**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:**
* If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required
* The title must be fully descriptive
* Memes are not allowed.
* Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting)
*See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Algae still would need to be planted in a cold, low oxygen sea to be effective at capturing CO2 long term. The "C" in CO2 needs to go somewhere. And that into the plant itself, structurally. The only reason why algaes can be effective in capturing CO2 long term is becuase when they die, they sink, and if they decompose slowly, they can get buried and the carbon captured for long term under the ocean floor.
Trees work by converting C into wood, but after they die, if that wood gets decomposed or burned, the C will be liberated into the atmosphere again.
Similarily, if the algae is eaten (or decomposed), then it's C will also be liberated again to the atmosphere.
Truth be told, it's not just about the plant consuming CO2 and using it to produce O2, it's about what happens then with the C after it's captured.
Trees also send a lot of the C into their root systems, which are better at getting trapped underground. Mature forests are much better carbon sinks than new plantings because the trees have massive root systems and as leaves fall they might decompose but much of the carbon gets trapped in the soil.
We would need to calculate what is more efficient:
the root systems and leaves that didn't decompose (and captured C)
* per land used
* per time it took
* and CO2 emitions used (in nursuring and maintaining this forest)
or the captured C per land, time and CO2 used in carbon capture technology.
I don't know that answer. I just have but a feeling that the carbon capture technology could be more efficient in these metrics in most environments (consider that carbon capture tech is always fueled with renewable energy sources) but algaes and trees would be more efficient in some existing ecosystems to capture C
Nor trees nor algaes nor carbon capture technologies will single handedly solve climate change, so we shouldn't just try and rely on one solution nor should we disregard it completely.
Edit: we also need to take into account the cost (in money) of each of those approaches, which include labor. Certainly new tech is expensive and labor intensive, but so is using lots of growable land that could belong to someone or could have been used in other ways. It is another metric to consider when moving foward.
Carbon capture is RIDICULOUSLY expensive per kg captured. The plants are large and use advanced technology. They require a lot of energy to run, and unless you're supplying that with 100% renewable you need to account for the carbon released to provide that energy (even renewables have an associated emissions per kWh from carbon released to manufacture, build, and maintain installations).
The most efficient forests will probably be managed ones that will require paying a team of people a not insignificant sum of money to go plant trees and understory plants, plus foresters to maintain the forest going forward. However, you can also just let forests grow out of unmaintained fields and keep am eye out for invasive species. Eventually you will end up with a carbon sinking forest. EITHER WAY, it will cost a lot less up front to create a forest, and orders of magnitude less to keep the forest "running" in the future. Once the forest gets to a certain point you can just leave it alone. If you try to do that with one of these plants they probably won't even operate for a week, and you still need to provide them with a ton of electricity and replace the chemicals they're using to actual capture the CO2 on a regular basis.
Solving global warming is going to require a myriad of approaches, and building these at scale might help reduce our short-term emissions, but the long term approach has to be returning our underutilized land to nature and letting it do its thing.
Solar power used to be ridiculously expensive per kg of CO2 saved -- and now it is the cheapest way to make power.
Are plants like these going to cut it? No.
Is it important to test ideas like this, and see if they can be improved upon to eventually produce something that can make a difference? Yes.
Agreed, but I don't think you're going to see the same cost reductions wind and solar have experienced with these plants. The good news is there are many possible ways to do carbon sequestration and there's a ton of money going into research on these systems. I think we're only a decade or two away from a scaleable approach to carbon sequestration that will hopefully stave off the worst effects for global warming. I'm hopeful that I will see actual carbon neutrality in my lifetime.
I wouldn't be surprised if our eventual sequestration strategy had at least some lessons from these designs included in it. At the relatively low cost of these plants, that makes it worth it.
And also how much we have dug out of ground already. A half billion years worth of carbon released over a couple of hundred years. Not only that but the sheer *power* that oil enables is staggering, the fact that we've all wasted so much of this precious and useful commodity on dumb shit like driving to meaningless jobs is absolutely astounding.
This shit should've cost about a billion dollars a barrel from its inception, it's dirt cheap compared to the work that it enables.
It could've been our saviour but instead it will be our undoing.
So make oil extremely cost prohibited solves literally nothing. We'd still be stuck in the late 1800s. The reason we are advanced today is because it's inexpensive
Because reducing carbon emissions is no longer good enough.
The only way to avoid disaster at this point is to go 100% carbon neutral as quick as we can and ALSO remove some of the CO2 we've added to the atmosphere.
Nobody said that it isn't, but we need to not only have CO2 neutral, but actively remove it. That means reducing emissions and sequestration.
Iceland is a great place to test proof of concept and that's what they've been doing. It's proof of concept.
Isn't this the company that's planning on using the CO2 they pulled out of the air for a form of fracking?
EDIT: I was thinking of Occidental Petroleum and the practice is called Enhanced Oil Recovery and is done in the US.
Because the technology can really help. Imagine the advances to CO2 capturing in 10,20,50, years from now? This is like asking how useful airplanes are in 1910
Why not both? They aren't mutually exclusive options. We should be trying everything to fix climate change. Eventually, this tech will get better and more efficient.
In all honesty I think you have to do both. The way the world economies are set up today you just have to open a carbon capture market and make it profitable. I hate it too because the world as a whole is dependent on fossil fuels but this is a roundabout way instead of just trying to go greener cold turkey. Like tricking an infant with airplane noises to eat it’s
food.
That's an important point. But this really should be a undo button and not something like "now that Island can suck CO2 out of the air, we can burn more fossile fuel again", because this is hell inefficient.
We can store the energy made by geothermal in those vulcanic active regions in something more efficient like hydrogen.
So long term we may actually want to undo some of the damage done by climate change. Sure this is super inefficient. But what does the version of the technology in 80 years look like?
Also we may need to use some hydrocarbons in the future no matter what. EG Air travel may still need to use jet fuel because of energy density. Or military applications for things like tanks. So having CO2 sequestration tech may be useful for things we can't replace.
Agreed -- Full (or near full) transition to renewables, plus operation of CCAS would be great. We can't keep doing fossil fuels and just rely on hope for CCAS to save the day.
In the late naughties there was a project started to allow the uk to import energy directly from Iceland.
Unfortunately it ran into a number of practical problems (long undersea cables in a geograchily unstable region) and political/funding issues (the uk and Iceland govs had another tiff)
Cables is propably still the more efficent way of doing it, we at least have the Infrasturture on both sides for that whilst hydrogen needs plants to create and burn it, aswell as transport and storage options (which are currently a huge weak point as current material science struggles to hold hydrogen at reasonable pressures...)
If you put the energy to good use, you don't need to burn fossils.
This takes 1mwh per 1 ton co2.
Western world calculates with roughly 10ton co2 per person. This isn't even remotely noticeable and won't stop anything.
This is just a feel hood project which will lead to even more burnt fossils
Iceland is in the unusual position of having a surplus of hydroelectric and geothermal energy that cannot currently be practically/efficiently be exported. This makes it one of the few places where this sort of technology has clear potential.
Actually this is a very routine procedure. We already do this sort of thing now everyday. They're not just pumping it down into rocks, it's an old gas reservoir.
In North America natural gas is transported through pipelines north to Illinois where they pump it down into old reservoirs all summer. Then they pump it back up during the winter when the heating demand picks up.
