Atmospheric CO2 removal technologies?

[anorlunda]

http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/09/norway-scraps-large-scale-carbon-capture-plan.html

Money is no object to those blue-eyed arabs of the north. If they can't do it, probably nobody can.

 

[Jimster41]

Inneresting. Looks like largely a case of fractious politics and complex economics... As usual.

My wife is a knowledgeable optimist (studying sustainability management at Harvard, and a bussiness strategist for a big AE firm), I asked her about this and she insisted progress is being made toward global regulation of carbon emissions. She had a lot of sources. I could only bring up the what if - a volcano, or say an oceanic methane hydrate eruption. The ultimate uncontrolled source(s) etc.

She got irritated then later sent me a link to this paper. I found it interesting. http://www.wzb.eu/sites/default/files/u13/the_paradox_of_climate_engineering_global_policy.pdf

What I wonder is if such an event were to happen, what would be the potential upside to an outfit, company, technology, person who had something to offer on that side. The value proposition seems potentially as white a swan as the black swan of such an event. Set that against the ambient situation we have today, where the mean signals point to increasing risk of high atmospheric CO2. If I was Neo-Rockefeller rich, like some of these folks today. I might put some chips over on that.

Then go buy a bunch of coal futures and pipeline stocks...

 

[johnbbahm]

Inneresting. Looks like largely a case of fractious politics and complex economics... As usual.

My wife is a knowledgeable optimist (studying sustainability management at Harvard, and a bussiness strategist for a big AE firm), I asked her about this and she insisted progress is being made toward global regulation of carbon emissions. She had a lot of sources. I could only bring up the what if - a volcano, or say an oceanic methane hydrate eruption. The ultimate uncontrolled source(s) etc.

She got irritated then later sent me a link to this paper. I found it interesting. http://www.wzb.eu/sites/default/files/u13/the_paradox_of_climate_engineering_global_policy.pdf

What I wonder is if such an event were to happen, what would be the potential upside to an outfit, company, technology, person who had something to offer on that side. The value proposition seems potentially as white a swan as the black swan of such an event. Set that against the ambient situation we have today, where the mean signals point to increasing risk of high atmospheric CO2. If I was Neo-Rockefeller rich, like some of these folks today. I might put some chips over on that.

Then go buy a bunch of coal futures and pipeline stocks...

I think when the alternative energy solutions are naturally cheaper than the oil extracted from the ground,
people will choose them. If the Governments of the world want to fund research into making the alternatives
cheaper and as practical as the current fuels, I can get behind that.
I do think actual geoengineering could be very dangerous, and have plenty of unexpected results.

 

[Jimster41]

By "naturally cheaper" do you mean "when it is capable of spontaneously overturning the economic status quo"?
And I gather you do not worry about danger on the course of status quo?

 

[anorlunda]

she insisted progress is being made toward global regulation of carbon emissions

Wow, now there's a specific statement that anybody could fact check. She could do well as a politician.

 

[Jimster41]

Wow, now there's a specific statement that anybody could fact check. She could do well as a politician.

I'm sorry, what did you say?

Are you are saying my wife is an idiot, or a liar, or do you actually respect and admire politicians?

Or do you just have problems with smart women?

 

[johnbbahm]

By "naturally cheaper" do you mean "when it is capable of spontaneously overturning the economic status quo"?
And I gather you do not worry about danger on the course of status quo?

The alternative I am talking about is man made hydrocarbon fuels.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/energy/2015/04/150428-audi-ediesel-made-from-water-air/
The status quo will not be upset, as the oil companies will likely be the ones deploying the technology.
They already own the refineries and the distribution infrastructure.
The exploration and extraction leg of their business, will still have markets for their products,
The man made feedstock will just set the ceiling for the price.
Audi now says the process for e-diesel is 70% efficient, This means it would
take about 55 Kwh of electricity to make a gallon of diesel.
Wholesale electricity can be purchased for about $.05 a Kwh,
which would be the equivalent to about $100/ barrel oil.

 

[Jimster41]

I agree that Audi's approach does some pretty clever things, you enumerate there, that leverage the status quo. I had not heard of it until your earlier post.

Problem is oil is like 50$ a barrel this morning, and it's arguably not the floor. Do you think the technology can be become viable in the near, medium or long term, given production and price context for fossil crude? Electricity would need to be closer to .02$ kWh. Maybe that's doable. But looking at Climeworks tech, I do wonder about scalability? Their demo machine is saying 8kg/day nominal. Even if it is efficient and cheap to run, you would need a whole lot of them right? Or a really big one. I wonder if the technology scales well theoretically and if they make one designed to sit in the exhaust stream of a coal plant, which runs around 12% CO2, 200+ degF and also has a lot of nasty corrosive stuff.

http://www.climeworks.com/demonstrator/articles/demonstrator.html
[Edit] just found this on their website.
http://www.climeworks.com/co2-capture-plants.html

You look at an article like this (somewhat dated),
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-captured-carbon-save/.
where capture is touted as relatively easy, but storage is the nightmare... and Audi does seem to have a pretty compelling missing piece.
If a utility with a fleet of old fully paid off coal boilers could all of a sudden sell their CO2 rich exhaust, and paint their stacks green... they would probably be pretty happy. They are spending literally billions on scrubbers that do nothing but keep them legal to run with respect to NOx, SOx, Hg, and Particulates. It's all about the sunk cost of the asset, and the prohibitive cost of building something else.

