This post suggests the energy cost is ~230kWh/ton.
This is an important sanity check because it means that (capital costs aside) and if it scales you could technically remain carbon neutral for a net output of energy.
While this is of course only in a lab and they mention "battery" one should remain skeptical (since pretty much every battery "breakthrough" is nothing more than marketing for research funding).
This may be in the paper but in this summary I didn't see anything about how the CO2 needs to be delivered. Does it need to be in a relatively pure form? What sort of preprocessing is required?
As for the capital costs, it's hard to say anything concrete here other than if silver and Gallium are catalysts, they're both relatively cheap at that scale (Gallium seems to be <$250/kg according to some quick Googling). Catalysts tend to have a lifespan so those aren't one-time costs generally but still.
It's also not clear how much of each material is required.
Not to be a broken record on HN, but I've often said--and I'll repeat here--that I don't believe altruism will solve greenhouse gas emissions and global warming: it'll only be solved when it becomes economic to do so.
Another way of putting that is when the cost of carbon capture and/or non-greenhouse gas emitting energy sources is profitable, that's when you'll see change.
Gallium is currently supplied by reprocessing the waste from other convenient metal ores to extract the traces of gallium. Even if we maximized gallium extraction from these waste streams, we are talking about a few thousand tons of gallium per year. We produce more gold every year than there is practically available gallium.
Unfortunately this is the story with many proposed solutions to carbon capture. Many things are possible as a prototype which are completely infeasible at the industrial scales required to make a dent in atmospheric carbon because the resources don't exist to run chemistry at that scale.
It is possible that we might be able to find more if we actively start looking for it? This would not be the first time that what was once a waste product becomes valuable once we know how to use it. Regarding gallium itself, its presence as basically waste product in bauxite ore suggests we can increase production (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...) and there may be other sources if we start searching.
Everything else relies on miracles and/or unobtainium.
Completely agree. We need governments to ensure externalities (both positive and negative) are reflected in market pricing so that economic forces can operate efficiently.
Implication: there must be a debt to pay for past and present GHG output. It should not be punitive. But it should be clear and predictable.
A debt which should be paid by past users, not current users who merely share the same country.
The moment you mention how a carbon tax works (that it’s a market mechanism) progressives recoil. When evangelizing to progressives, I try to focus on “making polluters pay for the damage they are doing” (as opposed to making taxpayers bail us out) since they are more likely to be persuaded by appeals to fairness rather than efficacy.
Similarly, conservatives recoil at “tax” nomenclature, so when evangelizing to the , I refer to it as “carbon pricing” and emphasize the economic efficiency argument.
In either case, we have a long way to go, politically.
The experiments described in the paper have used pure CO2. The conversion process is unlikely to work directly with air, because it decomposes CO2 into solid carbon partially oxidated and dioxygen.
If one of the products of the catalyzed reaction, i.e. oxygen from the air, would be present in a much larger concentration than the input substance (CO2), like in the air, the conversion reaction will either stop completely or it will be at least slowed down a lot.
So besides the costs for the energy and for renewing the silver and gallium from time to time and also for the organic solvents that might also need to be replaced from time to time, the cost of separating CO2 from the air must be added.
Nevertheless, it might still eventually be cheaper than alternative methods, as most of them also need to first separate the CO2 from the air.
In any case, much more research is needed to scale this from experiments in minute quantities to industrial dimensions.
Making something like graphite from pure CO2 has certain advantages as well (easier to get purity) and graphite electrodes are used in scrap steel recycling and other industries.
For comparison, see the ISS use of Sabatier reaction and some issues they had with catalyst poisoning:
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140002591
This indicates that power plant emissions, typically contaminated with sulfur / arsenic / mercury / nitrogen etc. , at about 10% CO2 as I recall, would be a very poor option relative to direct air capture.
As far as scaling, even existing systems (see ISS) could be scaled fairly rapidly and would be able to produce enough fuel for specialized uses, i.e. plausibly supplying SpaceX / ULA/ etc. rocket launches as a first step, then moving to supply airports with jet fuel for long-distance travel at a much larger scale.
