First Successful Demonstration of CO2 Air Capture Technology, a promising solution

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(viking31 @ May 1 2007, 03:48 PM) [snapback]433469[/snapback]</div>

Because we get tired of people saying things like CO2 really cools the Earth, why have CO2 levels varied in the past without human influence and saying we shouldn't do anything anyway because China will soon pass us up as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases?

We've talked science many times here in FHOP, but it's obvious he didn't absorb any of that. CO2 is a proven GWG (among others); it has been increased by human activity in the last 200 years to levels that haven't been seen for over 600,000 years, there are of course natural variations but the recent changes can't be fully explained by natural processes, human activity is a much better explanation scientifically; the scary thing is these changes are happening very fast and the transition could be very difficult for our civilization to adjust to. And just because our neighbor's yard is getting ugly doesn't mean we should trash our own.

Well, the military that adapts to lower oil usage will be the one that can survive. Peak oil is coming, like it or not, and it will probably be the only thing that can lower our usage of oil. If you're concerned about military strength, you might want to read up on what James Woolsey, former head of the CIA says about peak oil, and how relying on foreign countries (many of which are not friendly to U.S. interests) for our survival is not a good thing. Lowering our energy use NOW is the only real option if we want to remain strong as a country.
The U.S. hit its peak oil in the 70's, but the real problems then were politically caused, by foreign countries that could take advantage of our new reliance on their energy. Guess what - that hasn't changed - we're more reliant than ever. And now more countries' supply of oil is peaking - Mexico, Norway, even Venezuela is running out of the cheap stuff. Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia are pretty secretive about the true state of their oil fields, but the reports leaked out don't look good. Gas prices will not go down (year-over-year average), you can bank on that. If OPEC had extra supplies, why are they refusing to increase production even as oil prices climb 25% in 4 months?

We won't cripple our economy by investing in R&D & production of alternative energy - solar energy, wind, cellulosic ethanol, geothermal, etc. The world wants these products, and if we can develop them, that will provide jobs and income for us. If we use these products ourselves it will also reduce our foreign debt (largest single product of which is foreign oil), make us more self-reliant, and save money. Getting more results out of a unit of energy is called productivity, and economists like that.

I agree, we would be hard-pressed to limit China's access to foreign oil, so we better start planning now on how to do make better use of what we have, because more oil isn't happening.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(DaveinOlyWA @ May 1 2007, 03:30 PM) [snapback]433456[/snapback]</div>

The first part has been done, many times. The second part is a little trickier...

Like the volcanic lake in Africa back in 1989 or whatever? It can happen, but they're looking into ways to put CO2 back where it came from - into oil wells. These are thousands of feet down, usually in remote areas. They're doing some tests now, including off-shore rigs in Norway if I remember correctly, to make sure the CO2 won't leak out, and it can be sequestered for thousands of years, if not millions.

Umm, like the CO+O scheme discussed a few posts back? The only problem I see with making it back into hydrocarbons is it involves mixing in hydrogen. If making hydrogen was cheap, we'd be using that as a fuel directly, not going thru the extra steps to put carbon into it. Sure, CO may be useful in industrial processes, but I don't think they'd need as much as we would need to remove from the global atmosphere, so we still need to sequester large amounts safely.

 

Nerfer, well said in both posts. CO is used in a lot of industrial processes, so it has a value aside from syngas (CO + H2O).

Apparently, pushing the CO2 back into oil fields enhances oil recovery not just because of the pressure but also because it lowers the viscosity of the oil. Sticking it 10s of thousands of feet below the earth's surface (into the right geologic structures) would probably sequester it for a pretty long period of time. Having the appropriate geology is key.

 

Thanks Nerfer.
Viking, get a clue.
1) I was specifically referring to Berman and addressing troll like behavior.
2) While I do believe AGW is happening, I do not believe it can be changed and have said so many times. So I am not trying to convince people or debate AGW. So your comment is irrelevent.
3) We discussed peak in the 70's because we DID peak. Now the rest of the world is peaking. Additional oil yet to be found/pumped is nowhere near the amount needed to replace the decline that is just starting to occur, let alone satisfy China's exploding demand. Peak oil does not mean there is no oil, it means the demand cannot be satisfied and sparks will fly.
4) If you think oil is plentiful and AGW is a hoax, why in the f*** are you here? You seriously think humans can continue to exponentially increase our use of finite fossil fuels, and thereby continue to grow the human population exponentially?

My only point in most posts is that AGW/Peak Oil/Arab control of our economy are all related problems and debating one of them is pointless. Different people want to change for different reasons. Great!
Now let's stop debating the reasons and start working on a solution.

 

Years ago, I came up with this idea:

1. Strap a big plastic bag on top of your car.
2. Plumb the tailpipe so it empties into the bag
3. Drive as normal
4. When the bag gets full...just throw it away!!

[laughing]

 

I stumbled across a 1999 Los Alamos white paper on the subject. Very readable, even for a science wannabe like me. They suggest that you could cost-effectively capture C02 by blowing large volumes of air through calcium hydroxide solution, precipitating calcium carbonate. I can vaguely recall having done that (or at least read about it) in high school chem, so the concept isn't exotic at all. No idea how much things have moved on since 1999 but it gave a good overview of it. From first principles they suggest that this could be done, but they hitch is that getting the C02 out of the calcium carbonate takes a lot of energy. I didn't quite understand why they couldn't just leave it as calcium carbonate -- maybe it cost too much, maybe they wanted to sequester gas as the ultimate product. Ah, nope, I think get it -- to make calcium hydroxide commercially, they take limestone and drive off the C02 -- jokes on me, you'd have to recycle the calcium carbonate back to calcium hydroxide or the entire process gives off as much C02 as it takes in.


http://www.osti.gov/bridge/servlets/purl/7...able/770509.PDF

On sequestering C02 gas, I always come back to the 10-lbs-of-crap-in-a-5-lb-bag argument. If I did the math right, the volume of C02 from burning a hydrocarbon is about 1300 times the volume of the original hydrocarbon. So with any resonable level of compression it is going to take up at least several times the space of the original hydrocarbon, and for surface mined coal you can't put it back where it came from anyway. So if we play the usual negative game of assuming that this were the only carbon mitigation strategy available, you'd need a lot of new sites to dispose of the C02 in addition to the sites where the carbon came from originally. That said, sure, it seems like we ought to be able to get rid of some of it like this. Boils down to what's cheapest, I guess.

 

Would it be cheaper to just use algae and then pack and bury the algal goo somewhere? Seems like that would be easier and probably a lot cheaper... if it came to that sort of thing.