Reclaim carbon from the air

[GordonH]

This country needs to place these CO2 collectors around every major city in Canada.


Make back into fuel and just continue to collect.

As I see it, this is a complete game changer.

[Jlabute]

It is an interesting idea, making low-carbon fuels starting with methanol and going up to gas or diesel, and hopefully in a cost effective manner. If this technology would get rid of the national carbon tax and wind turbines then great. Let them sell better fuels. Perhaps they can use their carbon credits to make fuel cheaper? Maybe not a great idea if you consider the downsides.

Possible downsides are if we ever accomplish a declining ppm atmospheric CO2, would we stop extracting CO2 and stop making $$ on fuel or would we proceed to wipe out all life on earth? You can't control what every country does. Hopefully some CO2 is stored for a rainy day and we keep the ability to produce CO2. Some may laugh at this idea, but a lack of CO2 is more dangerous than a high CO2.

The last 50 years the earth has been greening, crops have been a lot more productive and water efficient. We will be reversing this. How much CO2 do we want in the atmosphere? How much 'colder' do you want it? Cold weather kills plants too. I am happy with 415ppm as it is now. 500ppm or 600ppm is fine. Are we talking about under 400ppm? 350ppm? or less? The earth will become less friendly to a healthy biosphere. The times in history when the biosphere flourished were all with very high levels of CO2. The last 800,000 years levels have been the lowest ever nearing plant starvation and deserts were expanding. Some people call 300ppm or less a quiescent or normal level but CO2 has been higher than this for the majority of the planets existence. As for global temperatures, we do not know what the many control knobs are controlling temperature and CO2 probably plays a minor role, much less than water vapour for sure. CO2 is also logarithmic in nature, so if 200ppm to 400ppm adds a 1 degree rise, then 400ppm to 800ppm adds the next degree. A negative change speeds up cooling (if you believe CO2 is the master knob)



https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S25 ... 18)30225-3


Process. I don't think fuel synthesis is part of the process yet and this plant is over $1.1B.

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[TylerM4]

Reclaiming CO2 from the atmosphere is the climate change holy grail for sure.

No point locating near cities unless there's another reason. CO2 is uniformly dispersed in the atmosphere. This is why it's in our best interest to enable projects that involve transitioning china to natural gas. It benefits the Canadian economy AND reduces global emissions.

I'd need to know more about this process. Physics tells us that you must add a significant amount of energy to turn CO2 into a hydrocarbon. That energy must come from somewhere. Best guess is that it's electricity. What is the cost of their resulting fuel? Whenever they gloss over the business case like they did in this article and do something silly like say "It'll cost everyone $50k to buy an electric car... just use this fuel instead" my BS detector goes off. Pretty confident you'd find that buying an electric car is cheaper in the long run.

We really do need to find a way to make something like this viable however.

[GordonH]

Reclaiming CO2 from the atmosphere is the climate change holy grail for sure.

No point locating near cities unless there's another reason. CO2 is uniformly dispersed in the atmosphere. This is why it's in our best interest to enable projects that involve transitioning china to natural gas. It benefits the Canadian economy AND reduces global emissions.

I'd need to know more about this process. Physics tells us that you must add a significant amount of energy to turn CO2 into a hydrocarbon. That energy must come from somewhere. Best guess is that it's electricity. What is the cost of their resulting fuel? Whenever they gloss over the business case like they did in this article and do something silly like say "It'll cost everyone $50k to buy an electric car... just use this fuel instead" my BS detector goes off. Pretty confident you'd find that buying an electric car is cheaper in the long run.

We really do need to find a way to make something like this viable however.

The way I see it having it set up near major centres would keep transportation costs down. From process plant to the pumps or airports.

[MCB]

The holy grail of tech would be atmospheric processors much akin to those seen in Aliens...albeit without the face loving and all that!

[BC Landlord]

I am pretty sure the process has a negative energy balance, meaning it uses more energy to produce a fuel, than that fuel gives. Otherwise, whoever was that guy in the video, presumably the owner, would have been the richest man on planet by now. I believe every tree would do a much better job of taking care of the atmospheric CO2 than his contraption.

[TylerM4]

I am pretty sure the process has a negative energy balance, meaning it uses more energy to produce a fuel, than that fuel gives. Otherwise, whoever was that guy in the video, presumably the owner, would have been the richest man on planet by now. I believe every tree would do a much better job of taking care of the atmospheric CO2 than his contraption.

Agreed. This is in no way a cheaper alternative.

The problem is that in the long run trees release as much carbon as they consume. All of that carbon is re-released back into the atmosphere when the tree dies and rots (or is burnt). This is why we cannot rely on mother nature or "planting more trees" to take care of the carbon problem. Once we mine that carbon from underground, it takes 1000's of years for nature to re-trap it. Common perception is that forests are "carbon sinks" which is not the case. A mature forest is carbon neutral and releases as much carbon as it absorbs.

[GordonH]

Anyone have something that would work, please bring it forward.

This brings a clean fuel for same price at the pump.

[BC Landlord]

Anyone have something that would work, please bring it forward.

We already have it. It's called nuclear energy.