I'd love to know more about their 'sorbent' physics. What material, compound, and chemical/physical process are they using? Gotta be paying the piper somewhere? Maybe it's like some crazy vanadium doped catalyst that costs 5000 $/sqft and lasts for 6 months.

 

[Jimster41]

Not to mention, these old coal assets suffer and suck when cycled, and often sit idle because of startup cost, or high turn-down limits. If they were just base-loaded again, running all day at the top, like back in the good old days, and even all night making liquid fuel... coal is cheap, abundant and relatively easy to get out of the ground. Pretty interesting. Gotta be a catch somewhere.

 

[johnbbahm]

I agree that Audi's approach does some pretty clever things, you enumerate there, that leverage the status quo. I had not heard of it until your earlier post.

Problem is oil is like 50$ a barrel this morning, and it's arguably not the floor. Do you think the technology can be become viable in the near, medium or long term, given production and price context for fossil crude? Electricity would need to be closer to .02$ kWh. Maybe that's doable. But looking at Climeworks tech, I do wonder about scalability? Their demo machine is saying 8kg/day nominal. Even if it is efficient and cheap to run, you would need a whole lot of them right? Or a really big one. I wonder if the technology scales well theoretically and if they make one designed to sit in the exhaust stream of a coal plant, which runs around 12% CO2, 200+ degF and also has a lot of nasty corrosive stuff.

http://www.climeworks.com/demonstrator/articles/demonstrator.html
[Edit] just found this on their website.
http://www.climeworks.com/co2-capture-plants.html

You look at an article like this (somewhat dated),
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-captured-carbon-save/.
where capture is touted as relatively easy, but storage is the nightmare... and Audi does seem to have a pretty compelling missing piece.
If a utility with a fleet of old fully paid off coal boilers could all of a sudden sell their CO2 rich exhaust, and paint their stacks green... they would probably be pretty happy. They are spending literally billions on scrubbers that do nothing but keep them legal to run with respect to NOx, SOx, Hg, and Particulates. It's all about the sunk cost of the asset, and the prohibitive cost of building something else.

I'd love to know more about their 'sorbent' physics. What material, compound, and chemical/physical process are they using? Gotta be paying the piper somewhere? Maybe it's like some crazy vanadium doped catalyst that costs 5000 $/sqft and lasts for 6 months.

I would rather we get off of coal as soon as possible.
I lived near a coal plant for a few years, the dust gets on everything.
I envision this as drawing the CO2 straight out of the air, or water as the Navy plans.
http://www.nrl.navy.mil/media/news-releases/2012/fueling-the-fleet-navy-looks-to-the-seas
I think the Navy is in the process of getting the man made jet fuel flight certified.
Oil is low right now, but much of that supply was created on the hope of a much higher market.
It will go back up, as the higher cost of the enhanced extraction processes has to come from somewhere.
The cheap easy oil, has already been found and is being recovered.
All the new stuff will be at higher cost, if the price stays low, they will stop looking for it.

 

[Jimster41]

yeah coal has other problems, to be sure. And I agree with what you say. Problem with getting off of it fast - the shift now is toward natural gas, result of which is likely to be a new status quo around that, with even stronger economic momentum. Better than no change. But if you could stick a veritable Mr. Fusion on the old F150 and have something that drives clean, you might be able to hold out until the Hover Skateboard actual comes to the corner store.

As I understand it Hawaii has a 100% renewables target, but their plan is to build to it through Natural gas (imported!). The infrastructure they will need to do that isn't going to be easy to mothball, once it is in place, even after the renewables are there.

 

[johnbbahm]

yeah coal has other problems, to be sure. And I agree with what you say. Problem with getting off of it fast - the shift now is toward natural gas, result of which is likely to be a new status quo around that, with even stronger economic momentum. Better than no change. But if you could stick a veritable Mr. Fusion on the old F150 and have something that drives clean, you might be able to hold out until the Hover Skateboard actual comes to the corner store.

As I understand it Hawaii has a 100% renewables target, but their plan is to build to it through Natural gas (imported!). The infrastructure they will need to do that isn't going to be easy to mothball, once it is in place, even after the renewables are there.

