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

Posted by EditorDavid on from the greenhouse-gas-remissions dept.

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.

40 of 77 comments (clear)

  1. Another one of these ? by Crashmarik · · Score: 1, Informative

    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)

    1. Re:Another one of these ? by sfcat · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      "Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
    2. Re:Another one of these ? by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      All those schemes are based on nuclear but they just don't tell you that.

      Maybe because it's not true and you are too much of an idiot to grasp that. These systems are about what you can do with non-fossil fuel energy, whether it be solar, wind or nuclear. You say solar and wind create C02 by moving or heating water or air? WTF? Are you serious? I'm not even going to debate that, your ignorance speaks for itself.

      Why don't you just donate your brain to science right now and get it over with? It could sit there in a museum right next to Einstein's, as an example of the polar opposite of genius. Got to warn the kids.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    3. Re:Another one of these ? by currently_awake · · Score: 1

      If it can be done with Nuclear then it can be done with Solar with batteries. The laws of physics work like that. Unless you're talking about doing it in interstellar space.

  2. too expensive by religionofpeas · · Score: 2

    $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.

    1. Re:too expensive by Freischutz · · Score: 3, Informative

      $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.

    2. Re:too expensive by religionofpeas · · Score: 1

      Nobody is going to be using coal at all.

      People won't stop using coal until it's all gone.

    3. Re:too expensive by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      I would think 1886 would be a great time to invest in buggy whips. It was a long time before the average household had a car. If you were a buggy driver, when cars first stated becoming popular with rich people, you might have been really pleased with the related improvements to the roads. It might have even been the golden age of the buggy! But that said, diversify promptly after WWI.

    4. Re:too expensive by careysub · · Score: 2

      Correct the proposed business scheme (err... "plan") is not one to capture carbon from the air - it is to produce zero net-carbon release hydrocarbon fuel. Unless this synthetic fuel replaces oil (and the oil replaced is then left in the ground) it does nothing to reduce CO2 in the air. More likely the Chevron plan is to pump the oil anyway, and simply use this net-zero-carbon liquid fuel added to the supply chain as cover, or even to extend its supply of hydrocarbon fuel to sell as oil sources are depleted, i.e. to support its continued extraction of oil.

      In fact since huge amounts of concentrated free CO2 are available right now for free, being emitted by cement plants, the whole expensive energy consuming "carbon capture" aspect of this hydrocarbon fuel producing plan smacks of just being a "green camouflage" move. If they were serious about produced zero carbon fuel they would be integrating fuel production with cement plants.

      --
      Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
    5. Re:too expensive by Gavagai80 · · Score: 1

      you burn it again it does nothing to reduce atmospheric carbon levels.

      It certainly does. It means that much less carbon is extracted from oil wells to meet the fuel demand.

      Pretending that a fuel has to be carbon-negative is moving the goalposts stupidly far. Carbon neutral fuel is plenty helpful.

      --
      This space intentionally left blank
    6. Re:too expensive by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

      If it replaces carbon that would otherwise be extracted from the ground the its a win. And if you can make fuel, you can also make feedstock for the chemical industry, so it doesn't necessarily need to be burnt. That said, plants also extract CO2 from the atmosphere using solar energy. Is this process clearly more cost effective than growing plants? I have my doubts about that.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    7. Re:too expensive by ChoGGi · · Score: 1

      I doubt people will ever stop using a cheap energy source?

    8. Re:too expensive by currently_awake · · Score: 2

      Their plan can't be to burn the fuel generated from CO2. The process of making fuel takes more energy than you get out of the fuel, so you'll always lose money on the process.

    9. Re:too expensive by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      $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.

      Which is when you use that dirty "r" word.

      Regulation.

      But no America will continue to externalise it's costs. Drill baby dri... sorry wrong election... "Sweet American Coal, vote Trump"

  3. Re:In 20 years oil will be worth half by Kernel+Kurtz · · Score: 3, Funny

    Then a quarter. Then worthless.

    Excellent. That will make it cheaper to fill my tank then.

  4. Re:In 20 years oil will be worth half by jpaine619 · · Score: 1

    Guess you don't know what durable plastics are made from.. Biodegradable plastics aren't always an option...

  5. Re:Still needs to run for a while... by lobiusmoop · · Score: 1

    Well, there's just 44 years of oil left, 160 years of natural gas and 400 years of coal. . After that, the human contribution to CO2 emissions drops pretty much to 0 anyway.

