Dubious Concept in Carbon Capture
Here’s one of many dozens of ideas I’ve seen to suck the CO2 directly out of the atmosphere. Its promoters claim to have a great number of smart people supporting the concept, but it sure seems asinine from here.
• Where does the energy come from to run the machine? How much carbon is emitted in the process of generating it? They imply that it can be run with renewable energy. Of course it can. But then that renewable energy can’t be used as it otherwise would be, i.e., to displace fossil fuel consumption.
• What is the carbon footprint of building and installing it in the first place?
• Yes, you can make carbon-neutral synthetic fuels out of the captured CO2 and hydrogen from electrolyzed water, but, given that there is only one molecule of CO2 out of every 2500 in the atmosphere, at what price?
• How do the economics of this compare to other modes of carbon reduction, e.g., energy efficiency and off-setting the use of fossil fuels with renewable energy?
I’m going to bet that senior energy analyst Glenn Doty agrees with me here; I hope to see his comments soon.
Of course I agree with you Craig.
🙂
This is asinine nonsense.
I’ve been absent for a while – too busy.
🙂
But if the goal is to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and you have a choice between taking it from the dilute atmosphere (400 ppm – as you say) or taking it from a smokestack which is emitting the CO2 into the atmosphere (~50,000-100,000 ppm), it seems straightforward and self-obvious that taking it from the smokestack would be at cost ~0.4% – 0.8% as much.
We don’t live in a world where we’re likely to run out of smokestacks anytime soon.
I don’t have time to look at their claims concerning how their contraption works, but if you have need of collecting CO2 – which I believe will be crucial for making synthetic renewable fuels – then you should take the CO2 where it is most concentrated, not where it is most dilute.. In the end, it’s all the same atmosphere; so why pay 250 times as much to extract CO2 from less efficient places?
Exactly. Thanks.
They quote a Harvard engineering professor, but I bet he’s been taken out of context. Hope so, anyway….
Nope. I just rewatched the video. And he’s David W. Keith, Professor of Applied Physics, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard University.
Wow, that’s strange. If he had been a professor of French cuisine or basket weaving, I could have understood…..
Glad to hear you’ve been busy, btw. Any progress on WindFuels you’d like to mention?
None yet…
We’ve had that mothballed for a while. We’re working on new products so we can grow our NMR/MRI business and self-fund the WindFuels.
We’d still be happy to talk to investors, but we have to look to our own stability until and unless one arises. R&D for a project like this takes a lot of money… and we didn’t have enough without an investor… So that is paused for now.
🙂
I understand. It’s a neat concept; I hope it can be de-mothballed.