As we build out photovoltaic solar, and it's going on as we type, the grid will need some way to handle
the fluctuation. Off grid solar systems us a dump load, to keep extra power from damaging the system.
I could envision a large refinery, converting all of the surplus to fuels for later use.
Who knows, maybe the surplus solar electricity, can be used for F150 fill up credits.
Kind of an indirect Mr. Fusion.

 

[Fenster Karton]

Since there is sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb 100% of its lines, and has been all your life, what effect does more CO2 have besides second order effects?

 

[mfb]

Since there is sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb 100% of its lines

Where did you get that from?

 

[Finny]

Are there any legitimate candidates for technologies that might provide inverse leverage over atmospheric CO2 levels?

It's not solar cells. It's not electric cars.
Not from the few life cycle studies I have seen which are at BEST a wash.

Best bet so far may be killing off 6.5B people, leave 500m elites.
Oh, and kill off most of the cows and steers...waaaay to flatulent.

 

[Baluncore]

Since there is sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb 100% of its lines, and has been all your life, what effect does more CO2 have besides second order effects?

The Sun emits black body radiation at a temperature of about 5500K. The Earth radiates at about 300K.
Black body radiation is not an ionisation line spectrum. It is a broadband phenomena.

Absorption close to 100% is the same as close to 0% transmission.
2% transmission is not the same as 1%, it differs by a factor of two.
1% transmission is not the same as 0%, it differs by a factor of infinity.

 

[jim hardy]

We are still a small part of the annual carbon cycle, maybe 4%.
https://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm

Increasing CO2 ought to encourage plant growth .
http://cdn5.theweedblog.com/wp-content/uploads//co2-marijuana-graph.jpg
http://www.theweedblog.com/co2-and-marijuana-plants/
okay, i apologize for that reference it's hardly a scientific journal

here's a more appropriate one
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-8137.2010.03441.x/pdf
also at https://kb.osu.edu/dspace/bitstream...d=87B29D0BA5181B4756709285624E3BBC?sequence=1

Longer growing seasons and reforestation of extreme latitudes will have some effect, i don't know how much.

What's the panic?

 

[Baluncore]

Since there is sufficient CO2 in the atmosphere to absorb 100% of its lines, and has been all your life, what effect does more CO2 have besides second order effects?

This is getting very close to the subject of global warming that is forbidden on PF. It is a favorite of the sceptics and makes the false assumption that absorption is 100% when it is not.
Can we please get back to the subject of possible or hypothetical removal mechanisms of CO2 from the atmosphere. Please avoid the subject of the validity, causes or effects of global warming.

 

[Baluncore]

Longer growing seasons and reforestation of extreme latitudes will have some effect, i don't know how much.

What's the panic?

Swings and roundabouts. More plant growth on land will mop up more CO₂, but more CO₂ will acidify the ocean and so prevent krill development in the Southern Ocean. That will break the "iron - phytoplankton - krill - whale - iron" cycle.
Let's avoid the politics and belief systems to concentrate on potential CO₂ removal technologies.

 

[jim hardy]

fair enough.

GE and Siemens are working on ideas

http://7bf847d11d127c20fa70-cd6cb91...4ba.r34.cf1.rackcdn.com/gernotschneiderv2.pdf

 

[mheslep]

The seasonal CO2 ppm swings measured at Mauna Loa are have increased. At the beginning of the record seasonal trough to peak was 4-6 ppm; now it is 6-8 ppm. With the northern hemisphere heavily out weighing the southern in seasonal growth/decay, it appears the biosphere is increasing its seasonal uptake of CO2, which would mean a greater long term lockup of carbon in biomass and soils. I supposed there could be other explanations as well having to do with simple uptake / release of gas from the oceans with temperature changes, that are not balanced north-south.

 

[mheslep]

Increasing CO2 ought to encourage plant growth .

*If* all the many ingredients required for growth are there in sufficient quantity. For instance, that graphic of plant growth states that all were grown with "similar" levels of water, light, etc. But that might mean more than enough water for even the fastest growth scenarios. Suppose instead that the water supply or the nitrogen and phosphorus in the soil were barely sufficient for maximum growth, as it must be in many places, at some CO2 level, say 400 ppm, and no more. Fixing carbon into biomass, as I understand it, requires the hydrogen from water in the presence of certain other required (if not consumed) elements, without (large scale) exception.

 

[jim hardy]

The seasonal CO2 ppm swings measured at Mauna Loa are have increased. At the beginning of the record seasonal trough to peak was 4-6 ppm; now it is 6-8 ppm.

I look at the slope between peaks and conclude Mother Nature still has power in her rate of removal to outpace our rate of addition.
That the amplitude of swings is increasing says we're making her work harder at it, though.

Unforseen consequences are inevitable and if we look closely we might figure out which ones are worth worrying about... i don't at all question the wisdom of doing that.