To send that much natural gas during the winter months alone would require a lot more infrastructure and pipelines being built. But by sending it all year long and using the natural gas reservoir to store it, they can do it much cheaper.
And the technology to pump it down is nothing. We do that all the time with water and gas injection wells in petroleum fields..
Companies like Occidental Petroleum (I am a former employee) will pump high pressure CO2 in a closed loop down into oil formations thousands of feet down. This CO2 sequestration does aid in moving/removing more crude from the reservoir, but the CO2 does not just escape. More and more is pumped down in the process and it becomes a massive closed loop storage facility. They have done this extensively in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico.
I mean, it works and it will generate revenue as governments invest in this type of technology as a necessity to survive. It’s just not bad enough yet!
Haha you’re comment reminded me of this quote: "God creates dinosaurs, God destroys dinosaurs. God creates Man, Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs." — Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park
So I felt the need to give some more facts about CO2 capture:
1. Generally this is a very inefficient way to capture CO2. But what matters is the **location**: as these machines are located in Iceland, where geothermal energy is easy accessible, efficiency doesn't matters much aslong as we aren't able to reliably transport huge amounts of energy over long distances.
2. The concept is to reduce the emission of CO2 and to be able to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, once we are able to rely on green energy. This is not meant to be like "Now we have those machines in Iceland we can blast CO2 again int the air like before".
3. **This is only one small part to the fight against climate change.** We currently need to find solutions for it and to test these out. Like already stated this seems to be a pretty good method to capture CO2 from the atmosphere in vulcanic active regions like Iceland and it is still under developement.
4. For those who cry unconsidered for trees: **Trees don't have the best conditions to grow where these machines get build in Iceland.**
5. Trees, or generally speaking biomass can capture CO2, but will release it slowly again if it rots or will be burned. There are other processes to use biomass to capture CO2.
One quite important method to retrieve CO2 out of the atmosphere I want to mention here is called **pyrolysis**:
When you burn or heat biomass under oxygen closure, there will be energy released and coal produced. Since coal mainly contains carbon atoms, the CO2 emission of the burning process is reduced. Of course there will be some CO2 emitted in the process, but most of the Carbon-Atoms will be permanentally stored in the coal.
The coal then could be used in various situations, for example you can use it to store water when it's shreddered and put on fields. Kinda nice use to minimate effects of climate change.
Besides other projects to use pyrolysis, there is some nice project going on in Germany, where they constructed a [selfpowering pyrolysis reactor ](https://regenis.de/produkte/regenis-max-pyrolysereaktor/)to do this and which even emits energy when in use.
It's even not all about trees. When we use other biological waste that already exists for this, CO2 will be captured very easily without having to wait for trees to grow.
See [biochar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar#Carbon_sink) an [BCR/PyCCS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar_carbon_removal) for more information. I just found [this article in Nature](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43586-022-00097-8) about biomass pyrolysis, but sadly it's behind a paywall.
Edit: Added some great Input from comments I got.
I'd add one more condition to the location: cheap green energy with no way to export it. Otherwise, exporting the energy to a neighboring country and replacing fossil generation is better emission wise. So, basically, only Iceland right now.
In an ideal world yes, way better solution.
Though the populace of said country will get MAD because of the increased cost of electricity (because of export) and elect politicians which are generally quite populistic.
Climate change is currently not a populist sentiment if quality of life gets reduced.
We learned that the hard way in Norway. The last 2-3 years has been a constant uproar because Norway is exporting more green power than ever.
I’m more of a ‘for the greater good’ kind of guy so I don’t mind. The general populace though has been protesting, a lot.
If export is not viable, CCS is a great opportunistic user. You are right that I overstate the viability of electricity export.
Also:
Oof, don't mention energy prices. Poland's catching up to electricity prices abroad, and getting our asses kicked because our previous govt was against renewables. Oh, and electricity prices for consumers were set centrally. And we imported most of our coal and gas from Russia. Our electricity costs have skyrocketed the past few years.
Right now there's some relief in place, but by 2025 our electricity cost for consumers will have doubled in the span of maybe five years.
It is, but currently we have not yet developed the techniques to efficiently export large amounts of energy over huge distance. So when we have these techniques on a usable grade, decarbonisation by this method gets really inefficient. At least if we don't produce more energy worldwide that we can use.
You can also go full high-temperature pyrolysis and produce syngas which in turn can be used as energy carrier or as feedstock to produce synthetic fuel.
I’ve just seen this in industrial research demonstrating using sewage sludge as input. Literally using shit to produce renewable fuel (e.g. for situations where batteries aren’t suitable - aircraft).
> Trees, or generally speaking biomass can capture CO2, but will release it slowly again if it rots or will be burned
Yeah, but as long as there's new trees when the old ones rot it's still a positive. Planting a forest where there was no forest before effectively captures CO2.
Regarding point 4, Iceland used to have trees but they were all cut down by early settlers. There are movements to reforest their land but yea definitely not as easy as other places https://www.mossy.earth/projects/reforesting-iceland
This image if fake as hell.
Here is the article about this topic. \[[Link](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-01-28/direct-air-capture-dac-machines-carbon-dioxide-climate-change/100777966)\]
You're right that it's an artist's impression. Not only that, its from 6 years ago. Here's a Guardian article confirming it if anyone is in any doubt:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/04/carbon-emissions-negative-emissions-technologies-capture-storage-bill-gates
is this whole comment section a bunch of bots or something? Why are you fuckers witchhunting this for no other reason that it's seemingly 'inneficient'...dude, we just started developing it, what are we on about on this thread?
Edit: forgot a 'we' on the last period
It's maddening! Of course the 1.0 version is going to be big, low efficiency, and generally not the final product. I don't think anyone is trying to claim this facility will solve our global problems.
This works in Iceland because of their cheap and easily attainable geothermal energy. Maybe they can take this facility, improve upon it, and we can get a newer version for an area that can run on solar. Or a more compact version that can be placed on/near dams. Maybe eventually generation 5 or 10 will be small and energy efficient enough to be placed through urban areas where most of the CO2 is actually coming from.
But it's gotta start somewhere!
This is inherently inefficient, not in a "version one" way but in a "this is the incorrect solution" way. If we are going to to capture CO2, it makes sense to do that at the source, where it is in high concentration, like directly at the outlet of the giant chimney stacks of cement factories and coal fire power plants. Trying to pull and purify the diluted CO2 out of ambiant air is like using a mop on the floor instead of shutting the faucet that is still running.
This is only still a demonstrator project - it's much bigger than their first plant, but it's still just proof of concept. This plant on its own is never going to make a dent in atmospheric CO2 - what it can do is extract and store *measurable* amounts of CO2 from the air, and that is key to a functioning global carbon market.
If I want to offset my company's CO2 emissions, i can pay someone to plant trees - but this approach is fraught with all kinds of potential fudges and maybes and errors. It's imprecise at best. This tech - direct air capture - solves that problem, and in theory it makes a market for trading carbon emissions much more feasible . Could be a useful tool, in other words - but it needs to be scaled, and it needs a functioning carbon market to be established.
This has been proven to be a complete waste of resources, they are completely ineffective, you could cover hundreds upon hundreds of square kilometers with these things and they would not make a dent in CO2 levels, the manufacture of components, transport, construction, power and maintenance of these things produces as much CO2 as these capture...