    --
    "I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
  6. Re:The future of the perpetuum mobile by glenebob · · Score: 1

    The fact that you think this is pointless would appear to indicate that you don't know what a working brain actually does.

  7. Re:Wait, what?! by glenebob · · Score: 1

    The article is so badly written, it's no wonder GP is confused.

  8. It's the reverse of methane reforming by bferrell · · Score: 1

    why not just stop at carbonate formation?

  9. I read the article..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This doesn't make much sense to me. So in the little flow chart between sequestration and pumping it back into a hey as fuel, there is a 'fuel synthesis step' that is going to be an energy intensive step since you can't really burn CO2 to get energy as it is the product is combustion. Thermodynamically you're going to need to put a shit ton of energy in to resynthesize the long chain carbon bonds so you can burn it as fuel. So unless your energy input is clean this will not work well at any scale.

    1. Re:I read the article..... by glenebob · · Score: 1

      Do you have the idea that fossil fuels were formed with no energy input?

      Hydrocarbons are simply an energy storage mechanism. You put energy in, and then later (a few minutes, a few million years, whatever) you can get some of that energy back out to make your car go vroom or make your feet warm. The energy can come from the sun via photo synthesis (like with fossil fuels) or via solar voltaic, wind, or hydro.

      So, in fact, turning atmospheric CO2, water, and energy into fuels makes all the sense in the world, and if we can shorten the process to a few minutes or hours, it can be done at scale until the sun quits working.

      The part about CO2 sequestration and fossil fuel extraction seems to be nothing more than large scale journalistic stupidity.

    2. Re:I read the article..... by Tough+Love · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  10. Re:Wait, what?! WTF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "gas can be purified into a form that can be stored or utilised as a liquid fuel"

    1) running engine MAKES CO2
    2) hose from exhaust pipe to air intake
    3)PROFIT!

  11. Re:Still needs to run for a while... by r2kordmaa · · Score: 2

    X years of Y left applies in case of current prices, increase prices and you'll find that much more of Y can be found. If you went back in time to say 1960, looked at technology of the time and prices oil could be sold at and counted up all the reserves available for extraction, well these reserves are not the ones we are extracting today, these are already gone. We'll never run out of oil to extract, but we will run out of money to afford it. It's already happening, cost of ownership is the most significant reason for switching to electric cars. We will eventually stop extracting fossil fuels, but will it be soon enough? Don't forget that currently CO2 emissions are higher than they have ever been, by a significant margin and growing. Next few decades will make much more of an impact than last few decades.

  12. Re:Wait, what?! WTF? by Aighearach · · Score: 2

    I heard it requires magnets for that to work.

  13. Terrible Article and A Questionable Business Plan by careysub · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The article does not deign to actually explain the capture process completely or with reasonable accuracy, nor discuss whether the whole "fuel making" claim is really relevant to carbon capture.

    There are two cycles involved in the capture process, potassium hydroxide dissolved in water (aka "hydroxide-based chemical solution") captures CO2 from air bubbled through it, forming potassium carbonate (chemistry labs everywhere use this reaction to scrub CO2 from air going to reactions where this is a problem). Then the K2CO3 solution is mixed with calcium hydroxide and it is cooked in a pellet reactor to convert the K2CO3 back to KOH, while converting the Ca(OH)2 to CaCO3 (calcium carbonate, aka chalk or limestone). The second cycle heats the CaCO3 in a furnace to convert it to calcium oxide (CaO), releasing CO2. This is also the first step in making cement.

    Carbon Engineering then proposes they will make synthetic fuel with a whole bunch of other chemistry, requiring a cheap source of energy that produces hydrogen gas (Carbon Engineering's on-line papers suggest electrolysis using solar power, the BBC article just assumes it exists).

    Here is the thing. The cement industry already produces huge amounts of CO2 from roasting limestone to make cement (8% of world CO2 release is from this source). These are large fixed plants, that already are concentrated sources of CO2, which is free - it is currently just dumped in the air. If you want to make synthetic fuel, why not just build the Fischer-Tropsch plant, and the hydrogen source, next to cement plants and avoid the extra cost and complexity and energy use of extracting it from the very dilute form of air?

