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First Successful Demonstration of CO2 Capture Technology
An anonymous coward writes "Global Research Technologies, LLC (GRT), a technology research and development company, and Klaus Lackner from Columbia University have achieved the
successful demonstration of a bold new technology to capture carbon from the air. The "air extraction" prototype has successfully demonstrated that indeed carbon dioxide (CO2) can be captured from the atmosphere. This is GRT's first step toward a commercially viable air capture device."
Nor does it mention anything about how it works.
Blueprints or it's bullshit!
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I assume that this is more energy efficient than the usual refrigeration based methods for generating pure CO2. This is a good thing. However, they don't say what they're going to do with the CO2 once they purify it. If you can't answer that question, you haven't solved the sequesteration problem.
I find this idea somewhat concerning. All too often the human race is guilty of doing things because they can, before they learn whether or not they should. I'm all for reducing carbon emissions, but in all honesty, what the hell will we break if we start trying to extract too much carbon from the atmosphere.
Mind you, find a way to quickly and efficiently separate the carbon from the oxygen, install in long range space craft and you suddenly have near limitless air for deep space voyages.
Actually the more people need paper the more trees get planted to supply that demand, trees unlike other forms of carbon is completely renewable.
Also recycling paper is a load of crap, it adds to polution by needing all sorts of nasty chemicals to bleach the paper so it can be re-used, not to mention all the petrolum needed to cart stuff from peoples homes to recyling centres, here they use multiple trucks, one for waste one for recycling.
It costs the US$8bill a yr in subsidies to pay for recycling and cleaning up the chemical by-products, it costs much less to plant and cut down trees.
Right, because trees grow instantaneously, bleach themselves, and require no transportation or other effort to be made into trees.
As others have pointed out, this article is almost entirely useless.
Can someone provide a link to something that answers the obvious questions:
1. How does it work?
2. How much energy does it take to extract it's 10 tonnes of CO2 per year?
3. How does this compare with refrigeration or plants as a means to reduce CO2 concentration?
4. What is it's likely cost?
Something very important that this project and other ideas to sequester CO2 have forgotten: what about the Oxygen?
If you start sequestering CO2 on a massive scale, it could work to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere - but at the same time you will permanently remove Oxygen from the atmosphere as well!
Now sure, at 21% there is plenty, but if removing CO2 is the plan, and it's a long term plan, slowly but surely there will be less and less oxygen in the air.
-Ariel
It's not hard to understand. Say five of us are living in a closed environment (i.e. earth). All five of us want to eat potatoes. Okay, so we'll plant a five foot wide garden. What if ten of us want potatoes? We'll planet a ten foot wide garden. What if ten of us want to eat twice as many potatoes? We'll plant a twenty foot wide garden.
Now say five of us want to use paper. We'll plant five trees. What if ten of us want paper? We'll plant ten trees. What if we want twice as much paper, even if we're just throwing half away? We'll plant twenty trees. What if we recycle half that paper? Oh, now we don't need twenty trees anymore; we'll only plant ten.
I'm not saying recycling is bad, but the allegation that we're chopping down the rain forests is just plain wrong; it's sensationalism. We've been planting tree farms for over fifty years, and that's what we use today to make paper. That's why the amount of trees in North America has been steadily growing over the past hundred years. There are more trees today than there has ever been, and the simple reason is because we use a lot of paper.
You're absolutely correct. You should all pay us Canadians (and probably the Russians too) to cut down trees and sink them into the nearby Pacific ocean. It's even all downhill!
We replant native species here and the forest area in the country has not changed in twenty years despite a thriving forestry industry.
Seriously, do you think any fancy process that involves heating things to 900 degrees that we come up with is going to be more efficient at absorbing carbon than a forest? A GROWING forest since a mature one doesn't absorb net carbon.
Good points well made.
Two issues issue you are missing however:
- recycling reduces VOLUMES of trash. Glass is not a raw material problem, but a landfill one.
- burning paper in incinerators (Europe style) effectively releases into the atmosphere all the CO2 that the trees absorbed.
Atheism is a non-prophet organisation
Yes, but the paper companies only plant single species fast growing trees. Those can not replace the complex ecosystem in the rain forests.
N %20-%20Trees%20are%20the%20Answer.pdf
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Modding that post as 5, Informative doesn't make any sense unless it was to illustrate popular misconceptions and propaganda.
Lumber companies, like any other farmers, would prefer to plant in places where the crops will grow and can be harvested for a profit and new crops grown. Rain forests are particularly POOR places to grow trees. The primary reason the U.S. imports so much lumber is because of Clinton-era restrictions on tree harvesting.
The myth of clear-cutting as a lumbering practice is also crazy. Think about it, the infrastructure needed to process and move the crop would have to be continually rebuilt. How many farmers do that? They will rotate the harvest areas as a way to let the soil regenerate but they don't strip the surface and continually move on.
Recycling paper, FWIW, yields a far inferior product in many, many ways. The more paper fibers are handled, the shorter they become. Compare an American corrugated box to one from China or Southern Europe. You'll find the recycled paper does not have the same strength. New fiber must be added or you eventually end up with a useless substance.
The idea that only one species of tree is planted by lumber companies is pure propaganda and incredibly naive. Like any other plant, different types of trees have different types of fibers. Different types of fibers are used to make different types of papers. It would no more be feasible to plant only one type of tree than it would to plant only one type of any other crop because the soil would become depleted. Paper companies are lumber companies. Are all the boards at a lumber store the same type of wood? Of course not.