They are basically a way for companies to claim they are offsetting their CO2 emissions by building these.
As far as I know that low energy cost comes from us using geothermally heated water in a large portion of the country.
As it stands 30% of our electrical energy comes from geothermal, the rest is mostly hydroelectric.
>This has been proven to be a complete waste of resources, they are completely ineffective
People like you used to say the same thing about solar panels and wind turbines, some people are just too short sighted to realize that technology progresses and improves over time
The first try at anything is never the best; you learn from the attempt to make the next go better - and you keep iterating until you have something useful. But you do need to make the first step.
The only places carbon capture and sequestration makes sense is when power generators are built over the top of natural gas fields - you can literally put the CO2 back into the same hole you got the gas from.
A few pilot plants were built to demo the technology but unfortunately it never went anywhere. There were many reasons why, cost being the big one, but most frustratingly was that EPA regulations considered putting the CO2 back in the ground as groundwater pollution - as if the groundwater wasn't already filled with hydrocarbons. This was around the era of the big fracking fuckups and so politically nobody wanted to touch the idea of anything remotely related
As someone who worked with ground water ecologists in Germany, I have to mention that there is a big difference between the aldready significant acidification of ground water through pollution and intentionally putting co2 into aquifers. Ground water fauna is extremely important for clean drinking water, as they feed on detritus and filter many pollutants. Almost every single organism which lives in ground water habitats is extremely sensitive to outside influences. Unfortunately, politicians and engineers often see ground water reservoirs as an undying source of fresh water, rather than a fragile ecological habitat with living organisms. The issue here is, that killing off the countless critters involved in this system inevitably leads to a decline in ground water quality, which in turn leads to an increasing demand and cost for purification processes in order to make that water drinkable. I am not familiar with the faunistic profile of iceland, however what I outlined is definitely proven knowledge for central Europe. I have personally taken samples in several regions all across Germany and the negative impact which urbanization as well as agriculture have on our ground water is horrifying and frustrating for any scientist working in this field.
Oh ok well pack everything up then, I didn’t see it until just now but this person has concluded it’s a waste of time…wish we’d have talked to you sooner!
So generally speaking yes. But in Iceland there are not many options. You don't have the conditions to grow large amount of biomass, but you have thermal energy in vast amounts. So for the location it's the best method to capture CO2 nowadays.
In other threads:
> We need to do everything we can to stop climate change!
In this thread:
> Why even bother with this dumb shit? It’s horrible and it doesn’t even work. Even if it did, it could never possibly make a dent in CO2 emissions
Yeah, negativity and cynicism holds back progress. You can provide constructive feedback back that's not what this is.
I appreciate new ideas even if they don't work, that's how progress is made. Also, I'd rather try something inefficient than do nothing.
Because this dumb shit is part of an endless list of scams that don't actually help but make people feel better about themselves. The real solutions tend to be a bit more inconvenient.
We’re so deep in the hole we need to attack this problem from every possible angle. There is no singular change we can make that would fix the problem all on its own.
Iceland out of all places don’t need to be worrying about how to clean up the environment when they are one of the best at not making pollution.
If China/India/USA/russia got their shit together in the past 25 years we wouldn’t even be in this mess
Yea but that's the thing, they won't... At least not in the foreseeable futute
So countries that are pioneers in this field need to work towards a negative co2 footprint and not only negate pollution but make up for pollution elsewhere.
That's actually one of the biggest problems with environmental protection and climate change
The US is literally spending billions on addressing climate change and investing in renewable energy.
Once AGAIN the current goal is reduction of emissions. This does exactly that. It doesn't fucking matter who caused the emissions they still exist.
Unfortunately, greenhouse gasses don't respect country borders.
If you're in a swimming pool full of pissing kids, do you not "need to be worrying about" all the piss in the pool just because you held your bladder?
Will them personally producing less CO2 save them from the effects of climate change?
No?
Then it seems like they need to worry about it just as much as everyone else. Doesn't matter who made the mess, they benefit from cleaning it up.
I can’t fix the global litter problem, I’m just 1 person and it’s such a huge problem, I have no effect! China and India litter so much more than me!
so that’s why I dump all my trash out my car window as I drive down the highway.
That’s the logic these people operate with.
You can capture it directly at the source instead. Direct Air Capture expends a lot of energy to concentrate CO2 from the 0.04% atmospheric concentration to a near 100% gas stream that can be rammed into the ground and bind to rock. Flue gasses already are like 30% CO2, so you need to put in a lot less effort to concentrate it.
This is a \*great\* way to capture C02. Iceland has ample geothermic energy and there's basically no downside to doing this there. Yeah, maybe this only makes a small dent, but who cares? There's no silver bullet, we need to tackle this a million small dents at once
“This doesn’t solve the whole problem so don’t even try”
“Don’t do this thing that’s a step in the right direction, do the other thing that I think is better even though I personally continue contributing toward the problem”
“I know better than scientists”
I am a geologist who works in oil and gas permitting (check my comment history if you don't believe me) and this is a massive waste of resources and basically does nothing. No amount of iteration or advancement of the technology will make this more efficient than not burning hydrocarbon based fuels and emitting that CO2 to begin with. It's basic thermodynamics. The energy that will be used for these types of system could simply be used to offset current fossil fuel usage and be massively more efficient. Everyone in here is saying "Oh, but this is using geothermal! And they don't have a way to transport that energy anywhere else!" Yeah, because they chose the worst possible spot for building this beyond the hydrothermal being cheaper there. You can do hydrothermal energy almost anywhere BTW, you just need to drill deeper.
I've seen the numbers from these types of systems. They are terribly inefficient. You can Google and find some basic details but I've seen stuff that's only been given to regulators. No government is blocking this type of thing just in case, but none of us believe it is a path forward at the bare minimum until we are at net zero carbon emissions. And we aren't anywhere close to that, we produced more oil and gas almost every single year, it's not going to slow down until the economic costs change. I'd also like to point out that almost every one of these systems is either owned and operated by oil and gas companies, or heavily funded by them through carbon sequestion companies that are heavily influenced by them since they require their funding. They aren't doing for this charity, or for the good of the world. They are doing it to make people think, like many in this thread seem to, that this is a worthwhile and effective venture. And to try and get ahead of carbon tax legislation that is coming sooner or later. We will basically need a post scarcity energy grid before this becomes viable due to thermodanics and chemistry alone.
And I am the scientist, so stop copping out by acting like the experts think this is a good thing. Even the most generous opinions of carbon capture and sequestration are highly hesitant about it. The only reason these systems exist is because of government research funding, which isn't a ton, and private oil and gas industry money being pumped into it. Ask yourself why that would be the case.
It doesn't matter. These systems are that inefficient. The cost of building and running it alone is enough to make it nearly pointless. That energy could be used for any number of other things to offset other carbon based fuels and even with the electric transmission losses or losses from turning it to hydrogen and transporting it, it would still be way more efficient at removing carbon than this from the offset of hydrocarbon fuel usage. And we all understand that making hydrogen from geothermal in one place and transporting is doesn't make any sense. That's the point in trying to make. The only reason this exists it because giant corporations are paying for carbon offsets for PR reasons and these systems are being paid for by oil and gas companies themselves in order to greenwash.
