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Scientists Find Way To Make Mineral Which Can Remove CO2 From Atmosphere (phys.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.Org: Scientists have found a rapid way of producing magnesite, a mineral which stores carbon dioxide. If this can be developed to an industrial scale, it opens the door to removing CO2 from the atmosphere for long-term storage, thus countering the global warming effect of atmospheric CO2. This work is presented at the Goldschmidt conference in Boston. Now, for the first time, researchers have explained how magnesite forms at low temperature, and offered a route to dramatically accelerating its crystallization. A tonne of naturally-occurring magnesite can remove around half a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere, but the rate of formation is very slow. The researchers were able to show that by using polystyrene microspheres as a catalyst, magnesite would form within 72 days. The microspheres themselves are unchanged by the production process, so they can ideally be reused. Project leader, Professor Ian Power from Trent University in Ontario added: "Using microspheres means that we were able to speed up magnesite formation by orders of magnitude. This process takes place at room temperature, meaning that magnesite production is extremely energy efficient. For now, we recognize that this is an experimental process, and will need to be scaled up before we can be sure that magnesite can be used in carbon sequestration (taking CO2 from the atmosphere and permanently storing it as magnesite). This depends on several variables, including the price of carbon and the refinement of the sequestration technology, but we now know that the science makes it do-able."
...is a faith based proposition. Nature already has a way to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere for long term storage: trees. Start planting trees on the monocrop, annual farmlands.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
So one tonne of this mineral will remove 5 tonnes of atmospheric CO2 per year. One article I found based on a quick Google search gives an estimate of about 1,100 tonnes of CO2 emitted every second. Perhaps some of this could be captured more easily where it's being generated, but we'd need to manufacture a lot of this stuff if we wanted to be carbon neutral with just this technology alone.
Just where do they propose to get the magnesium? At what energy cost?
"...thus countering the global warming effect of atmospheric CO2..." which is negligible compared to the warming effect of Methane, and even more negligible compared to the warming effect of water vapor.
Find a way to rapidly remove water vapor from the atmosphere and you may finally be onto something. The greenhouse effect of water vapor is 10,000 times stronger than the greenhouse effect of CO2, at current levels for each. Reducing water vapor by 1% would have 100 times the effect of removing ALL of the CO2 from the atmosphere (which is not to say we shouldn't try to remove all the CO2 from the atmosphere, because that would still be something).
A large industrial chiller hooked up to a nuclear power plant could drain literally hundreds of tons per day of water vapor from the atmosphere. At that rate it would take perhaps just a few years to remove 1% of the water vapor from the atmosphere, with the added benefit of creating potable water for underserved or neglected populations (for example Flint Michigan, which does not have safe water to drink) or even man-made lakes for recreation.
Build 100 nuke plants with these chillers and for 1/4 of one year of the US national budget you could solve global warming in a decade. I honestly don't know why nobody has proposed this, but it probably has something to do with right wing special interests like the Koch Brothers or others who have weaponized global warming against the poor (who are at the greatest disadvantage and have the most to lose as temperatures increase).
The annual yield of magnesite is more or less 30000000t per year. The amount of CO2 added to the atmosphere is 1090t per second. If we used all the annual yield to bind CO2 we could stop the increase of CO2 for whole 7 hours.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
FFS, 80% of the earths surface is covered in water which is constantly evaporating as part of the water cycle.
"hundreds of tons per day of water vapor from the atmosphere"
Wow, that much! Newsflash - More than 1 million tons PER SECOND evaporates into the atmosphere. Google it. Thousands of tons of water is probably already taken out of the atmosphere each day just due to air conditioner condensation you moron.
You're an idiot, go get yourself an education.
By the time they'd have an effect, severe permanent damage would have already been done.
This (quite possible) scenario doesn't preclude us from planting more trees, does it?
I mean, we should be planting more trees as a matter of course in conjunction with other measures to reduce CO emissions (at best) - or regardless of how much we fuck up on that front (at worst.)
Planting a damned tree actually cost little, specially if one were to pick moderate fast growing hardy species (like Moringa or Gumbo Limbo, depending on the climate.).
Doesn't even need to be trees, but hedges that can provide either wind barriers or foliage to cattle.
We don't even need to guarantee that a tree reaches adulthood, we just need green bodies to consume CO2. We could implement a "minnow spawn" approach and throw fast growing tree seeds already prepped to germinate by the millions on rows. Large numbers of disposable seeds would guarantee trees would grow.