Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Sunday April 07 2019, @05:20PM   Printer-friendly

Climate Change: 'Magic Bullet' Carbon Solution Takes Big Step:

A technology that removes carbon dioxide from the air has received significant backing from major fossil fuel companies.

British Columbia-based Carbon Engineering has shown that it can extract CO2 in a cost-effective way.

It has now been boosted by $68m in new investment from Chevron, Occidental and coal giant BHP.

[...]CO2 is a powerful warming gas but there's not a lot of it in the atmosphere - for every million molecules of air, there are 410 of CO2.

While the CO2 is helping to drive temperatures up around the world, the comparatively low concentrations make it difficult to design efficient machines to remove the gas.

Carbon Engineering's process is all about sucking in air and exposing it to a chemical solution that concentrates the CO2. Further refinements mean the gas can be purified into a form that can be stored or utilised as a liquid fuel.

[...]Carbon Engineering's barn-sized installation has a large fan in the middle of the roof which draws in air from the atmosphere.

It then comes into contact with a hydroxide-based chemical solution. Certain hydroxides react with carbon dioxide, reversibly binding to the CO2 molecule. When the CO2 in the air reacts with the liquid, it forms a carbonate mixture. That is then treated with a slurry of calcium hydroxide to change it into solid form; the slurry helps form tiny pellets of calcium carbonate.

The chalky calcium carbonate pellets are then treated at a high temperature of about 900C, with the pellets decomposing into a CO2 stream and calcium oxide.

After any water lingering in the concentrated CO2 is removed, the result can be converted into a fuel:

The captured CO2 is mixed with hydrogen that's made from water and green electricity. It's then passed over a catalyst at 900C to form carbon monoxide. Adding in more hydrogen to the carbon monoxide turns it into what's called synthesis gas.

Finally a Fischer-Tropsch process turns this gas into a synthetic crude oil. Carbon Engineering says the liquid can be used in a variety of engines without modification.

The question then becomes are people going to look at this development and think there is no need to reduce their use of fossil fuels and/or delay the transition to renewable power sources?

Prev: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/06/13/025232&from=rss

Related: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/08/20/0148258
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/10/29/1532257&from=rss
https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=19/02/28/0231247


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday April 07 2019, @07:17PM (8 children)

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Sunday April 07 2019, @07:17PM (#825901) Journal

    Further refinements mean the gas can be purified into a form that can be stored or utilised[sic] as a liquid fuel.

    ...hmm. And when this fuel is burned, what are the resulting emitted combustion products?

    I'd prefer to see a tech that turns CO2 into a stable solid mixture of some sort. It's not like we don't have enough.

    --
    Do I know any jokes about sodium?
    Na.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Sunday April 07 2019, @07:54PM (3 children)

    by hemocyanin (186) on Sunday April 07 2019, @07:54PM (#825919) Journal

    I'd prefer to see a tech that turns CO2 into a stable solid mixture of some sort.

    So something like wood. I wonder what technology could make that happen? Maybe this: https://imgur.com/DdEHq99 [imgur.com]

  • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday April 07 2019, @09:25PM

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Sunday April 07 2019, @09:25PM (#825939) Homepage Journal

    You didn't read the article. And, that's O.K., not everyone can. But it explains why our great Oil Industry is financing this one. They need MASSIVE AMOUNTS of Carbon Dioxide. They put the Carbon Dioxide into their wells. And, the Oil comes out. The more Carbon Dioxide they put in, the more Oil they get. And as everybody knows, we can never get enough Oil for our ROARING Economy. Big money maker and it's very ecological too. Classic WIN WIN!!!!

  • (Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Monday April 08 2019, @12:53AM

    by RandomFactor (3682) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 08 2019, @12:53AM (#826016) Journal

    It can also be pelletized or sequestered underground. The fuel stream is just one possible output (and one that takes more effort.)

    Pulling carbon out of the air to burn it and put it back in the air is ~'carbon neutral', which is significantly less impactful than pulling that same carbon out of sequestration and dumping it into the air.

    --
    В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08 2019, @03:01PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 08 2019, @03:01PM (#826185)

    And when this fuel is burned, what are the resulting emitted combustion products?

    The CO2 that was previously bound. So yes, using it as fuel won't reduce the CO2 levels. However unlike burning fossil fuels, it also won't add CO2 to the atmosphere.

    I'd prefer to see a tech that turns CO2 into a stable solid mixture of some sort.

    From the summary:

    Finally a Fischer-Tropsch process turns this gas into a synthetic crude oil.

    Of course there are also solid products that are made of crude oil, such as plastics and bitumen.

    • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday April 08 2019, @09:21PM

      by fyngyrz (6567) on Monday April 08 2019, @09:21PM (#826370) Journal

      However unlike burning fossil fuels, it also won't add CO2 to the atmosphere.

      Well, the problem at this point is pretty clearly that we need to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. So "carbon neutral", while better than "here, have some more carbon" isn't great.

      Finally a Fischer-Tropsch process turns this gas into a synthetic crude oil.
      Of course there are also solid products that are made of crude oil, such as plastics and bitumen.

      Seems like the way to go to me. Go to EV's ASAP, which are energy source agnostic, get off petroleum and other significant present-day atmospheric CO2 contributors (solar, nuclear, hydro, wind, tidal, geothermal, basically just about anything but burning stuff.) Hydrogen's basically a battery — you can only make it by shoveling in more energy than you're going to get out of it, and it's both difficult to transport and to store, so not all that great, really, barring a huge new infrastructure investment.

      I keep hoping (and being disappointed) that one of these ultracap companies or some brilliant researcher somewhere will break the high-voltage barrier for ultra-thin dielectrics, so we can store enough energy in ultracaps to get past batteries and their nasty combo of toxic chemistry and very short service lifetimes.

      Eestor [eestorcorp.com] was trumpeting all about that, but appears to have either been scamming or simply unable to do what they thought they could do (and yeah, I'm aware of their continuous trumpeting of independent test results... but where's the HV / high farad capacitor, fellas? Huh? Huh?)

      --
      What I if told you
      you read the previous line wrong