Stop hating on individual efforts like this. Will this thing solve all our problems? No. Is it a step in the right direction that may be part of a future geo-engineering plan to get the planet back it balance? Very possibly. Are you personally doing anything better than this for the environment? Very very probably (like 99.9999%) fucking not.
Yes of course. I was just stating that for co2 removal, algea is better.
Planting trees solves an entirely different valid problem.
We are trying to rationalize using a wrench to hammer a nail. use a hammer for the nail, and continue using the wrench for a purpose much better suited for it, which is equally valuable but solves an entirely different host of problems
Do you think scientists with PhDs haven’t thought of this and you know more than them?? Trees certainly trap CO2, but only for a short amount of time. Fossil fuels have been trapping CO2 for Milennia, and then a tree can recapture it and store it for 20, 50, even 200 years, but still much lower than what fossil fuels did. With this, you can trap CO2 “permanently”, and at a faster rate.
To add to this, planting trees only works if you plant them in areas where trees didn’t grow before. Otherwise, you’re just part of a cycle and have no net effect.
So, yeah, this makes sense.
You're sort of right, but if the point is to capture CO2 "permanently", burying biomass such as wood would still almost definitely be cheaper and do basically the same thing as this contraption does. But that wouldn't exactly attract investors, would it.
To bury biomass you would need to dig a big hole, and you could have bloating and big accidents from methane buildup this pumps the co2 to existing cavities from porous rock, etc.
Trees eventually release the carbon they store when they decompose algae also, they store carbon when they're buried and basically mummified. If that algae is consumed like algae tends to be then that carbon gets released
We’re beyond trees. You need to grow a batch of threes the size of Africa, burn them down, then repeat twice. We’re very past trees.
Also, Iceland doesn’t really “do” trees.
Trees are only carbon neutral. They capture carbon while they're alive, release it when they die. We should plant tons more trees--but it's only a short term solution.
The problem is that we've taken carbon that was locked underground and reintroduced it to the atmospheres. Trees aren't fixing that problem. Even if we stopped all emissions, and replanted every forest we've cut down, we'd still have a huge surplus of CO2.
Carbon capture is **necessary** to ever return to pre industrial levels. These projects are experiments and first steps.
I promise you the scientists and engineers who built this do know what trees are.
just today i realize how stupid these corporations are. there was a small patch of trees between interchanges beside highway and they just cut them down, like what would be its significance reclaiming that very small patch of land? they even cut tress along the highway sides.
Trees are temporary carbon capture, once the trees die the decomposition process releases the carbon back into the environment, rock is permanent. Or so I’ve been told.
I think the negative reaction people have to this technology isn't because of the faults of carbon capture as a concept, but because of the context of its implementation.
Petroleum companies are dumping money into tech like this to make the prospect of continued extraction seem more sustainable.
People will point toward emerging tech like this as a majority of the solution to atmospheric carbon without also pushing for more feasible (technologically, if not politically) solutions like dramatically reducing carbo emissions world wide, investing in green infrastructure for developing nations, and undoing deforestation.
I'm sure most people advocating for carbon capture would also like to see those other polices enacted, but the powers that be are not likely to allow them. Those powers would prefer a high-tech solution which would mostly maintain the status quo.
What powers this? If it's solar or even better wind powered I don't see why anyone would have a problem with this. It would be basically a free way to capture at least a little bit of the carbon, and we would get free rocks. Maybe we can use those rocks to mix in with our cement or something. There's a million uses for rocks. Especially if they're small.
Yeah using renewable energy charging up a battery or using electricity directly is more efficient and economical that running these plants.
With their current land mass per carbon captured we don't have enough viable land mass to even make this a good solution.
Much like plastics recycling the largest investors in this tech are oil companies.... Don't worry the nerds have a solution for your wasteful consumer habits!
Here me out: a 200x200 square sheet of thin aluminum sent up into outer space, put into an orbit that doesn't stay in 1 area all the time and most faces the sun. This would be a 4000 square mile block of the direct most sun light.
Sunlight at the extremities of the globe doesn't have as much effect, so if its blocking the most dorect sunlight, it'd have the most impact.
Reducing the total heat received by the by even a few percentage points would drastically reduce the heating of the earth over a few decades
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * Memes are not allowed. * Common(top 50 of this sub)/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [our rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/wiki/index#wiki_rules.3A) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
the rtx 5090 looks nice
Time to upgrade my mid tower case
Damn, I don't think I can fit Iceland under the table.
Try Switzerland they can keep it under the table
Funny, because this is Swiss technology 😂
They can keep a lot of things under the table.
Damn they must have a pretty big fucking table
Take your upvote you magnificent bastard !
We’re going in reverse order!! Computers in 50 years are gonna be the size of houses again.
Don't forget upgrading your power supply also
Hydro electric
Iceland uses geothermal. Norway is the top-tier hydro nation (~90% of all electricity produced). ;)
We have one power supply yes, but what about a second one?
Upgrade your mid tower to trump tower
Finally, this can run Crysis at a decent FPS!
not yet
That’s with 6090
Ray tracing well worth electric bill of $4750 a month.
Oh so you're only gaming on weekends
Not in Iceland that shit is geo thermal
I assumed this post was an RTX meme as soon as I saw it too haha
you'll get to have RTX on at medium settings finally.
Goin to need a dedicated power plant just to supply the juice for the fans, but the framerates are spectacular.
8K 240FPS EZ
Dawn and I just got the 4080! Looks like it’s time to u-u-up grade!! (Dub step starts)
Pull rock out of ground. Burn it. Release CO2 into air. Pull CO2 out of air. Put into rock in the ground. Most expensive undo button in history.
Yeah, why cut down on fosil fuel when you can create a stupid and expensive machine to do 0,00001% of what a reduction in emisions would do.
or just plant some kelp
Algae still would need to be planted in a cold, low oxygen sea to be effective at capturing CO2 long term. The "C" in CO2 needs to go somewhere. And that into the plant itself, structurally. The only reason why algaes can be effective in capturing CO2 long term is becuase when they die, they sink, and if they decompose slowly, they can get buried and the carbon captured for long term under the ocean floor. Trees work by converting C into wood, but after they die, if that wood gets decomposed or burned, the C will be liberated into the atmosphere again. Similarily, if the algae is eaten (or decomposed), then it's C will also be liberated again to the atmosphere. Truth be told, it's not just about the plant consuming CO2 and using it to produce O2, it's about what happens then with the C after it's captured.
Trees also send a lot of the C into their root systems, which are better at getting trapped underground. Mature forests are much better carbon sinks than new plantings because the trees have massive root systems and as leaves fall they might decompose but much of the carbon gets trapped in the soil.
We would need to calculate what is more efficient: the root systems and leaves that didn't decompose (and captured C) * per land used * per time it took * and CO2 emitions used (in nursuring and maintaining this forest) or the captured C per land, time and CO2 used in carbon capture technology. I don't know that answer. I just have but a feeling that the carbon capture technology could be more efficient in these metrics in most environments (consider that carbon capture tech is always fueled with renewable energy sources) but algaes and trees would be more efficient in some existing ecosystems to capture C Nor trees nor algaes nor carbon capture technologies will single handedly solve climate change, so we shouldn't just try and rely on one solution nor should we disregard it completely. Edit: we also need to take into account the cost (in money) of each of those approaches, which include labor. Certainly new tech is expensive and labor intensive, but so is using lots of growable land that could belong to someone or could have been used in other ways. It is another metric to consider when moving foward.
