156
Scientist Discover How to Convert CO2 into Powder That Can Be Stored for Decades
(www.scientificamerican.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2023
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Storing carbon as sodium formate has the same problem as storing it as trees - bacteria will eat it and release CO2. Its also not useful as portable fuel - its energy density is an order of magnitude less than kerosene.
Its potential use as a battery is interesting though. I can imagine a system where a long lasting catalyst is used to fill a tank of sodium formate using waste CO2 from industrial processes and excess electrical generation capacity from renewable sources like wind and solar, and the machines that use sodium formate to generate electricity at times of low wind and solar generation could potentially be less polluting overall compared to mining lithium for new batteries and recycling worn out lithium batteries.
See, here's an actual reason why this doesn't work for sequestering carbon. Like, it frustrates me to no end that lemmy, as supposedly environmentally conscious as it is, immediately throws out any man-made attempts at carbon capture and insists that plants are the only solution.
If there's a real reason why it wouldn't work, then okay! I get that! Just... We're already burning up here and we need all the help we can get. We're already suffering the consequences of climate change and it's only going to get worse, why is everyone so excited to discount any attempts to improve the capture process? Do you really wanna live with 2023's weather (or the weather for whatever year we finally start decreasing CO2 output) for however long it takes for the environment to fix itself, or would you rather researchers were trying to find newer, faster ways of capturing it so we don't have to keep having extreme weather well into the 2060s or later? Even if we switch to all renewables overnight, If you just sit back and let trees do the job, we'll probably still be experiencing the effects of climate change for the rest of our lives.