Slashdot Mirror
Sucking CO2 From Air Is Cheaper Than Scientists Thought (technologyreview.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: While avoiding the worst dangers of climate change will likely require sucking carbon dioxide out of the sky, prominent scientists have long dismissed such technologies as far too expensive. But a detailed new analysis published today in the journal Joule finds that direct air capture may be practical after all. The study concludes it would cost between $94 and $232 per ton of captured carbon dioxide, if existing technologies were implemented on a commercial scale. One earlier estimate, published in Proceedings of the National Academies, put that figure at more than $1,000 (though the calculations were made on what's known as an avoided-cost basis, which would add about 10 percent to the new study's figures). Crucially, the lowest-cost design, optimized to produce and sell alternative fuels made from the captured carbon dioxide, could already be profitable with existing public policies in certain markets. The higher cost estimates are for plants that would deliver compressed carbon dioxide for permanent underground storage. David Keith, a Harvard physics professor and lead author of the paper, is also the founder of Carbon Engineering, "a Calgary-based startup that has spent the last nine years designing, refining, and testing a direct air capture pilot plant in Squamish, B.C.," reports MIT. "Carbon Engineering plans to combine the carbon captured at its plants with hydrogen to produce carbon-neutral synthetic fuels, a process the pilot facility has already been performing." The company has secured $30 million, but is seeking additional funds to build a larger facility that will begin selling fuels. CNBC notes that Carbon Engineering is owned by several private investors, including Bill Gates.
The slashdot servers run on a beowulf cluster of wind powered abacuses. You insensitive clod.
Between $94 and $232 ? I had assumed it be somewhere between $100 and $250. Apparently I was wrong.
They claim carbon capture for $200/ton.
Ethanol is 786 kg/m^3, but is only a little under half carbon, call it half, but give them 50% for extra cost of getting useful fuel.
So about 1.3 cubic meters of 190 proof booze for $200...everybody will be able to afford a whole swimming pool of vodka! If it wasn't bullshit.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Women are the most oppressed minority in human history, asshat.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.