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Capture Carbon in Concrete Made With CO2 (Javascript required):
On a vast grassy field in northern Wyoming, a coal-fired power plant will soon do more than generate electricity. The hulking facility will also create construction materials by supplying scientists with carbon dioxide from its exhaust stream.
A team from the University of California, Los Angeles, has developed a system that transforms "waste CO2" into gray blocks of concrete. In March, the researchers will relocate to the Wyoming Integrated Test Center, part of the Dry Fork power plant near the town of Gillette. During a three-month demonstration, the UCLA team plans to siphon half a ton of CO2 per day from the plant's flue gas andproduce 10 tons of concrete daily.
[...] Carbon Upcycling UCLA is one of 10 teams competing in the final round of the NRG COSIA Carbon XPrize. The global competition aims to develop breakthrough technologies for converting carbon emissions into valuable products.
[...] Cement, a key ingredient in concrete, has a particularly big footprint. It's made by heating limestone with other materials, and the resulting chemical reactions can produce significant CO2 emissions. Scorching, energy-intensive kilns add even more. The world produces 4 billion tons of cement every year, and as a result, the industry generates about 8 percent of global CO2 emissions, according to think tank Chatham House.
[...] The UCLA initiative began about six years ago, as researchers contemplated the chemistry of Hadrian's Wall—the nearly 1,900-year-old Roman structure in northern England. Masons built the wall by mixing calcium oxide with water, then letting it absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. The resulting reactions produced calcium carbonate, or limestone. But that cementation process can take years or decades to complete, an unimaginably long wait by today's standards. "We wanted to know, 'How do you make these reactions go faster?'" Sant recalled.
The answer was portlandite, or calcium hydroxide. The compound is combined with aggregates and other ingredients to create the initial building element. That element then goes into a reactor, where it comes in contact with the flue gas coming directly out of a power plant's smokestack. The resulting carbonation reaction forms a solid building component akin to concrete.
[...] After Wyoming, Sant and colleagues will dismantle the system and haul it to Wilsonville, Alabama. Starting in July, they'll repeat the three-month pilot at the National Carbon Capture Center, a research facility sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy.
See Also: https://samueli.ucla.edu/ucla-carbon-capture-team-preparing-for-industrial-demonstration/.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Booga1 on Sunday February 09 2020, @12:14PM (7 children)
I don't think they're idiots. I think they're hoping to find idiots that will give them jobs and money while they turn this experiment into a product. Bonus for them if they can get it patented and just sell that to others who will do the work.
There's a market for greenwashing [wikipedia.org] and they'll be riding the hype train as far as they can go.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday February 09 2020, @12:25PM (6 children)
IEEE = Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
UCLA - University of California, Los Angeles
Like, WTF? Did we reach peak opportunism and this is the beginning of the descend into idiocracy?
Your (tax) money at work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 4, Informative) by Booga1 on Sunday February 09 2020, @12:52PM (2 children)
We're way past the beginning of the descent into Idiocracy... but I digress.
Much of academic research has been turned from a search for pure scientific knowledge into a search for money. [sciencemag.org]
Grants, products, and patents are all ways get that money. In this particular case it's a $20 million contest. From the link in the story [xprize.org].
The team lists on their contest page [xprize.org] that they have at least one patent pending already, so that's definitely part of the equation. They also say "CO₂NCRETE™ has a CO₂ footprint that is approximately 50% lower than that of traditional concrete..." so it looks like it's a probably net gain in capturing carbon after all. Perhaps I am being too cynical here and should give them the benefit of the doubt, but it's getting tougher to not be cynical about this sort of stuff the more you see it.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday February 09 2020, @01:40PM (1 child)
Net gain? Not possible in the absolute sense.
Lower than the current way of producing cement? Maybe that's the case when comparing with hydraulic cement [wikipedia.org] - based on silicates, it will require higher roasting temperature, but it doesn't require CO2 to cure - thus no CO2 absorbtion
But it can't be lower than non-hydraulic concrete - essentially, lime with aggregate.
So, essentially they propose some sort of "concrete bricks" as a solution. But, fired bricks would have the same CO2 footprint [bnpmedia.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Booga1 on Sunday February 09 2020, @02:40PM
They do say it is for "traditional Portland cement" which is listed under hydraulic cement in the Wikipedia page. Of course, the secret's in the sauce and I doubt anyone but the team and the contest sponsors will know that for a while.
I still suspect you're closer to the truth of the matter than any claim of "50%" improvement in CO2 footprint on their contest page.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 09 2020, @04:16PM (2 children)
Like a peer mentioned an ever larger percent of all science, from all institutions, is driven purely by money. Universities are increasingly run by non-academics who treat the operation as just another institution for profit making.
For instance Imperial College London (a generally well regarded institution in the UK, for my fellow 'mericans) came under the spotlight after one of their researchers ended up committing suicide [timeshighereducation.com] under the stresses of trying to keep his minimum grants received amount up. He (and they) are were expected to pull in £200k.
Note his 'performance investigation' had absolutely 0 to do with his research or anything like that. The entire publishing system in the west is becoming increasingly bastardized. Pull in grant money = good researcher, do not pull in much grant money = bad researcher. If this stuff started back in the 1600's can you imagine the state of society today? Land on the moon... we'd be lucky to have managed to get to the automobile.
The secret is we aren't starting to enter into idiocracy. We're already there. It's just a lot more pretentious than the movie. However, unlike the movie I think this is a self correcting problem. Countries that aren't playing our stupid games already are pulling ahead. So either they will become the dominant players in the world, or we'll snap out of this stupidity and get back to where we should be.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 09 2020, @10:18PM
This is 100% correct where I work too (a name-brand US university).
The "scientists" (former scientists) work flat out trying to get money and could not give 2 shits about the work. The only work that gets done is by imported labor as cheaply as possible and there's barely any supervision or training. The message comes down from above to publish stuff - doesn't matter what, doesn't matter if it works, don't even tell me about it unless in reference to it being published - and my name goes in the important space (first or last). End of conversation.
I don't know why but there are zero Americans in the entire operation. Up and down the ladder, none. Why? The jobs are not particuarly bad - at least comparable to boss-centric work anywhere - but Americans won't touch it. However it's not science in the sense you read in text books or idealized in scifi. Just another dreary management and business job.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday February 10 2020, @03:22PM
If you substitute Royal patronage for grant money, it did start back in the 1600s...
sudo mod me up