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I feel like the only way electric cars can be truly “environment friendly” is if the carbon produced is captured at the plants.
Not sure if it’s at all possible, though.
In: Engineering
*Possible?* Yes, there are ways to do that.
*Practical?* Absolutely not.
The problem with the vast, vast majority of “carbon capture” technology is that it costs more energy to capture the carbon than you get from burning the fuel in the first place.
Carbon capture only has value if it is (a) mostly passive, (b) requires little to no energy to run, and (c) captures carbon at a greater rate than we actually produce it. No existing method does this, and many, *many* people have tried, because if this were possible, it would basically let us keep doing what we’re doing without worrying about switching to clean, non-carbon-emitting energy sources.
Electric cars can be more environmentally friendly than gasoline in a variety of ways. Firstly, if you live in an area that already gets almost all of its energy from clean sources. I live near a very large river that flows into the Pacific ocean, which has several dams across it that generate hydroelectric power. As a result, apart from the occasional use of natural gas to shore up electric load, my state uses nearly 100% non-carbon-emitting energy sources, so our electricity is almost completely “clean.” Likewise, countries like France, which generate most of their electricity from nuclear power, can similarly recharge their electric vehicles with energy sources that don’t emit carbon.
If we can develop a functional fusion reactor, that would allow us to generate clean energy pretty much anywhere, but that’s still a physics dream, not meaningfully practical yet. (My hopes are on the Wendelstein 7-X “stellarator” reactor and related startups, because unlike a tokamak design, a stellarator can produce *continuous plasma.*) Until that day hopefully arrives, we’re dependent on wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal power–all of which have serious limitations. (Hydroelectric is obviously also nice, but the vast majority of hydropower sources are *already in use,* so there’s no further potential for *new* clean energy there.)
So first of all you can generate energy at power plants that don’t generate carbon such as solar, nuclear, hydro, wind or geothermal.
Second gas power plants plus energy transmission to an electric car is still more energy efficient than burning the gas in a car
Third even if it was exactly equal generating the emissions at a power plant is better than generating those emissions in densely populated areas so people don’t breathe them in
Fourth there is more to pollution than just CO2 and generating power at a power plant makes it easier to scrub off things like SOx, NOx and fine particulate matter.
Fifth is the unfortunate one which is carbon capture takes energy to do so while it is possible to do it takes energy to do and the point of burning carbon is to generate energy so if you turn methane into CO2 and water the energy to turn it back into methane will take at least as much energy as you got in a perfect world but in reality will take even more energy
There’s a power plant that pumps the CO2 into an enclosed tomato greenhouse. It really helps the tomatoes flourish. I’ve always wondered why we don’t pair more power plants with agriculture so directly.
The province of Saskatchewan in Canada is experimenting with a carbon capture and storage project at the Boundary Dam power plant (despite the name it’s actually a coal-fired power plant)
It has had middling success so far, and is subject to a hefty amount of criticism- mostly because the CO2 generated is simply being used to frack a nearby oil field and help extract more fossil fuels
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_Dam_Power_Station?wprov=sfti1#Carbon_capture_and_storage_demonstration_project
The fundamental problem with capturing CO2 is what do you with it after that? You can capture as much carbon as you want in f.i. trees, but the minute you burn them (doesnt matter if today or in 50 years), you release the carbon back into the atmosphere. The only way, how to “lower” carbon is to stop digging it from the ground and/or start burying it. Everything else is just bullshit done for PR points.
If we’re talking about something like a coal fired power plant, basically all the energy comes from turning carbon into carbon dioxide. Natural gas is a little better, because some of the energy comes from burning hydrogen into water.
Though there are power plant types that don’t release CO2, like nuclear, solar, wind, hydroelectric, and geothermal.
The most practical option for combustion to become carbon neutral, is to grow the fuel. Maybe algae farms would work.
Yes, it is possible. The explanations in here right now are either unnecessarily complicated or just flat out incorrect.
If you take the exhaust from a power plant and pass it through a catalytic converter you can easily isolate CO2 gas. You can do whatever you want with it really.
One commenter mentioned pumping it into a greenhouse, which is actually a beyond possible solution. I can’t go too into detail because of an NDA I signed (i can’t share any specific data or research), but i recently worked for a power company that wants to do exactly this. When you increase the CO2 available to plants by a factor of 5, the growth rate, size and strength of plants increases drastically as well. A greenhouse with CO2 added to it will produce much more food than one without.
Otherwise, we need CO2 for many products that we use. Plastics, synthetic rubber, carbonated drinks… the list goes on.
Someone pointed out that the only real way to capture carbon and store it away is by burying it or storing it in tanks, and that is true. However, it’s not impossible and it also doesn’t consume more energy than the power plant produces. Not even close.
I honestly don’t understand a lot of the pessimism in this thread. Capturing the carbon emissions from a fossil fuel plant is not at all a bad idea. I think a better way to put it is recycling them. While burying them is perhaps impractical, finding a use for the emissions is not. Carbonated beverages generally get their CO2 from a designated CO2 generator that exists solely to burn a gas (usually propane) and harvest the CO2 byproduct. By instead using the CO2 byproduct of our fossil fuel power plants, we’d be making a real impact.
So yes, it is possible and there are useful applications.
It is possible. It’s wildly expensive thereby making the power plant unprofitable. The power plant is already on the verge of being unprofitable because renewables are so cheap.
There are useful applications – industrial CO2 is a thing, but it’s too expensive to compete with existing industrial CO2 sources.
The cheapest solution remains the same cheapest solution as 100 years ago – don’t emit the CO2 to begin with. Conservation always wins.
Yes it’s possible. Port of Rotterdam is working on a project called Porthos, where they intend to capture emissions from shell, exxonmobil and the likes and store those indefinitely in empty gas fields along the coast.
Finding an alternative use for the emissions, as other commenters explained, is impractical.
It would take more power to capture than you get from emitting the carbon, so the most effective way to capture the carbon is to not emmit it in the first place.
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