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posted by martyb on Tuesday September 18 2018, @06:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the insert-sappy-comment-here dept.

Climate change is killing our planet. The excess production of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses are filling the atmosphere and warming the Earth faster than natural processes can effectively negate them. Since 1951, the surface temperature has risen by 0.8 degrees C, with no sign of slowing. So now it's time for humans to step in and rectify the problem they created -- by using technology to suck excess CO2 straight from the air.

Direct Air Capture (DAC), is one of a number of (still largely theoretical) methods of collecting and sequestering atmospheric carbon currently being looked at. Despite their varied methods, all of these techniques seek to accomplish the same goal: pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it in a form that will not contribute to the effects of global warming.

[...] Unlike current flue gas capture systems, which can only effectively collect CO2 directly from a factory smokestack where the carbon dioxide is more concentrated, DACs can capture carbon at more diverse and distributed sources. And given that roughly half of annual CO2 emissions come from distributed sources (such as vehicle tailpipes), DACs could have a huge impact on climate change.

DACs generally operate by pushing air past a sorbent chemical which binds with carbon dioxide but allows other molecules to pass unimpeded. For example, one of the earliest sorbents employed was a calcium hydroxide solution, which strongly binds with CO2 to create calcium carbonate. The captured CO2 is then unbound from the sorbent, purified and concentrated for use in industrial applications. Of course this is often easier said than done. With the calcium carbonate method (which is derived from the Kraft process), the material must be separated from the solution, dried, and then carbonized at 700 degrees C.

This however reveals the Achilles heel of DACs: their cost. A 2015 study from the National Academies estimated costs of around $400 to $1,000 per ton of CO2 extracted at that time. With nations needed to collectively pull 5 billion tons of carbon out of the atmosphere, every year until 2050, to remain within the bounds of the Paris Climate Accord, doing so with just DACs would prove economically infeasible. The associated energy costs needed to carry out these chemical processes (estimated at 12 gigajoules of electricity per ton of CO2 captured) would be equally staggering.

"Direct air capture could become a major industry if the technology matures and prices drop dramatically," Professor Chris Field, former co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC), and Dr Katharine Mach, director of the Stanford Environment Facility, wrote in a 2017 Science article. "Direct air capture might require much less land but entail much higher costs and consumption of a large fraction of global energy production."

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @06:50AM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @06:50AM (#736408)

    Turn it into limestone and build megalithic cities that last for thousands of years with it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:56AM (9 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:56AM (#736423)

      Calcium hydroxide, Ca(OH)2[,] also known as slaked lime is manufactured by heating limestone to a high temperature of about 1000C and then adding water to the calcium oxide.

      (source [gulpmatrix.com])

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @08:18AM (8 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @08:18AM (#736428)

        Not sure what you are getting at but limestone contains carbon: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limestone [wikipedia.org]

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @08:44AM (7 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @08:44AM (#736431)

          Yes it does. When we make calcium oxide from limestone, that carbon is released in the form of (wait for it) carbon dioxide. When that calcium oxide is made into calcium hydroxide, the calcium hydroxide can capture that same amount of carbon dioxide, because of stoichiometry. Hence making artificial limestone from natural limestone doesn't, overall, capture carbon dioxide.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @08:56AM (6 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @08:56AM (#736432)

            Who brought up making artificial limestone from natural limestone? Capture the waste carbon as ash or whatever and use it to make limestone, then build stuff with it.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:02AM (5 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:02AM (#736434)

              When you make limestone, that's artificial limestone innit? Your feedstock is natural limestone, unless you've come up with another source of calcium hydroxide.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:24AM (4 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:24AM (#736438)
                • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 18 2018, @11:54AM (3 children)

                  by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 18 2018, @11:54AM (#736462) Journal

                  And those plant ashes... how exactly did they became ashes without releasing CO2?

                  --
                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @01:09PM (2 children)

                    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @01:09PM (#736487)

                    It says the ashes were going to be produced either way:

                    The ashes of plants are also rich in lime and the priests established the custom of receiving ashes from cooking fires from all over Egypt, to add them to the mixture.