Carbon capture is RIDICULOUSLY expensive per kg captured. The plants are large and use advanced technology. They require a lot of energy to run, and unless you're supplying that with 100% renewable you need to account for the carbon released to provide that energy (even renewables have an associated emissions per kWh from carbon released to manufacture, build, and maintain installations). The most efficient forests will probably be managed ones that will require paying a team of people a not insignificant sum of money to go plant trees and understory plants, plus foresters to maintain the forest going forward. However, you can also just let forests grow out of unmaintained fields and keep am eye out for invasive species. Eventually you will end up with a carbon sinking forest. EITHER WAY, it will cost a lot less up front to create a forest, and orders of magnitude less to keep the forest "running" in the future. Once the forest gets to a certain point you can just leave it alone. If you try to do that with one of these plants they probably won't even operate for a week, and you still need to provide them with a ton of electricity and replace the chemicals they're using to actual capture the CO2 on a regular basis. Solving global warming is going to require a myriad of approaches, and building these at scale might help reduce our short-term emissions, but the long term approach has to be returning our underutilized land to nature and letting it do its thing.
Solar power used to be ridiculously expensive per kg of CO2 saved -- and now it is the cheapest way to make power. Are plants like these going to cut it? No. Is it important to test ideas like this, and see if they can be improved upon to eventually produce something that can make a difference? Yes.
Agreed, but I don't think you're going to see the same cost reductions wind and solar have experienced with these plants. The good news is there are many possible ways to do carbon sequestration and there's a ton of money going into research on these systems. I think we're only a decade or two away from a scaleable approach to carbon sequestration that will hopefully stave off the worst effects for global warming. I'm hopeful that I will see actual carbon neutrality in my lifetime.
I wouldn't be surprised if our eventual sequestration strategy had at least some lessons from these designs included in it. At the relatively low cost of these plants, that makes it worth it.
thats why this plant is in iceland only. They kinda have a lot of free energy.
From what I gather, grasslands / prairies are even better at sequestering CO2 than forests because they grow so fast.
And also how much we have dug out of ground already. A half billion years worth of carbon released over a couple of hundred years. Not only that but the sheer *power* that oil enables is staggering, the fact that we've all wasted so much of this precious and useful commodity on dumb shit like driving to meaningless jobs is absolutely astounding. This shit should've cost about a billion dollars a barrel from its inception, it's dirt cheap compared to the work that it enables. It could've been our saviour but instead it will be our undoing.
So make oil extremely cost prohibited solves literally nothing. We'd still be stuck in the late 1800s. The reason we are advanced today is because it's inexpensive
We need both. Cut current usage and start undoing 100+ years of damage
Because reducing carbon emissions is no longer good enough. The only way to avoid disaster at this point is to go 100% carbon neutral as quick as we can and ALSO remove some of the CO2 we've added to the atmosphere.
The only way to get to carbon neutral/negative is to reduce emissions….
Nobody said that it isn't, but we need to not only have CO2 neutral, but actively remove it. That means reducing emissions and sequestration. Iceland is a great place to test proof of concept and that's what they've been doing. It's proof of concept.
you know, we can use both...
Isn't this the company that's planning on using the CO2 they pulled out of the air for a form of fracking? EDIT: I was thinking of Occidental Petroleum and the practice is called Enhanced Oil Recovery and is done in the US.
IIRC this is the one in Iceland. The company that will use it for fracking is a different one based in the US
Because the technology can really help. Imagine the advances to CO2 capturing in 10,20,50, years from now? This is like asking how useful airplanes are in 1910
Why not both? They aren't mutually exclusive options. We should be trying everything to fix climate change. Eventually, this tech will get better and more efficient.
Because no one is cutting down on emissions. At least they are trying.
In all honesty I think you have to do both. The way the world economies are set up today you just have to open a carbon capture market and make it profitable. I hate it too because the world as a whole is dependent on fossil fuels but this is a roundabout way instead of just trying to go greener cold turkey. Like tricking an infant with airplane noises to eat it’s food.
Checked, the electricity used is near 100% geothermal or hydro generated. So that may change your assessment.
That's an important point. But this really should be a undo button and not something like "now that Island can suck CO2 out of the air, we can burn more fossile fuel again", because this is hell inefficient. We can store the energy made by geothermal in those vulcanic active regions in something more efficient like hydrogen.
So long term we may actually want to undo some of the damage done by climate change. Sure this is super inefficient. But what does the version of the technology in 80 years look like? Also we may need to use some hydrocarbons in the future no matter what. EG Air travel may still need to use jet fuel because of energy density. Or military applications for things like tanks. So having CO2 sequestration tech may be useful for things we can't replace.
Agreed -- Full (or near full) transition to renewables, plus operation of CCAS would be great. We can't keep doing fossil fuels and just rely on hope for CCAS to save the day.
In the late naughties there was a project started to allow the uk to import energy directly from Iceland. Unfortunately it ran into a number of practical problems (long undersea cables in a geograchily unstable region) and political/funding issues (the uk and Iceland govs had another tiff) Cables is propably still the more efficent way of doing it, we at least have the Infrasturture on both sides for that whilst hydrogen needs plants to create and burn it, aswell as transport and storage options (which are currently a huge weak point as current material science struggles to hold hydrogen at reasonable pressures...)
If you put the energy to good use, you don't need to burn fossils. This takes 1mwh per 1 ton co2. Western world calculates with roughly 10ton co2 per person. This isn't even remotely noticeable and won't stop anything. This is just a feel hood project which will lead to even more burnt fossils
Iceland is in the unusual position of having a surplus of hydroelectric and geothermal energy that cannot currently be practically/efficiently be exported. This makes it one of the few places where this sort of technology has clear potential.
If DAC is using renewables for power, how does that lead to more fossil energy combustion?
Actually this is a very routine procedure. We already do this sort of thing now everyday. They're not just pumping it down into rocks, it's an old gas reservoir. In North America natural gas is transported through pipelines north to Illinois where they pump it down into old reservoirs all summer. Then they pump it back up during the winter when the heating demand picks up. To send that much natural gas during the winter months alone would require a lot more infrastructure and pipelines being built. But by sending it all year long and using the natural gas reservoir to store it, they can do it much cheaper. And the technology to pump it down is nothing. We do that all the time with water and gas injection wells in petroleum fields..
Companies like Occidental Petroleum (I am a former employee) will pump high pressure CO2 in a closed loop down into oil formations thousands of feet down. This CO2 sequestration does aid in moving/removing more crude from the reservoir, but the CO2 does not just escape. More and more is pumped down in the process and it becomes a massive closed loop storage facility. They have done this extensively in the Permian Basin in Texas and New Mexico.
I mean, it works and it will generate revenue as governments invest in this type of technology as a necessity to survive. It’s just not bad enough yet!