 

[jim hardy]

Fixing carbon into biomass, as I understand it, requires the hydrogen from water in the presence of certain other required (if not consumed) elements, without (large scale) exception.

well there's plenty of hydrogen in water.

Asimov's 1960-ish essay "Life's Bottleneck" highlighted phosphorous as the rate determining element for the biosphere. He cites upwelling of phosphorous laden seawater near the poles as the reason sea life is so abundant there despite the intense cold.

 

[mheslep]

well there's plenty of hydrogen in water.

Yes, and plenty of places that are on the margin with water. Most of CA probably qualifies the last couple years, so that I doubt plusing up the CO2 there helps growth at all.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

It is usually easier to free Mother Nature than to do her job for her.

Every which growing season? The graph "Recent Monthly Mean CO₂ At Mauna Loa" clearly shows an annual cycle.
I would have expected the CO₂ use to be more or less constant with both hemispheres alternating production.
CO₂ seems to rise during the Northern winter while the Southern Ocean is absorbing CO₂ during the Southern summer. Why?

The growing season in the N hemisphere removes much more CO2 than the growing season in the Southern hemisphere, presumably because there is a lot more land and land-based vegetation takes much more CO2 out until stuff decays in the fall. Not that phytoplankton doesn't consume a _lot_ of CO2 in the oceans, but that the CO2 doesn't last long in the aquatic systems. Most of the aquatic photosynthesis makes carbs that are quickly consumed and move up the food chain with the more rapid release of the CO2.

We've analyzed the annual CO2 variations in the southern part of the southern hemisphere (latitudes -30 to -90), and there is a definite oscillation with the right phase to attribute it to photosynthesis. It is just 5-10 times smaller than the annual oscillation in the northern hemisphere.

One interesting tidbit is that as CO2 levels have been increasing, so has the quantity of CO2 put back into the biomass each growing season. As atmospheric levels of CO2 have increased by 20%, so has the quantity of CO2 taken up by photosynthesis each growing season in the northern hemisphere.

 

[Baluncore]

Sin( x+π ) = – Sin( x ).
So the global annual cycle is the difference between the smaller Southern cycle and the larger Northern cycle.

The long term trend in atmospheric CO₂ will have a slope that varies with the net rate of CO₂ (addition – removal).
It should also have an e^–t curvature determined by any approach to a new photosynthetic equilibrium.
There appears to be no immediate approach to a limit in the long term trend, photosynthetic or elsewise.
If anything the CO₂ is still exponentially increasing as e^+t, with the wrong exponential sign.

If needed, alternative technologies will be selected based on a cost/benefit analysis.
As an economic precaution, we need the widest possible available choice of potential solutions.
The denial of immediate necessity constitutes ignorance of precautionary consideration of potential future alternatives.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

If anything the CO₂ is still exponentially increasing as e^+t, with the wrong exponential sign.

The sky isn't falling, and the increase in atmospheric CO2 is not exponential. The attached graph shows the Mauna Loa data with the best fit exponential, line, and cubic polynomial. The cubic is clearly the best fit, as has been widely recognized in many peer reviewed papers. The exponential is only a slightly better fit than the straight line.

 

[Baluncore]

The sky isn't falling,

Who said it was? Only you.

The point I have made is that atmospheric CO₂ is increasing at an increasing rate.
If there was a significant photosynthetic sink or a natural limit within sight then the slope would be reducing at a reducing rate.
I maintain that there is no evidence yet of a natural upper bulkhead.

By claiming "the sky isn't falling" you are running interference and denying this topic the right to consider potential remedial technologies.

 

[Dr. Courtney]

The point I have made is that atmospheric CO₂ is increasing at an increasing rate.

This is a physics forum. It is important to understand the difference between an exponential increase and "increasing at an increasing rate." Lots of functions that are not exponential can be "increasing at an increasing rate". Positive quadratics are one example. Anyone who knows freshman calculus should be able to give plenty more examples.

If there was a significant photosynthetic sink or a natural limit within sight then the slope would be reducing at a reducing rate.

The photosynthetic sink tends to be short term, because in the current biosphere, most of the CO2 that is used in the growing season is released again within a year by various decay processes.

But as far as scientists can tell, all the CO2 released by the burning of fossil fuels was once in the atmosphere and was added to the natural sink (vegetation that became fossil fuels) by photosynthesis. One wonders if envorironmental or genetic engineering could increase the long term photosynthetic sinks of CO2. If it happened in the past, why can't it happen again?

By claiming "the sky isn't falling" you are running interference and denying this topic the right to consider potential remedial technologies.

Anyone can consider whatever potential remedial technologies they wish. I have denied no one that right. Fraudulent claims that CO2 is increasing exponentially are simply mathematically inaccurate and give deniers ammunition to point how how proponents of certain policies are using inaccurate math.