    Given the vast source of concentrated free CO2 being dumped from cement plants, this "carbon capture" scheme makes no sense at all, if we don't first capture that really easy to get concentrated CO2 from cement. I suggest that this is not really a serious project, aimed at doing anything useful, but a scheme to divert attention from stopping existing CO2 emissions ("We''ll just capture it later and make more fuel! Win, win!").

    --
    Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
  14. Re:Wait, what?! WTF? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You're right! Sorry...

    1) running engine MAKES CO2

    2) hose from exhaust pipe to air intake

    3) attach Magnets (but only these super-duper special ones that I have for sale ...oh and you will need my instruction book too, only five easy payments of 49.95 billed monthly to your debit card or direct from your savins account (enter account number, SSN and mother's maiden name here_______________, _______________,__________________)

    3)PROFIT!

  15. NOnono by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1
    While the concept of removing CO2 from the atmosphere might in some cases be smart, the concept of turning it into fuel ranks as really really stupid.

    While a rapid increase in the level of CO2 is not good, because there is a problem with the ability of animals to adapt, using atmospheric CO2 derived fuel means a real disaster.

    CO2 is not in itself, bad. In fact, we alomst certainly wouldn't be here without it, as the earth would be a very cold place.

    So given that a fair number of people don't believe it has a heating effect, the same folks, might very well decide that removing it wouldn't cool the planet.

    And using it as fuel means that once we start, there will be a lot of money spent lobbying to continue. If we were to somehow lower the CO2 to some agreed upon level, there will be powerful interests demanding to continue extraction.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  16. Re:Still needs to run for a while... by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

    Peak oil / global oil supply has been incorrectly predicted for over a century now. Might as well throw the latest failed prediction onto the pile.

    I'm not saying it's not a great idea to reduce our dependence, but don't kid yourself that it will happen naturally because we run out, at least not anytime soon.

    --
    Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  17. Re:Terrible Article and A Questionable Business Pl by taiwanjohn · · Score: 1

    If you want to make synthetic fuel, why not just build the Fischer-Tropsch plant, and the hydrogen source, next to cement plants and avoid the extra cost and complexity and energy use of extracting it from the very dilute form of air?

    This seems like an opportunity for cement manufacturers to make some extra money, along with great PR for their eco-friendly carbon capture. So why aren't they doing it yet? If Carbon Engineering claims they can produce fuel at a cost that's comparable to US gasoline, then it would almost certainly be a lot cheaper with a concentrated source of CO2.

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
  18. Re:In 20 years oil will be worth half by gweihir · · Score: 1

    If you go by TCO, it is already massively negative in worth...

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  19. Stopped pretending? by VeryFluffyBunny · · Score: 1

    Does this mean that the fossil fuel industry has stopped pretending that they're not one of the main causes of climate change? Do they now accept that their current practice of digging up hydrocarbons out of the ground and turning them into pollution at an ecocidal rate should stop?

    --
    Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
  20. Re:Still needs to run for a while... by Tough+Love · · Score: 1

    Right, and on top of that he pull his numbers out of his butt.

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  21. Re:In 20 years oil will be worth half by Kernel+Kurtz · · Score: 1

    You won't have a tank

    I'll take that bet.

  22. Re:In 20 years oil will be worth half by currently_awake · · Score: 1

    Oil will never hit zero, just like coal and wood never hit zero but both used to be the major source of fuel. If the situation between USA and China keeps heating up you might very well have a tank in 20 years.

  23. Re:Still needs to run for a while... by currently_awake · · Score: 1

    What I know of the ultra-wealthy gives me no reason to think they would object to converting large tracts of productive farmland to bio-diesel production, to be burnt, and thereby generate CO2.

  24. Re:This article is a lie by matthollingsworth · · Score: 1

    exactly

  25. Idiots by aglider · · Score: 1

    You capture CO2 intorno fuel. Then you burn the fuel releasing the CO2 back.
    The solution isn't to capture it but it's all about not releasing it. Idiots!

    --
    Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
  26. Just combust silane in CO2 by Miamicanes · · Score: 1

    If you really want to get rid of CO2, just burn silane (a/k/a "Martian Coal") in it:

    SiH4 + 2CO2 --> SiO2 + 2C + 2H2O

    or, put another way... burn silane in a carbon dioxide atmosphere, and end up with quartz, carbon, and water.

    Of course, getting the silane itself might create more CO2 than it actually locks up...