Even then, NOx can be mitigated. This process is fascinating in that unlike most "breakthroughs" this has a semblance of a chance of scaling.
Now I firmly believe the future here is ultimately space-based solar power collectors. I've seen estimates that a panel in space around Earth can generate ~7 times the power it can on Earth. This is a deep topic but generating power in space for use on Earth isn't as crazy as it may sound.
Anyway, another potential application is to use variable power output for useful purposes on-site. For example, you can extract CO2 directly from the atmosphere and with simply chemistry you can make gasoline from that. This is currently cost-prohibitive so no one does it.
At some point this may become economic, in which case the variable power output won't be an issue. You're now only interested in the total output. You also don't lose power from transmission or require the capital cost of transmission lines.
Perhaps CO2 capture is another potential such application. Either the CO2 could be processed on site with a process like this and the byproducts (pure carbon and oxygen) can be sold.
You have a bug somewhere, I'm not sure where.
Roughly speaking the heat of combustion is proportional to the number of atoms of oxygen in the molecules coming out of the reaction.
So CH4 + 2 O2 = CO2 + 2 H20
If you hypothetically split CH4 first, you get
CH4 + 2 O2 = (C + 2 H2) + 2 O2 = (C + O2) + (2 H2 + O2) = CO2 + 2H20
The first reaction is endothermic, but it absorbs much less heat than the heat produced by the second part of the reaction.
So, you can roughly say that the energy coming from burning CH4 comes half from burning the Carbon and half from burning the Hydrogen.
Now, if you can make the reverse reaction CO2 -> C + O2 with 100% efficiency, then sure, you get to economically burn CH4 with zero emissions. But if that reaction has only 50% efficiency, then all your (energetic) profit has been wiped out.
The article doesn't say what efficiency this envisioned reaction has, but I'd be mightily surprised if it were 50%.
Much better to not burn the Carbon to begin with. That is what methane pyrolysis [1] tries to do.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis#Methane_pyrolysis_fo...
Obtaining a pure stream of CO2 concentrated from 400 ppm atmospheric sources is the optional approach for industrial chemistry processes (and requires significant upfront energy investment), but from here one can go almost anywhere, to methane or jet fuel or graphite electrodes or carbon fiber building materials or synthetic dyes.
However, it's unlikely these technologies will have much effect on reducing atmospheric CO2 levels. They simply eliminate the need for natural gas / petroleum / coal as raw materials for synthesis of necessary products.
Wouldn’t it be a lot better though to somehow turn CH4 into hydrogen and carbon, bury the carbon or use it for uses that don’t end up in the atmosphere, and burn the hydrogen alone or use it in fuel cells? Fuel cells might get you to pretty good energy yields.
Norway is now building pipes to pump CO2 down to the old oil wells.
Seems like it starting to get economically profitable to grab CO2 from the air and sell the quota?
You should know that injecting old oil wells with CO2 helps them produce more oil. The CO2 becomes carbonic acid under pressure, which then dissolves pores in the rock wider, allowing more oil and gas to escape.
Also, it looks pretty doubtful that CO2 will stay in gas wells for a long time. Eventually it'll find some fissure and due to the acidity any crack will be eroded wider till all the CO2 comes out like a fizzy drink.
But don't worry. Oil and gas companies will happily collect government subsidies for pumping CO2 underground to get more oil out to sell, in the knowledge that when the gas escapes in a few decades they can act all surprised...
At ~€1000 per person we could easilly afford to go CO2 neutral. It's just a question of will
However if you are talking about CO2 already in the air, you have a MASSIVE amount of energy required to separate/concentrate the CO2 FIRST.
Even though you have to expend energy to preconcentrate CO2, the benefit of having a clean stream (assuming not downwind of Los Angeles) of CO2 is that further industrial chemistry is much easier, catalysts last much longer, etc.
That's true, but the economics are being badly skewed by not properly accounting for the externalities of emissions. If this were done (e.g. a global carbon tax) the situation would change dramatically.