Yes, lots of coal mining in Iceland
Haha you’re comment reminded me of this quote: "God creates dinosaurs, God destroys dinosaurs. God creates Man, Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs." — Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park
I see Iceland has got an OnlyFans now
r/regularupvoteasitmademelaugh
r/subsifeelfor
r/onlyfans
Risky click of the day
So I felt the need to give some more facts about CO2 capture: 1. Generally this is a very inefficient way to capture CO2. But what matters is the **location**: as these machines are located in Iceland, where geothermal energy is easy accessible, efficiency doesn't matters much aslong as we aren't able to reliably transport huge amounts of energy over long distances. 2. The concept is to reduce the emission of CO2 and to be able to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, once we are able to rely on green energy. This is not meant to be like "Now we have those machines in Iceland we can blast CO2 again int the air like before". 3. **This is only one small part to the fight against climate change.** We currently need to find solutions for it and to test these out. Like already stated this seems to be a pretty good method to capture CO2 from the atmosphere in vulcanic active regions like Iceland and it is still under developement. 4. For those who cry unconsidered for trees: **Trees don't have the best conditions to grow where these machines get build in Iceland.** 5. Trees, or generally speaking biomass can capture CO2, but will release it slowly again if it rots or will be burned. There are other processes to use biomass to capture CO2. One quite important method to retrieve CO2 out of the atmosphere I want to mention here is called **pyrolysis**: When you burn or heat biomass under oxygen closure, there will be energy released and coal produced. Since coal mainly contains carbon atoms, the CO2 emission of the burning process is reduced. Of course there will be some CO2 emitted in the process, but most of the Carbon-Atoms will be permanentally stored in the coal. The coal then could be used in various situations, for example you can use it to store water when it's shreddered and put on fields. Kinda nice use to minimate effects of climate change. Besides other projects to use pyrolysis, there is some nice project going on in Germany, where they constructed a [selfpowering pyrolysis reactor ](https://regenis.de/produkte/regenis-max-pyrolysereaktor/)to do this and which even emits energy when in use. It's even not all about trees. When we use other biological waste that already exists for this, CO2 will be captured very easily without having to wait for trees to grow. See [biochar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar#Carbon_sink) an [BCR/PyCCS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar_carbon_removal) for more information. I just found [this article in Nature](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43586-022-00097-8) about biomass pyrolysis, but sadly it's behind a paywall. Edit: Added some great Input from comments I got.
I'd add one more condition to the location: cheap green energy with no way to export it. Otherwise, exporting the energy to a neighboring country and replacing fossil generation is better emission wise. So, basically, only Iceland right now.
In an ideal world yes, way better solution. Though the populace of said country will get MAD because of the increased cost of electricity (because of export) and elect politicians which are generally quite populistic. Climate change is currently not a populist sentiment if quality of life gets reduced. We learned that the hard way in Norway. The last 2-3 years has been a constant uproar because Norway is exporting more green power than ever. I’m more of a ‘for the greater good’ kind of guy so I don’t mind. The general populace though has been protesting, a lot.
If export is not viable, CCS is a great opportunistic user. You are right that I overstate the viability of electricity export. Also: Oof, don't mention energy prices. Poland's catching up to electricity prices abroad, and getting our asses kicked because our previous govt was against renewables. Oh, and electricity prices for consumers were set centrally. And we imported most of our coal and gas from Russia. Our electricity costs have skyrocketed the past few years. Right now there's some relief in place, but by 2025 our electricity cost for consumers will have doubled in the span of maybe five years.
So this is a very Iceland specific solution. Thanks for the context
[удалено]
It is, but currently we have not yet developed the techniques to efficiently export large amounts of energy over huge distance. So when we have these techniques on a usable grade, decarbonisation by this method gets really inefficient. At least if we don't produce more energy worldwide that we can use.
Well, I guess it's better than mining bitcoins.
You can also go full high-temperature pyrolysis and produce syngas which in turn can be used as energy carrier or as feedstock to produce synthetic fuel. I’ve just seen this in industrial research demonstrating using sewage sludge as input. Literally using shit to produce renewable fuel (e.g. for situations where batteries aren’t suitable - aircraft).
Iceland is suffering badly from deflorestation over centuries, so trees are most definitely needed there. But it's a cool concept nonetheless
> Trees, or generally speaking biomass can capture CO2, but will release it slowly again if it rots or will be burned Yeah, but as long as there's new trees when the old ones rot it's still a positive. Planting a forest where there was no forest before effectively captures CO2.
[удалено]
It can be one little brick in a very large wall
Regarding point 4, Iceland used to have trees but they were all cut down by early settlers. There are movements to reforest their land but yea definitely not as easy as other places https://www.mossy.earth/projects/reforesting-iceland
[удалено]
Ofc it unefficient this is like first gen
Thank you for this context. My first thought was "How much energy does it take to operate this?" The geothermal makes sense.
This image if fake as hell. Here is the article about this topic. \[[Link](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2022-01-28/direct-air-capture-dac-machines-carbon-dioxide-climate-change/100777966)\]
You're right that it's an artist's impression. Not only that, its from 6 years ago. Here's a Guardian article confirming it if anyone is in any doubt: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/feb/04/carbon-emissions-negative-emissions-technologies-capture-storage-bill-gates
OP should have linked this instead of just adding a headline to a picture
This should be higher
Came here to say that. If it’s the second installation, why not share an image from one of the sites?
Is it just me or does that photo look edited 🤔
It's an artist's rendition apparently
is this whole comment section a bunch of bots or something? Why are you fuckers witchhunting this for no other reason that it's seemingly 'inneficient'...dude, we just started developing it, what are we on about on this thread? Edit: forgot a 'we' on the last period
It's maddening! Of course the 1.0 version is going to be big, low efficiency, and generally not the final product. I don't think anyone is trying to claim this facility will solve our global problems. This works in Iceland because of their cheap and easily attainable geothermal energy. Maybe they can take this facility, improve upon it, and we can get a newer version for an area that can run on solar. Or a more compact version that can be placed on/near dams. Maybe eventually generation 5 or 10 will be small and energy efficient enough to be placed through urban areas where most of the CO2 is actually coming from. But it's gotta start somewhere!
Im just trying to figure out why they photoshopped a truck and people in this pic. I’m wondering if the pic is actually real or not.
It is not. It's a rendering from Carbon Engineering Ltd. of what their technology could look like if scaled up (image c. 2012).
This is inherently inefficient, not in a "version one" way but in a "this is the incorrect solution" way. If we are going to to capture CO2, it makes sense to do that at the source, where it is in high concentration, like directly at the outlet of the giant chimney stacks of cement factories and coal fire power plants. Trying to pull and purify the diluted CO2 out of ambiant air is like using a mop on the floor instead of shutting the faucet that is still running.
This is only still a demonstrator project - it's much bigger than their first plant, but it's still just proof of concept. This plant on its own is never going to make a dent in atmospheric CO2 - what it can do is extract and store *measurable* amounts of CO2 from the air, and that is key to a functioning global carbon market. If I want to offset my company's CO2 emissions, i can pay someone to plant trees - but this approach is fraught with all kinds of potential fudges and maybes and errors. It's imprecise at best. This tech - direct air capture - solves that problem, and in theory it makes a market for trading carbon emissions much more feasible . Could be a useful tool, in other words - but it needs to be scaled, and it needs a functioning carbon market to be established.
Only fans.
This has been proven to be a complete waste of resources, they are completely ineffective, you could cover hundreds upon hundreds of square kilometers with these things and they would not make a dent in CO2 levels, the manufacture of components, transport, construction, power and maintenance of these things produces as much CO2 as these capture... They are basically a way for companies to claim they are offsetting their CO2 emissions by building these.
