Canadian Company Gets $68M Investment To Turn CO2 Into Fuel (bbc.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the BBC: British Columbia-based Carbon Engineering has shown that it can extract CO2 in a cost-effective way. It has now been boosted by $68m in new investment from Chevron, Occidental and coal giant BHP... With its new funding, the company plans to build its first commercial facilities. These industrial-scale direct air capture (DAC) plants could capture up to one million tonnes of CO2 from the air each year....

Carbon Engineering's process is all about sucking in air and exposing it to a chemical solution that concentrates the CO2. Further refinements mean the gas can be purified into a form that can be stored or utilised as a liquid fuel.... Carbon Engineering says the liquid can be used in a variety of engines without modification. "The fuel that we make has no sulphur in it, it has these nice linear chains which means it burns cleaner than traditional fuel," said Carbon Engineering's Dr Jenny McCahill. "It's nice and clear and ready to be used in a truck, car or jet."

CO2 can also be used to flush out the last remaining deposits of oil in wells that are past their prime. The oil industry in the US has been using the gas in this way for decades. It's estimated that using CO2 can deliver an extra 30% of crude from oilfields with the added benefit that the gas is then sequestered permanently in the ground... There is a big worry that with large investments from the fossil fuel industry, the focus of Carbon Engineering's efforts could be turned to producing more oil, not just tackling climate change. Carbon Engineering says that if governments want to invest in its process they are very welcome to do so. If they're not ready to stump up the cash, the company is happy to take funding from the energy industry as time is so short, and the need for the technology is so great.

Comments

Another one of these ?

[Crashmarik]

Korea
https://economictimes.indiatim...
Audi
http://time.com/3837814/audi-e...
When was the ONR renamed NRL ?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com...

At least these schemes solve solars problem of storage. (maybe no idea how these schemes will deal with being operated intermittently)

Re:Another one of these ?

[sfcat]

Korea https://economictimes.indiatim... Audi http://time.com/3837814/audi-e... When was the ONR renamed NRL ? https://www.smithsonianmag.com...

At least these schemes solve solars problem of storage. (maybe no idea how these schemes will deal with being operated intermittently)

No, no they don't. All those schemes are based on nuclear but they just don't tell you that. The only way any of these technologies doesn't produce CO2 is if they use nuclear. Solar and wind are far far far to energy sparse (ie not energy dense) to provide enough heat to power these processes. If you were to try to use wind or solar you would create more CO2 moving and heating the water or air than if you just used natural gas to power the process. Not to mention the land you would have to clear for the wind and solar plants (you can't just use solar cells, you would need a solar concentrator like Ivanpah). If you used fossil fuels, that would be self defeating as you would use more fuel than you produce. These systems are about what you can do with nuclear. Without nuclear they are interesting curiosities with no use. That's why nothing has been done with them even though we've be able to do these types of chemical processes for decades in some cases.

Re:too expensive

[Freischutz]

$100 per ton would mean $200 per ton of coal, which sells for around $50. Nobody's going to pay a 5-fold premium on coal.

Mind you that's just for capturing the gas:

Carbon Engineering says that its direct air capture (DAC) process is now able to capture the gas for under $100 a tonne.

Expect the conversion into whatever fossil fuel they choose to cost even more and probably quite a bit more than another hundred bucks. That and the fact that this only makes sense (economics apart) if you re-bury the coal since if. you burn it again it does nothing to reduce atmospheric carbon levels. Anybody hitching their cart to fossil fuels is like a guy who went to see the Benz Patent-Motorwagen in 1886 and then sank his entire fortune into a buggy-whip company.

Re:I read the article.....

[Tough Love]

It is kind of buried but the mention in passing that they rely on green energy. Obviously, the chemistry must be endothermic. The proposal seems more or less credible at first blush, but I can't help thinking that that is its only real purpose: to appear credible. As in, being at heart a scheme to separate investors from their money.