If you are a young person reading this I would seriously consider making this a litmus test for any politician you are considering voting for, and urging your peers to do the same. Otherwise your generation is in for a (literally!) a world of hurt.
You've listed altruism and economics, but may have discounted self-interest-- not financial, but survival. Young adults especially are both at an age where they can expect to feel some especially nasty impacts of climate change, and at a point in their career where they can begin making decisions accordingly.
The generations above that have family, children, etc, and that too is at least a mix of self interest and , I supposed, a form of altruism directed towards your family.
It's not easy for us to think in such timelines and abstract outcomes, but we're making progress in that direction.
I'm not saying self-interest in terms of self preservation will be the key factor here either, just that it not just about a sort of mechanical economic optimization point. At some tipping point, economic w/ technological advances will converge with self preservation. I guess the question is whether or not that will happen soon enough to really matter. Economics may be the dominant factor now, but the worse things get, the less that economics will matter in making decisions, the more that self preservation will become dominant.
We need more than altruism, which is local sacrifice. We need global enforcement and agreement and, I agree with GP, incentive.
BTW, the "economic" solution consists of making it in everyone's self interest to work against CO₂ emissions.
The term "economic" can mean a lot of things. Solar and Wind can be cost-effect replacements for many uses of fossil fuel. With some regulations and transformation of daily surplus energy to other forms, you could get an economy with energy costs similar to the present and low carbon usage. So if "economic" just means, idk, works in an economy, then it's essentially not an important barrier (except the state should finance it's efforts with a graduated income tax and not a visibly-punishing measures like carbon or at-the-pump taxes, instead just making some things eventually prohibited but cushioning the blow for those poor or industries want to preserve).
But if by "economic", you mean the economy has to just do what it "wants" with no intervention at all, well we'll not only suffer the disasters of global warming but also unbridled pollution.
We may be underpricing the collapse of our civilization due to climate change. It'll be extremely inconvenient and really bad for businesses all over.
The carbon capture market NEEDS to have public funding/intervention to make it profitable.
Now, carbon capture will be important if we want to have a chance of undoing atmospheric CO2, but IMO, while now it the time to invest in research it's not the time to deploy. More public/government funds need to be pushed towards limiting CO2 output and eliminating sources of CO2.
The notion of carbon capture is much the same as having urine capture in a swimming pool. There is no way it won't cost more energy to remove than it produced when released.
That aside, electrifying vehicles doesn't necessarily reduce emissions significantly. It may simply shift the emissions from individual vehicles to the power plant that produces the power that charges the cars.
Now this is nearly always a net positive: large-scale fossil-fuel burning power generation is pretty much always more efficient (even accounting for transmission power loss) but the point is that emissions don't go to zero.
Another interesting thought: the price of gasoline acts as a barrier to vehicle usage to some degree. As in, knowing you have to spend $50 to fill up the tank affects your behaviour to varying degrees. Well with electric vehicles depending on where you live that marginal cost might be <$5 per tank-equivalent of range.
I wonder if that means that with a fully electrified vehicle fleet, people will end up driving more because of the lower marginal costs.
> The solid co-contributor of silver-gallium rods ensures a cyclic sustainable process
Unsure if this means the gallium is consumed or not during the process.
Give you an idea. Gen plant burning natural gas produces CO2, use some of gen electric to cool the emitted CO2 down then mine the result battery artifacts
Can we have a carbon bankrupt ? If a company can't prove they are not emitting CO2 or getting CO2 out of the atmosphere then they are not allowed to operate anymore ?
I know it's nickelodeonsimplistic but can't carbon emissions be considered more important than money when deciding to allow companies to operate ?
We don't need technological solutions, we need political solutions. Now
The political solution were nuclear plants in the 70’s. They were damned by the Ecologists (at least in Europe). We are reaping what we sowed.
Where do you want the energy to come from?
This is controversial
It's not our fault the industry didn't provide us with alternatives.
That means that for every $1 the oil industry makes, it is creating $2 of debt for future generations.