                    • (Score: 1) by YeaWhatevs on Tuesday September 18 2018, @05:34PM (1 child)

                      by YeaWhatevs (5623) on Tuesday September 18 2018, @05:34PM (#736610)

                      You don't seem to comprehend. That's fine for making itty-bitty batches, but that's not the industrial process used to make millions of tons per year.

                      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @06:54PM

                        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @06:54PM (#736651)

                        I don't think it is used that widely yet:

                        Inorganic polymer concrete (geopolymer) is an emerging class of cementitious materials that utilize "fly ash", one of the most abundant industrial by-products on earth, as a substitute for Portland cement, the most widely produced man-made material on earth.
                        [...]
                        Perhaps Geopolymer concrete's greatest appeal is its life cycle greenhouse gas reduction potential; as much as 90% when compared with OPC.

                        https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090929141534.htm [sciencedaily.com]

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @06:57AM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @06:57AM (#736410)

    "to remain within the bounds of the Paris Climate Accord" you have to be like the USA. Despite pulling out, we're the only nation to meet our target. LOL.

    At least in the USA, we finally have hope and change! We're making Earth great again.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:32AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:32AM (#736419)

      citation needed

      • (Score: 1) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:39AM (2 children)

        by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:39AM (#736420) Homepage Journal

        The Link from The Mighty Buzzard........ washingtontimes.com/news/2018/aug/19/the-united-states-didnt-sign-the-paris-climate-acc [washingtontimes.com]

        • (Score: 2) by Bethany.Saint on Tuesday September 18 2018, @08:03AM (1 child)

          by Bethany.Saint (5900) on Tuesday September 18 2018, @08:03AM (#736425)

          The Times is a right wing propaganda paper like Fox News: a combination of truths, some half truths, and outright misleading information. The article may be right but until it's verified by a more objective source you should assume it's misleading data and/or results.

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @08:22AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @08:22AM (#736430)

            What news site would you not describe that way? Seems to be all of them to me...

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Aiwendil on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:29AM

      by Aiwendil (531) on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:29AM (#736440) Journal

      Since the paris agreement is a mess "meeting the goals" means very little.

      For instance the INDC of USA is basically "to reduce emissions by 28-40% compared to 2005", do you know how friggin dirty the US industry and electricity was in 2005?

      I'd be darned interested in seeing USA rather try to meet where Sweden, Norway, or France was at 1990 instead (per capita). (Here is a hint - the grid of those where below 60g/kWh in carbon intensity back then. Or about a third of what a natgas/erdgaz plant is today).
      Heck, USA even try to meet where Finland was back then would be a huge leap forward (about 180-300g/kWh).

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:10AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @09:10AM (#736435)

    by (concrete) trees of loving grace.

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 18 2018, @10:26AM (18 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday September 18 2018, @10:26AM (#736449) Homepage Journal

    If only there were some biological organism like these robotic trees that captured carbon as part of its natural lifecycle.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday September 18 2018, @01:13PM (7 children)

      by RS3 (6367) on Tuesday September 18 2018, @01:13PM (#736488)

      ... and then if we would stop cutting them down, using CO2 releasing machines, to make room for overhead wires...

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:00PM (6 children)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:00PM (#736538) Homepage Journal

        Ah but unless you burned them the carbon would remain sequestered even after they were cut down, which would make room for even more of these "biotrees" to take their place. I dunno, maybe we could use them for building materials or furniture or something; carbon sequestration and usefulness all in one package.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:10PM

          by RS3 (6367) on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:10PM (#736542)

          That sounds heretical. Are you some kind of dissident?

          [I know some of the readers won't comprehend that I'm being sarcastic.]

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:32PM (4 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:32PM (#736552)

          Ah but unless you burned them the carbon would remain sequestered even after they were cut down

          "Burning" here means reacting the carbon fixated in the tree with oxygen to produce water and carbon dioxide. That will inevitably happen to the cut tree, be it in the metabolisms of living organisms or due to ignition.

          Of course, normally new photosynthesizing plants grow and react that carbon dioxide with water, producing oxygen and fixated carbon.

          The carbon cycle at work, all powered by a giant nuclear reactor floating in space.

          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:40PM (3 children)

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:40PM (#736556) Homepage Journal

            That will inevitably happen to the cut tree, be it in the metabolisms of living organisms or due to ignition.

