Comment by Detrytus
5 hours ago
This solves only part of the problem: it captures CO2 and can release it later. But you still need to figure out what to do with this CO2, how to turn it into something useful.
5 hours ago
This solves only part of the problem: it captures CO2 and can release it later. But you still need to figure out what to do with this CO2, how to turn it into something useful.
A startup from Quebec is using an electrochemical process to produce potassium formate from CO2.
Electro Carbon https://www.electrocarbon.ca/en
https://sustainablebiz.ca/clear-the-runway-electro-carbon-be...
Their process for generating potassium formate is greener than standard methods. It does require electricity as an input but that can come from renewable, green sources.
Potassium formate is used in de-icing products, fertilizer, heat transfer fluids, drilling fluid, etc... so a useful, monetizeable output comes out of the process.
Disclosure - Know the founders personally. Wanted to shoutout their work. No financial ties to the company.Chemistry is not at all my expertise & I don't have details on their process beyond what's on the website.
you can inject it into peridotites and let it mineralize. there is enough exposed peridotite outcrops in the world that we could inject all the co2 produced and store it there indefinitely. this process also produces elemental hydrogen.
Do you have any links on research on that? Serious question.
Yes.
For example:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0805794105
Peter Kelemen has written a lot of papers on this topic.
Here is a more recent paper that I wrote together with Peter and others currently in review:
https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/9651/
This is more about the mechanics of how the rock breaks to allow fluids to move around.
And here is another paper currently in review that we coauthored about how we know there’s gas moving in the system and therefore hydrogen is being produced:
https://essopenarchive.org/users/543018/articles/1363688-eni...
Tbh I have no idea why we didn’t submit these to arXiv instead of these other preprint servers.
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Someone proposed to make giant beaches of malachite and let the sea break the rocks. Malachite has two -OH that can be replaced by a CO3= and so capture the CO2.
I can't find a good link now, but at least it's the only method I know where it's not obvious that requires a huge amount of energy that makes the whole process net negative.
I'm fine with keeping it inside something brick-shaped and chucking it down an abandoned mine from where it can be retrieved at a later time. It would definitely be a storage improvement over "the atmosphere and our lungs".
It can be used as an energy storage by compressing / releasing + powering a turbine. Good for storing excess wind + solar energy.
If it is reasonably energy efficient, this could be used to feed a methane processor, especially on Mars.
Stable storage would be limestone. To bring it down to pre-industrial levels it would mean that each person on earth would get a cube of 5 meters a side.
IDK, build houses out of limestone like we have been doing for ages.
Roads maybe?
The answer is obvious: create a cryptocurrency-based economy where countries and citizens are incentivized to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and ship it into space in exchange for crypto.
/s
One of the subplots from the excellent Delta-V series by Daniel Suarez.