this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2024
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Scientist Discover How to Convert CO2 into Powder That Can Be Stored for Decades (www.scientificamerican.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 44 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Sweet

This only ignores a tiny issue with the CO2 capturing part (that is why we're doing this, right?)

The CO2 in our atmosphere is there because we took energy out of a system, with CO2 as a by product. If we want to convert that CO2 back again to carbon, plastics, you name it, we will have to put back that energy we took as well.

We've been doing this CO2 dumping for a good two centuries now, and we're still at it. The atmosphere has a huge amount of extra CO2 because of that, and if we want to air out all that CO2, well basically have to spent give-or-take the same amount of energy that we've been taking for the past two centuries.

If, starting tomorrow, we magically use only solar, wind and nuclear, and we magically double our energy output, we would have to spend about 50% of our entire energy budget for the next century to pull out all the excess CO2 from the atmosphere. This is ignoring the storage problem (where to safely store it, stable, how, and conversion to anything that can be stored will require energy too) and ignoring things like energy conversion efficiency and losses that typically is around the 30% or so for most engines, meaning that in reality we might actually have to spend multiple centuries on this.

No matter what we do, this is not a problem that anyone alive today will see fixed. This problem is humongous, if not humanity ending, and yet somehow most people think it's something science will solve within the next few years.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago

No matter what we do, this is not a problem that anyone alive today will see fixed.

I'll be fucked sideways with a three pronged dildo if I don't do whatever I can to leave this place better than how it was left to me, no matter how small the outcome of my efforts may be.

The mentality of "whoever comes next can deal with it" is what took us here.

This problem is humongous, if not humanity ending, and yet somehow most people think it's something science will solve within the next few years.

If there is one thing we are good at is finding solutions for problems. Unfortunatelty, we often create new problems for ourselves, which is a nasty habit we should look into solving as well. Not doing anything, at all, is not what we are.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Ok and?

Are you saying not to try?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

We have far more carbon free power sources to use now, and they keep getting better every year.

[–] Xanis 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Isn't the whole point of better technology to create newer and more efficient ways of doing things? Thus wouldn't it be feasible to push that energy back in or back out using methods that may use the same amount of energy, though yield far greater results? I don't know enough about this field, though it makes sense to me that modern tech, and developing tech, must be better than their counterparts two centuries past, and even 10 years ago.

I understand any system requires energy to be used. It's the amount of energy per X unit that makes the difference.

Or am I wrong? Legitimately curious.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Thus wouldn’t it be feasible to push that energy back in or back out using methods that may use the same amount of energy, though yield far greater results?

Yes, it's possible to improve efficiency, up to a limit set by thermodynamics. In this video, a scientist (granted, astrophysicist) talks about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBN9JeX3iDs

Even if we built a 100% efficiency direct air capture system (which is impossible) to get down to 450 PPM CO2 levels by 2050, which is frankly too much already, and even in the more optimistic emission scenario -- all of that still demands roughly 5% of the planet's entire electricity production to be diverted to these machines.

While capture is necessary, it will physically not suffice. We have to stop emitting more; keep fossil fuels in the ground.

[–] doppelgangmember 1 points 11 months ago

Preventative medicine for the Earth basically

[–] CADmonkey 1 points 11 months ago

Are you saying to just give up?

[–] aelwero 21 points 11 months ago

"The resulting powder closely resembles a commercial product that has been safely used for years to melt ice on highways and airports."

It has not been used as snow melt on highways... I fucking wish...

I have a 50lb bag of sodium formate sitting in my garage... It's not a common snow melt, it's a very premium (roughly 4x the price of rock salt at the retail end) snow melt that's much nicer to your cars, your pets (we use it because our poor dog has sensitive paws), your grass, your concrete... And it works way better.

Dumping mass tonnage at every highway maintenance yard instead of rock salt would be a massive benefit to vehicle longevity and the environment in general.

It's a really fucking good idea even without the fuel cell part of the deal :)

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

We can make coal from wood for centuries. The only thing we need to do is to grind it down and bury it. Even better we can make biogas and store it in empty gas deposits.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Yes, and we should do that as well. Trees are a nice CO2 capture process but they take time and space. These people propose a process that instead takes energy, which is good as well as we know that a switch to intermittent renewables will mean we will have periods of abundant energy with negative price.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Good luck dealing with megatonnes of this powder if you ever want to make a small dent in global emissions. It's one thing to capture it, but the sheer amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere is such that we wouldn't be able to handle the amount of product that this process makes.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

All the CO2 in the atmosphere weights on the order of 10^15 kg. That's roughly the size of a lake like the Titicaca lake. I did not do all the calculation as sodium formate is heavier than water but part of its weight is from added atoms (sodium and hydrogen) but that gives a scale of the room it would take. More likely, every country would have a few storage facilities, probably in closed down mines.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Looks sound, but I'm not qualified to say if success will follow. It's certainly stable and also a low-grade fuel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_formate

Upon heating (in the range from 253 C to 411 C), sodium formate decomposes into various compounds - either hydrogen and sodium oxalate, or hydrogen and sodium carbonate - so it's true that it can be used as a fuel without releasing the carbon. Shipping it somewhere where it gets converted back to sodium formate is the tricky part, because that seems unlikely to happen onsite (on a small site, anyway).