            Not true. Quite a lot of the carbon from decomposed vegetable matter remains sequestered in the soil. More of it remains in the microbes doing the decomposition. And finally, if it remains sequestered for several hundred years as it is quite possible for it to do if used as building/furniture materials, that's more than long enough. We don't need or even want to permanently sequester the carbon; we just want to tip the balance of the cycle back towards more of it being sequestered.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:34PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:34PM (#736679)

              Ayyyy, a useful buzzpost. I'm walkin' heeerrre!

              • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:49PM

                by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:49PM (#736689) Homepage Journal

                They're almost all useful unless you don't allow yourself to even consider ideas outside your tribal dogma. For all the shit-talking directed at religious folks around here, the ones talking the shit sure do their best to emulate their unwavering faith in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

                --
                My rights don't end where your fear begins.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @08:20AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @08:20AM (#736949)

              Charcoal can last thousands of years in the soil, and it improves the soil too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar# [wikipedia.org]

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @02:00PM (7 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @02:00PM (#736514)

      It does sound expensive.

      One tree can sequester about 1 tonne of atmospheric CO₂ in about 40 years. So let's say 40 trees will sequester 1 tonne in 1 year.

      TFA says we should target 5 billion tonnes of sequestration per year (seems low to me), so that's 200 billion trees, or roughly 25 trees for every man, woman and child currently living on the earth.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:03PM (2 children)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:03PM (#736539) Homepage Journal

        Shouldn't be a problem for anyone except India and desert nations. Most everyone else has at least enough land for that even after considering farming land use.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @04:05PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @04:05PM (#736571)

          Shouldn't be a problem for anyone except India and desert nations. Most everyone else has at least enough land for that even after considering farming land use.

          I think you're wrong that most people have enough land for 25 trees (I'd question the assertion that even most people have any land).

          Adding 200 billion trees to Earth represents about a 5% increase in forest area. Forests cover about 30% of the earth's entire land area today so we'd be using about 2% of all land for these new trees. That's about the size of all the cities on the planet, combined. Currently almost all the Earth's land area is either agriculture, forest, or desert (about 30% each).

          It's certainly possible, after all, there was much more forest than that on Earth prior the industrial revolution. But there were also about 7 billion fewer humans at that time.

          Killing 7 billion humans is probably easier and cheaper than growing 200 billion trees, and will reduce CO₂ emissions by about 4 billion tonnes annually simply because there are fewer people breathing.

      • (Score: 2) by Aegis on Tuesday September 18 2018, @10:52PM (1 child)

        by Aegis (6714) on Tuesday September 18 2018, @10:52PM (#736795)

        or roughly 25 trees for every man, woman and child currently living on the earth.

        And that's per year!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @08:26AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @08:26AM (#736950)

        A tree that's just been planted will be smaller than a mature tree, hence it'll take up carbon dioxide more slowly.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:53PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:53PM (#736562)

      The interactive documentary series, Megaman, portrays the regular use of robotic trees by 20XX, and this must be what they are for! They are clearly the way of the future!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @08:08AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 19 2018, @08:08AM (#736947)

      You mean, like a robot but alive. We have that: it's people.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @02:20PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @02:20PM (#736522)

    Which means that you have to account for the refining of the chemical. Which is why chemistry based solutions may create some interesting new materials, but they are unlikely to solve CO2 sequestration. Their impediment is the where, not the how.

    Even if we all personally buried and planted 50 trees in our lifetimes, we are still going to run into problems with the soil lacking phosporus and potassium. So you have account for the freight on those materials as well. You can get CO2 and nitrogen out of the air anywhere. But the other precursors to a stable sequestration material are not so easy to come by in a free state.

    If you want a universal solution, you have to look at the universal problem. Which is to say we are talking about a wholistic planetary management system. And the only people who are talking about that are the permaculturists. Funny thing is, they have a workable sequestration solution right now. What they don't have is a way to make it work while keeping existing parasitic industrial complexes in business. Which is why everybody is still looking for a fix, instead of trying to implement the fix we already have.

    If chemistry wants to solve this problem, the best way is perhaps by finding a drug that mitigates the egos of the WTO wallstreet and all of the banking institutions that are still pooring support into broken bio-economic models.

    • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:06PM (4 children)

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:06PM (#736541) Homepage Journal

      If you buried the trees, preferably in a ground up or shredded state for easier decomposition, you could simply plant over top of them and use the minerals released by decomposition of the trees a generation or two before.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @04:52PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @04:52PM (#736597)

        Yep.

        And then over several hundred years you end up with soil that is carbon rich to a depth of six or seven feet like terra preta. The entire eastern seaboard of the U.S. needs to look like it did before the white man came. Same with much of central and south America. The thing is that complex polyculture ecosystems can produce extraordinary food yields if managed correctly. But there is not currently any industrial leverage in actually managing those ecosystems.

        If you want to invent something enables CO2 sequestration, figure out how to to harvest fruit and nuts robotically in a polyculture hardwood forest. Figure out how to breed, track, and harvest wild turkey, wild boar, and wild venison industrially in a polyculture hardwood forest. Because that is what these areas are going to look like. The only difference will be whether mankind will go extinct before or after these areas return to that kind of ecosystem. Life will find a way to increase the volume of biomass in an area. That is what life does.

        The thing is, we want to increase biomass in these areas. That is the whole point of crop management. So the issue isn't whether we can, or whether we want to, but why the food supply system is managed in a way that disallows it. And if you want to know why that is, it is because bankers are running the farms.

        We need to be graduating 10k students a year majoring in bioeconomics. We need to be racking up stats world wide as fast as possible so we can start understanding how to turn the practice of permaculture into a science based industrial manufacturing discipline.

        We know how to solve the problem. We just don't know how to solve it with the same number of bankers we had yesterday. Which is why every week there is a new perpetual motion scheme in the CO2 sequestration market.

        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:25PM (2 children)

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:25PM (#736672) Homepage Journal

          The entire eastern seaboard of the U.S. needs to look like it did before the white man came. Same with much of central and south America.

          I think I just won this round of Spot the Lunatic!

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:42PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:42PM (#736684)

            Incorrect, not a lunatic just kinda bad at writing. I wouldn't quite say "bankers" owning the farms just greedy corporate leaders putting profits over sustainability and environmental protection.

            Humanity has massively deforested the entire planet, that is a valid statement about restoring areas. But you are buzzy, unable to separate fact from personal ideology. Well, most of the time anyway.

            • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:54PM

              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday September 18 2018, @07:54PM (#736693) Homepage Journal

              Well, good luck with eliminating every port east of the Mississippi, many of the most populated cities in the nation, and our nation's capitol so you can plant trees. Let me know how that works out for you.

              --
              My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:22PM

      by RS3 (6367) on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:22PM (#736548)

      You're obviously intelligent, but your comment reminds me of "book smart" versus practical knowledge. You mention problems due to lack of phosphorus and potassium, but much of the eastern half of North America was completely covered in forest (trees) for thousands of years. I'm no botanist, but somehow the trees sustained themselves. All I'm saying is: quit cutting trees so much until (and if) humans can come up with a big-picture universal solution.

      I like your comment about finding a drug. It needs to quell the short-term profit grabbing and convince people we need very long-term carbon-neutral, energy-neutral thinking. I hate to be a cynic / pessimist, but from what I see, money and politics go hand-in-hand and drive the driven, and I don't see a fix for that. But I'm always interested in ideas and anything I can do to help.

  • (Score: 2) by CZB on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:46PM (1 child)

    by CZB (6457) on Tuesday September 18 2018, @03:46PM (#736558)

    Maybe its just my industrial bias as a farmer, but it seems that plants can beat these other sequestration projects and have some produce as well. This gets talked about within agriculture circles. It can't exactly pay for itself in the current economy, but if governments and organizations want to fund it, we can grow rainforests and other maximized region-ideal biomes that should solve the problem. (And create others - big forests do effect weather.)

    Carbon credits that plant trees are kind of scams. The environmentalist industry has opposed the ag industry in really damaging ways, because we oppose each other instead of working together.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @04:04PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 18 2018, @04:04PM (#736570)

      (And create others - big forests do effect weather.)

      Yeap - the rainforests cause rain

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