This is vandalism, pure and simple
Capturing CO2 from flue gas at power plants should be a good bit cheaper, but I think it’s still significant.
The need for the worlds supply of gallium and a lot of silver and other chemicals signals more red flags.
HN Story 8 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28873458
My response: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28874831
For carbon capture to be useful from a climate perspective, we have to actually lock away the consumed carbon somewhere where it can’t enter the fast carbon cycle.
I quickly skimmed it but the protocol on page 13 seems simple, the chemicals involved are relatively low risk (verify the MSDS).
Mix some gallium metal with a powder of a Silver salt in a mortar and pestle, put it in a solvent, stir it with a magnetic stirrer, while bubbling CO2, in a N2 atmosphere, and carbon snowflakes should float to the top in a few hours.
Maybe some chemist can help make it into a safe for all kid science-fair project.
Since the last crash of oil prices there was a radical move toward rare earth material mining. Every minining and exploration company tried look into ways to mine and find better uses of rare earth minerals that would generate the same pre-crash oli and gas profits.
But reviewing half a decades stock research or DD of these newly pivoted mining companies I find nothing to be radical and it is often the same repackaged environmental well being rhetoric from the industry.
There is no pioneering business, leader or technology in rare earth mining. And I am often very skeptical of mining industry talking about positive environmental consequences of mining.
Even though we are divided on Musk's contribution in revolution in EV industry but he didn't push an environmental agenda IMO but he pushed for providing better consumer utility while minimzing negative environmental consequences. If rare earth industry as a whole quite non-inuitivetly provide or promise of enhanced utility (in the economic sense) without mentioning positive environmental consequences as a headline then I will believe.
https://www.youtube.com/c/lockpickinglawyer/search?query=Gal...
If it can be retrofitted to existing generators, then at least they stop generating CO2 into the atmosphere.
There's been a lot of nonsensical "CCS" (Carbon Capture and Storage) where the "storage" is "somehow pump it back underground where it screws the water table".
At least this mechanism captures the CO2 into a form where not only is it potentially useful, but is also easy to re-store in a stable way, potentially back to the same coal mines the original fossil fuel came from.
The advantage of using gallium is that it is in liquid form. When the gallium is regenerated after catalyzing one cycle of the reaction, it mixes again with the liquid gallium.
Being liquid ensures a long life for the catalyst. Solid catalysts are never recovered perfectly after taking part in the reaction and then being again deposited on their support, so they degrade much faster.
The mechanism of solid catalyst degradation is similar to that which limits the life of a rechargeable battery with solid electrodes.
230 * 0.07 = 16.1 dollars.
So that suggests that most of the cost is not energy.
Not sure if this is really competitive enough. Just read recently[1][2] that EEMPA based solution can capture at a cost of $47
[1] http://netl.doe.gov/projects/files/CostAndPerformanceBaselin... [2] https://scitechdaily.com/cheaper-carbon-capture-is-on-the-wa...
[0]: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/carbon-costs-quantifie...
And once it scales, it will be cheaper and cheaper, jut like most other products. With a 10 percent price reduction per year, it would be $620 per person in 10 years, roughly the same as an internet bill.
In the rest of the world it's even cheaper. The average person in the world could be offset for $400 now.
Even if that weren't the case, the atmosphere is 21% oxygen and 0.04% CO2.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101029132924.h...
However, even if this was an economically viable solution to the perceived problem of CO2 in the atmosphere, this doesn't help with the goal of setting up a global government and global tax, so it would be ignored.
Anthropogenic global warming, as a studied issue, is not about solving the world's problems; it's about setting up a global government with a global tax. It always has been; it hasn't even pretended to be anything else. The motivations have always been ostensibly about solving global warming, but the plans have always been very public; set up a global tax and a global government to implement this tax. That could not be more clear.
Ask yourself, if you were planning on taxing the entire planet, even if it was only .1% of their GDP (~80 billion), would you rather have that money or have some random scientist discover the solution to the problem that leads to you getting 80 billion dollars?
