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Comment by BurningFrog

9 months ago

The practical applications, should expectations pan out, are pretty fantastic.

- Harvesting water from air anywhere, including the desert, would be incredibly useful. Maybe we can make the air too dry somehow, but that should be manageable.

- I expect the world will solve the CO₂ global warming situation by sequestering the excess CO₂ underground. We know how to sequester gas from the natural gas industry. We just need a way to grab pure CO₂ from the atmosphere. MOFs look like they'll be the best way to do that!

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BurningFrog

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SoftTalker  9 months ago

> We just need a way to grab pure CO₂ from the atmosphere.

You really understate the absolutely massive amount of resources it would take to actually do this.

  • BurningFrog  9 months ago

    First of all: You may well be right about the cost!

    Of course, to solve the biggest problem on the planet, absolutely massive amounts of resources may be the right size investment.

    The way I imagine this to work is that a future MOF material spontaneously accumulates CO₂ molecules from the atmosphere. When it's "full" the CO₂ is extracted (this may be the hard part), and pumped underground (this is mature tech).

    If you can go through this cycle without destroying the MOF, it seems pretty sustainable to me.