This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
The question to always ask with these articles is: Is this process prohibitively expensive, or does the process output more CO2 overall than you input? It's always one of the two.
A third question is, can it scale up to what's needed to begin to make a dent in the problem. The answer will unfortunately always be no, not even close. That's how much we've put in the air and oceans, the numbers are huge.
Another greenwashing method.
The slow boil will continue
por que no los dos?
hay más dinero en no hacer nada
So just carry on like normal people! We can keep kicking this can down the road indefinitely, allowing the O&G tycoons continue to rape the planet.
Fuck me.
Yeah, my first thought is we found a way to stave off catastrophe so the deniers can say they were right all along. 🤬
I get the temptation to feel that way, but this development should be seen as a really good thing.
1st we have started to electrify everything which is fantastic but it's a Pandora's box, no one can just put that technology back in the box and we'll see continued development and improvement which reduces CO2 output.
2nd we needed a way to remove the extra CO2 from the atmosphere without overtaxing the environment, this should help us do that and get the planet back to a healthier position.
Making sodium formate (HCOONa), using electrochemistry :
CO~2~ + H~2~ =>> formic acid
H~2~O =>> H~2~ + 1/2O~2~
NaCl + H~2~O =>> NaOH + 1/2H~2~ + 1/2Cl~2~
formic acid + NaOH =>> sodium formate
I guess they must use something similar to this, probably shortening some steps and using efficient solvent at the right temperature and pressure and with the right electrocatalist.
Well, I still prefer photosynthesis which produces sugar (and +). Plants are self replicating, use free solar energy, captues CO~2~ straight from the air and all this probably at a tiny fraction of the cost.
I prefer algae... much more space in the ocean...
My understanding is that pumping algae into the ocean is actually a really bad idea. In a barren pond or abandoned quarry? Sure, great place for it. However, iirc, if the algae blooms it'll suck a lot of oxygen out of the water and I think puts CO2 back into the water (can't remember if it just sucks up oxygen, or if it does both). That can cause marine life to suffocate and result in mass die-offs.
I never understood that- isn't algae a plant therfore o2 producer?
It dies off and sucks oxygen, but its a balance
The problem is that if algae dies, it's most likely die at the same time making a sudden and great O2 shortage making animals die, which creates the same process.
We will never run out of fizzy drinks now!
We need to find a way to produce more co2 faster just in case
I see "electrolysis" and understand "consumes a shit ton of electricity"
That's ok with solar arrays on otherwise unusable land. We're figuring out the clean electricity thing, now we gotta figure out the carbon capture thing.
Sure, okay..........and then what?
They want to use it as fuel again
Seltzer factory
What do you mean? Iirc from the last time I saw this pop up, they wanted to use it as a fuel to heat homes, but it seems like they could just put it back in the ground where it belongs.
I keep waiting for them to discover plants.
Carbon Catch and Release
Any one have a better link?
Yeah, this article seems enamored with the idea that the researchers came up with the idea, but doesn't actually explain how they are doing it at all.
The published study describing their math and method is linked in the article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266638642300485X
The big problem with physical carbon storage is that we emit way too much to ever have enough land to store it all as powder. All of these technologies work great at the demonstration scale, but when you do the math for any sort of scale that would make a dent in our emissions, it's just way too many carbon atoms.
The opportunity, of course, is that it might become feasible to mine the air for carbon (and fold it with added electricity from transient sources like wind/wave/tide/solar) and compete with the folks pumping sequestered carbon fuels from the ground.
Of course, this wouldn't compete with the use cases for petroleum that arise in refining the polymers in oil (think of all the plastics and other compounds that come out of the oil industry that aren't refined fuels). Selling those products is so profitable that for years oil companies have been flaring off excess natural gas at the wellhead to be rid of it instead of spending the money to capture, contain, and ship it to market. On the one hand, if this tech to mine CO2 from the air becomes a competitor, 1 of 2 things happens:
It's probably #2, really refined fuels can be considered a waste product of extracting the petrochemicals
Well, that’s all dandy with this new tech, but question is, is it economically feasible?
Clean, thorium fueled nuclear reactors would be a much better solution for the next hundred or so years until fusion is practical.
