlife, which probably should count towards the carbon content of an area.