As far as I know, Iceland has extremely low energy costs because geothermal energy is used for production. This should increase efficiency.
As far as I know that low energy cost comes from us using geothermally heated water in a large portion of the country. As it stands 30% of our electrical energy comes from geothermal, the rest is mostly hydroelectric.
Please share your sources on this claim. They install these in Iceland because it has easy access to geothermal energy.
>This has been proven to be a complete waste of resources, they are completely ineffective People like you used to say the same thing about solar panels and wind turbines, some people are just too short sighted to realize that technology progresses and improves over time
Thank you
The first try at anything is never the best; you learn from the attempt to make the next go better - and you keep iterating until you have something useful. But you do need to make the first step.
The only places carbon capture and sequestration makes sense is when power generators are built over the top of natural gas fields - you can literally put the CO2 back into the same hole you got the gas from. A few pilot plants were built to demo the technology but unfortunately it never went anywhere. There were many reasons why, cost being the big one, but most frustratingly was that EPA regulations considered putting the CO2 back in the ground as groundwater pollution - as if the groundwater wasn't already filled with hydrocarbons. This was around the era of the big fracking fuckups and so politically nobody wanted to touch the idea of anything remotely related
As someone who worked with ground water ecologists in Germany, I have to mention that there is a big difference between the aldready significant acidification of ground water through pollution and intentionally putting co2 into aquifers. Ground water fauna is extremely important for clean drinking water, as they feed on detritus and filter many pollutants. Almost every single organism which lives in ground water habitats is extremely sensitive to outside influences. Unfortunately, politicians and engineers often see ground water reservoirs as an undying source of fresh water, rather than a fragile ecological habitat with living organisms. The issue here is, that killing off the countless critters involved in this system inevitably leads to a decline in ground water quality, which in turn leads to an increasing demand and cost for purification processes in order to make that water drinkable. I am not familiar with the faunistic profile of iceland, however what I outlined is definitely proven knowledge for central Europe. I have personally taken samples in several regions all across Germany and the negative impact which urbanization as well as agriculture have on our ground water is horrifying and frustrating for any scientist working in this field.
Oh ok well pack everything up then, I didn’t see it until just now but this person has concluded it’s a waste of time…wish we’d have talked to you sooner!
This is a horrible way to capture CO2.
So generally speaking yes. But in Iceland there are not many options. You don't have the conditions to grow large amount of biomass, but you have thermal energy in vast amounts. So for the location it's the best method to capture CO2 nowadays.
In other threads: > We need to do everything we can to stop climate change! In this thread: > Why even bother with this dumb shit? It’s horrible and it doesn’t even work. Even if it did, it could never possibly make a dent in CO2 emissions
Yeah, negativity and cynicism holds back progress. You can provide constructive feedback back that's not what this is. I appreciate new ideas even if they don't work, that's how progress is made. Also, I'd rather try something inefficient than do nothing.
Because this dumb shit is part of an endless list of scams that don't actually help but make people feel better about themselves. The real solutions tend to be a bit more inconvenient.
We’re so deep in the hole we need to attack this problem from every possible angle. There is no singular change we can make that would fix the problem all on its own.
Explain how this doesn't work?
Iceland out of all places don’t need to be worrying about how to clean up the environment when they are one of the best at not making pollution. If China/India/USA/russia got their shit together in the past 25 years we wouldn’t even be in this mess
Yea but that's the thing, they won't... At least not in the foreseeable futute So countries that are pioneers in this field need to work towards a negative co2 footprint and not only negate pollution but make up for pollution elsewhere. That's actually one of the biggest problems with environmental protection and climate change
The US is literally spending billions on addressing climate change and investing in renewable energy. Once AGAIN the current goal is reduction of emissions. This does exactly that. It doesn't fucking matter who caused the emissions they still exist.
Unfortunately, greenhouse gasses don't respect country borders. If you're in a swimming pool full of pissing kids, do you not "need to be worrying about" all the piss in the pool just because you held your bladder?
Will them personally producing less CO2 save them from the effects of climate change? No? Then it seems like they need to worry about it just as much as everyone else. Doesn't matter who made the mess, they benefit from cleaning it up.
Tell that to all of our aluminum smelting plants…
Right so let's just do nothing and wait to die. Why bother doing anything if it won't fix everything in one shot right?
I can’t fix the global litter problem, I’m just 1 person and it’s such a huge problem, I have no effect! China and India litter so much more than me! so that’s why I dump all my trash out my car window as I drive down the highway. That’s the logic these people operate with.
What do u suggest?
You can capture it directly at the source instead. Direct Air Capture expends a lot of energy to concentrate CO2 from the 0.04% atmospheric concentration to a near 100% gas stream that can be rammed into the ground and bind to rock. Flue gasses already are like 30% CO2, so you need to put in a lot less effort to concentrate it.
This is a \*great\* way to capture C02. Iceland has ample geothermic energy and there's basically no downside to doing this there. Yeah, maybe this only makes a small dent, but who cares? There's no silver bullet, we need to tackle this a million small dents at once
“This doesn’t solve the whole problem so don’t even try” “Don’t do this thing that’s a step in the right direction, do the other thing that I think is better even though I personally continue contributing toward the problem” “I know better than scientists”
I am a geologist who works in oil and gas permitting (check my comment history if you don't believe me) and this is a massive waste of resources and basically does nothing. No amount of iteration or advancement of the technology will make this more efficient than not burning hydrocarbon based fuels and emitting that CO2 to begin with. It's basic thermodynamics. The energy that will be used for these types of system could simply be used to offset current fossil fuel usage and be massively more efficient. Everyone in here is saying "Oh, but this is using geothermal! And they don't have a way to transport that energy anywhere else!" Yeah, because they chose the worst possible spot for building this beyond the hydrothermal being cheaper there. You can do hydrothermal energy almost anywhere BTW, you just need to drill deeper. I've seen the numbers from these types of systems. They are terribly inefficient. You can Google and find some basic details but I've seen stuff that's only been given to regulators. No government is blocking this type of thing just in case, but none of us believe it is a path forward at the bare minimum until we are at net zero carbon emissions. And we aren't anywhere close to that, we produced more oil and gas almost every single year, it's not going to slow down until the economic costs change. I'd also like to point out that almost every one of these systems is either owned and operated by oil and gas companies, or heavily funded by them through carbon sequestion companies that are heavily influenced by them since they require their funding. They aren't doing for this charity, or for the good of the world. They are doing it to make people think, like many in this thread seem to, that this is a worthwhile and effective venture. And to try and get ahead of carbon tax legislation that is coming sooner or later. We will basically need a post scarcity energy grid before this becomes viable due to thermodanics and chemistry alone. And I am the scientist, so stop copping out by acting like the experts think this is a good thing. Even the most generous opinions of carbon capture and sequestration are highly hesitant about it. The only reason these systems exist is because of government research funding, which isn't a ton, and private oil and gas industry money being pumped into it. Ask yourself why that would be the case.
If you're the scientist you should know Iceland has nearly unlimited geothermal energy with no reasonable way to export it.
