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There’s a global race to reduce the amount of harmful gases in our atmosphere to slow down the pace of climate change, and one way to do that is through carbon capture and sequestration — sucking carbon out of the air and burying it. At this point, however, we’re capturing only a fraction of the carbon needed to make any kind of dent in climate change.
Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin, in partnership with ExxonMobil, have made a new discovery that may go a long way in changing that. They have found a way to supercharge the formation of carbon dioxide-based crystal structures that could someday store billions of tons of carbon under the ocean floor for centuries, if not forever.
“I consider carbon capture as insurance for the planet,” said Vaibhav Bahadur (VB), an associate professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering’s Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering and the lead author of a new paper on the research in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering. “It’s not enough anymore to be carbon neutral, we need to be carbon negative to undo damage that has been done to the environment over the past several decades.”
Journal Reference:
Aritra Kar, Palash Vadiraj Acharya, Awan Bhati, et al. Magnesium-Promoted Rapid Nucleation of Carbon Dioxide Hydrates, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c03041)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 04 2021, @04:32PM (3 children)
scares the crap out of me!
first, just use the "everybody" space called atmosphere as a dumping ground and make money.
then instead of burning less hydrocarbon with "public air" the "contaminated air" now gets buried with that other thing we need to stay alive "oxygen".
according to periodic tables, oxygen has 8 protons whilst carbon only has 6? but we're burying 16 "oxygen protons" for every " 6 carbon protons".
the crazies will argue that there is more then enough oxygen to go around. that might be true overall but there can totally be "oxygen deprived" localities.
no idea how changing the composition of atmosphere in one locality changes other stuff.
maybe it's a bit like removing only quartz particles from a concrete pillar holding a bridge? still alot of other shit in that pillar, yes? lol, but scary as shit.
this carbon burying shit is plain crazy. the energy required is not free and using "renewable" energy to do it is even more crazy.
burn less and use the renewable energy to build more renewables (obviously manufacturing renewable energy harvesting and storing devices requires energy itself and they don't last forever and will have to be recycled and replaced)!
burying lots of oxygen with a bit of carbon without curtailing hydrocarbon consumption is basically turning "climate change" into a farce!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 04 2021, @04:53PM (2 children)
off topic but methinks we cannot solve the "climate crisis" as long as the people "in power" cannot stop making war.
wars require energy, fast and dense.
the energy of a atom was liberated but didn't bring "world peace".
as long as war is a option, hydrocarbons are ammunition that power them.
i am hard pressed to think of a "instrument of war" that doesn't require hydrocarbons? maybe bio-weapons?
military power is also "guaranteed access to energy". seems one way to "keep submission" is controlling types of energy sources and access to them.
seems glaring that not every house roof has solar panels and electricity storage and fusion is forever 20 years away -or- only allowed
in a form and shape that has to be a gargantuan, endless and hydrocarbon intensive project. :)
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday October 04 2021, @08:40PM (1 child)
Maybe a nuclear submarine?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 04 2021, @10:03PM
ah, yes, those.
pushing "da button" on one of those is like shoting yourself in the head with a frictionless bullet that keeps orbiting the earth at a height of a few meters ... sooner or later everybody steps into its path and dies, including the people who normally tie your sub to the home-dock :)