Lumber companies are farmers. Remember that and use it as a way to filter out the propaganda. You might be interested to learn the opinion of one of the founders of Greenpeace: http://www.corrugatedmachines.com/2007-04-09%20BC
His comment that people should fight the auto and oil industries is more than a little whacked. Imagine what it would be like without plastics and the internal combustion engine. We'd be living the same as people did before the industrial revolution which would be a far shorter lifespan and much, much harder lives...burning coal and wood which genreate far more pollution/energy but that's a whole different topic...
Specifically bury the charcoal in your fields - it increase the fertility of the soil (same effects as peat soil or volcanic soil)
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vaporware?
So just why would you recover CO2 from the air when it would be much easier to do so before it leaves the chimney? Until every single fossil fuel plant uses CCS, this is a waste of time, and if every fossil fuel plant used CCS we wouldn't really have much of a problem anyway. The easiest way to recover CO2 is to not emit it in the first place.
You need to re-read the parent first. He's talking about rainforests. How much rainforest does the US have ?
This article points out that carbon can be sequestered in soil with the right mix of plants. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/314 /5805/1598. Those plants can at the same
time be used to make fuel.s -selling-solar.html
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Get off carbon: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
So the plan is actually to stick this stuff in barrels and bury it?
Here in Canada, we've been hearing a lot about how the Conservatives plan to focus on capturing and sequestering carbon instead of actually reducing emissions, and living up to our Kyoto obligations. I think it might be a tiny bit shortsighted to think we can continue pumping this crap into the atmosphere at ever increasing rates, then capture it and stick it underground along with the nuclear waste and other garbage that we bury.
Bah! Call me when they have bottled Lightning.
(and John McCain as well)
Never play chicken with a passive aggressive.
Isn't underground were it came from? I mean seriously, the entire Idea behind using Biofuels instead of fossil fuels is because the carbon on biofuels are already on the earths surface and there is no net gain. Wouldn't this be the same? placing Co2 back underground were is came from?
In short, you have absolutely nothing to say, but you are very certain that you are smarter than everyone else?
It is important to remember that this is an added cost to the price of fuel. The cost, maybe $0.30/gal is not so large that it looks like a killer, but you can't make money from this without making this connection. To go beyond just compensating for emissions and beginning to reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations requires further cash input. So, perhaps you require each pound of coal used to pay for 8 pounds of CO2 sequestered and that raises electric rates by 4 cents per kWh. Pretty soon you put coal generation out of business since renewables will fill in.
s -selling-solar.html
I think that what we should call this is potentially commercially feasable and reserve viability for things that increase economic activity.
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Solar power for what you pay for coal power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
I think you hit the nail on the head: Those of us that are for CONSERVATION are put off by Environmentalists. The "all or nothing" approach of the Crisis Crowd leads to a lack of cooperation. I can't stand most Environmentalists, even though I agree with about half of what they are asking for.
Some of us think that pollution should be reduced because it sucks to breath pollution. If it helps a spotted owl, then thats good, too. Water should be clean because I drink it. Hunting should be allowed but regulated because it helps manage populations. We believe minimum gas mileage standards for cars is at least as important for national security as it is for the environment. Some people like myself actually believe that "Global Warming" is likely overstated, but if you phase in carbon reduction gradually and provide some tax incentives, you can actually IMPROVE the economy and make our own immediate environment nicer. Oh yea, and the whole lower CO2 thing as a bonus.
Of course, everyone has different opinions. It doesn't matter. If people would bother finding common ground on environmental issues instead of pointing fingers, I might enjoy some better fishing, and you might enjoy whatever is important to you. Then again, for some people on the fringes, it isn't about getting the net result, it is about CONTROL over others.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Dry Ice is a by-product of the air products industry. Air is cooled to condense it. Valuable gasses are fractionaly distilled out such as Oxygen, Argon, etc. CO2 is mostly a byproduct of the process. It is one of the reasons it is relatively cheap in bulk compaired to the other gasses. The bulk of air is Nitrogen. It is cheap enough to be used as a refrigerant in addition to being used for it's chemical properties.
Argon is a valuable inert gass used in welding and manufacturing. Oxygen is valuable in medical, manufacturing and welding. By comparison CO2 and Nitrogen are surplus gasses left over from the manufacturing process. CO2 and water must be removed ahead of time so the solids do not plug the plumbing. (Helium comes from natural gas. It's too rare in the atmosphere to distill commercialy. It is present in natural gas as a by-product of radioactive decay.)
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-4/Oxygen.html
"Most commercial oxygen is produced using a variation of the cryogenic distillation process originally developed in 1895. This process produces oxygen that is 99+% pure. More recently, the more energy-efficient vacuum swing adsorption process has been used for a limited number of applications that do not require oxygen with more than 90-93% purity."
"Because this process utilizes an extremely cold cryogenic section to separate the air, all impurities that might solidify--such as water vapor, carbon dioxide, and certain heavy hydrocarbons--must first be removed to prevent them from freezing and plugging the cryogenic piping."
The truth shall set you free!
Depends where you prune the timeline. All that underground carbon started up here, you know. You did call it a fossil fuel, so I think you get that.
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
You're confusing weather forecasts with climate prediction. They're two very different things.