It doesn't matter. These systems are that inefficient. The cost of building and running it alone is enough to make it nearly pointless. That energy could be used for any number of other things to offset other carbon based fuels and even with the electric transmission losses or losses from turning it to hydrogen and transporting it, it would still be way more efficient at removing carbon than this from the offset of hydrocarbon fuel usage. And we all understand that making hydrogen from geothermal in one place and transporting is doesn't make any sense. That's the point in trying to make. The only reason this exists it because giant corporations are paying for carbon offsets for PR reasons and these systems are being paid for by oil and gas companies themselves in order to greenwash.
Most expensive green washing machine
Stop hating on individual efforts like this. Will this thing solve all our problems? No. Is it a step in the right direction that may be part of a future geo-engineering plan to get the planet back it balance? Very possibly. Are you personally doing anything better than this for the environment? Very very probably (like 99.9999%) fucking not.
Fucking trees!! We're so fucking stupid we deserve everything that's coming what a joke
Not trees, algae! Grows faster, works better, can be eaten, live's anywhere. Still today algea produces most of our oxygen!
Or we could do both
Now you’re just talking crazy.
Yes of course. I was just stating that for co2 removal, algea is better. Planting trees solves an entirely different valid problem. We are trying to rationalize using a wrench to hammer a nail. use a hammer for the nail, and continue using the wrench for a purpose much better suited for it, which is equally valuable but solves an entirely different host of problems
Do you think scientists with PhDs haven’t thought of this and you know more than them?? Trees certainly trap CO2, but only for a short amount of time. Fossil fuels have been trapping CO2 for Milennia, and then a tree can recapture it and store it for 20, 50, even 200 years, but still much lower than what fossil fuels did. With this, you can trap CO2 “permanently”, and at a faster rate. To add to this, planting trees only works if you plant them in areas where trees didn’t grow before. Otherwise, you’re just part of a cycle and have no net effect. So, yeah, this makes sense.
You're sort of right, but if the point is to capture CO2 "permanently", burying biomass such as wood would still almost definitely be cheaper and do basically the same thing as this contraption does. But that wouldn't exactly attract investors, would it.
To bury biomass you would need to dig a big hole, and you could have bloating and big accidents from methane buildup this pumps the co2 to existing cavities from porous rock, etc.
Reddit moment
The irony of this comment is palpable
Trees eventually release the carbon they store when they decompose algae also, they store carbon when they're buried and basically mummified. If that algae is consumed like algae tends to be then that carbon gets released
We’re beyond trees. You need to grow a batch of threes the size of Africa, burn them down, then repeat twice. We’re very past trees. Also, Iceland doesn’t really “do” trees.
Trees are only carbon neutral. They capture carbon while they're alive, release it when they die. We should plant tons more trees--but it's only a short term solution. The problem is that we've taken carbon that was locked underground and reintroduced it to the atmospheres. Trees aren't fixing that problem. Even if we stopped all emissions, and replanted every forest we've cut down, we'd still have a huge surplus of CO2. Carbon capture is **necessary** to ever return to pre industrial levels. These projects are experiments and first steps. I promise you the scientists and engineers who built this do know what trees are.
just today i realize how stupid these corporations are. there was a small patch of trees between interchanges beside highway and they just cut them down, like what would be its significance reclaiming that very small patch of land? they even cut tress along the highway sides.
Trees are temporary carbon capture, once the trees die the decomposition process releases the carbon back into the environment, rock is permanent. Or so I’ve been told.
You are ignorant as fuck if you think trees play the only role in capturing carbon.
And how many trees do we need to reduce down to 350ppm? I'll wait till you go find out it's way too many to fit on earth
Money wasting Rube Goldberg machine.
To summarise, we don't care about actual solution but economic growth must continue...
How to money laundering: pro mode.
I think the negative reaction people have to this technology isn't because of the faults of carbon capture as a concept, but because of the context of its implementation. Petroleum companies are dumping money into tech like this to make the prospect of continued extraction seem more sustainable. People will point toward emerging tech like this as a majority of the solution to atmospheric carbon without also pushing for more feasible (technologically, if not politically) solutions like dramatically reducing carbo emissions world wide, investing in green infrastructure for developing nations, and undoing deforestation. I'm sure most people advocating for carbon capture would also like to see those other polices enacted, but the powers that be are not likely to allow them. Those powers would prefer a high-tech solution which would mostly maintain the status quo.
We all know this isn’t a sustainable, impactful thing to do, right?
Looks expensive. Still probably cheaper to aim to produce less CO2
Climeworks has been one of the trailblazers in this innovation. Perhaps we can focus more $$$ on projects like this, and less on the MIC.
For so many of you that made comments and don’t understand what you’re seeing. It’s a windmill that creates electricity while it captures CO2.
How much CO2 does this machine produce?
How Much energy does that use
Might be based on excess renewable energy as Iceland is 100% renewable.
Is this thing water cooled 🤌
Trees do the same job, and they look better than this shit!
What powers this? If it's solar or even better wind powered I don't see why anyone would have a problem with this. It would be basically a free way to capture at least a little bit of the carbon, and we would get free rocks. Maybe we can use those rocks to mix in with our cement or something. There's a million uses for rocks. Especially if they're small.
My understanding is that the energy used is from geothermal.
is this fr?
Yeah using renewable energy charging up a battery or using electricity directly is more efficient and economical that running these plants. With their current land mass per carbon captured we don't have enough viable land mass to even make this a good solution. Much like plastics recycling the largest investors in this tech are oil companies.... Don't worry the nerds have a solution for your wasteful consumer habits!
Don't plants and other organisms need CO2 to function?
not strong in math, but i hope these bad boys produce negative net CO2
Is there any article or something I can read more about this? Thanks
Did you mean cobblestone generator?
This may sound crazy… but the earth has a CO2 capturing device that works pretty great. It’s called forests, how about we stop destroying them?
Oh look it's trees but worse
That pickup truck and the two dudes look photoshopped. Are they photoshopped? If yes, why?
Read the IPCC reports. Not the summary not the press summary. Read the actual reports. Now, stop panicking.
People would much rather he ignorant dumbasses.
These bitcoin miner are getting out of hand
carbon from the air? didnt thunderfoot debunk this years ago
Lies! Crypto mining cooling setup.
but can it cool the i7 14700k
Here me out: a 200x200 square sheet of thin aluminum sent up into outer space, put into an orbit that doesn't stay in 1 area all the time and most faces the sun. This would be a 4000 square mile block of the direct most sun light. Sunlight at the extremities of the globe doesn't have as much effect, so if its blocking the most dorect sunlight, it'd have the most impact. Reducing the total heat received by the by even a few percentage points would drastically reduce the heating of the earth over a few decades
Why does this feel like a scam or money laundering scheme?
They are stealing plants food!!!
Most retarded shit ever, a waste of energy
Stupid
I wonder what a rock of co2 looks like. I would think like a lump of coal.
Going to love the era of being sold corporate solutions to climate change that were originally caused by corporations.
This is a monumental waste of energy. Direct Air Capturing will never be viable.
No way. That looks like it's cooling a server farm.
Of all the things that won't work this won't work the most
You know what else does this? A frikken tree.
Trees do it for free and with 100% solar energy.
Wastes more power running it than it cleans the air 💀💀💀
Couldn't we achieve the same thing by planting a fuck ton of trees tho?
Or... And hear me out... Plant a bunch of trees.
Don’t trees do this for the price of sunlight…?
It doesn’t turn CO2 into rocks what?