For many years now I have wondered why we aren’t able to turn the air captured carbon into useful things like carbon fiber or carbon nanotube batteries. surely there must be some way of doing this through the magic of chemistry.
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So the problem is that we don’t *want* the carbon we capture. The planet already has a very robust carbon cycle, with CO2 floating around, getting slurped up by the biosphere into things like trees, sitting there for a while, then progressively drizzling it’s way back into the atmosphere through processes like decomposition (when the tree dies), etc. A very very small amount of carbon ends up *sequestered* and turning into chemicals like peat moss or (eventually) coal and oil, but this happens on geological timescales.
When carbon is sequestered in this fashion, it no longer participated in the carbon cycle, and thus no longer contributes to the balance of our biosphere (including warming effects). Our problem is not that we’ve added CO2 to the atmosphere. Our problem is that we got the CO2 *from the ground*. We have been taking massive amounts carbon that has been out of circulation for hundreds of millions of years and adding it all back into the system all at once.
Put another way: burning tree logs isn’t a problem (the carbon you release was already in the biosphere), but burning oil absolutely is (the carbon you release hasn’t seen oxygen since before mammals were cool).
The only useful thing we can do with captured carbon is bury it in the ground, taking it back out of circulation and ensuring it can no longer interact with the biosphere. As mentioned, there is actually a very natural process for doing this, it’s just so very very slow compared to how rapidly we’re digging up ancient hydrocarbons and lighting them on fire, so it’s not a great situation all around.
This, btw, is why you can’t “offset” carbon emissions by planting trees.
We technically can, but in practice it’s just doesn’t make economical sense. Take carbon fiber for example, we know of several ways to synthetize it. But not all method are equal, the one we use the most is the cheapest method.
Now we want to extract CO2 from the atmosphere, then transform that CO2 into carbon fiber. What are the chances that this specific method will be cheaper than the cheapest method we developed so far or that we will develop in the future? Chance are, creating carbon fiber that way will always be more expensive.
Then there is the problem of scale. We produce around 140,000 tons of carbon fiber each year worldwide. This seem a lot, but we emit 37,000,000 tons of CO2 each year, around 27% of that mass is carbon so about 10 billions of carbon each year, which is more than 70 times more than our current production of carbon fiber. My point here is that even if 100% of our production of carbon fiber was made from atmospheric CO2, this would remove about 1% of the CO2 we emit into the atmosphere each year. It wouldn’t help, it would only make carbon fiber more expensive.
This is also the problem with most things we can or want to make out atmospheric carbon. We just don’t need most of those material in large enough quantity to make a dent in the massive emission of CO2.
Even plastic we only produce 380 millions tons each year. Even if we could create a replacement for plastic made exclusively of carbon and that 100% of all the plastic we do would be done this way, it would only represent less than 4% of our emission.
Material we used to make stuff, we typically don’t use a lot of it on the grand scheme of things. Don’t get me wrong, 380 millions tons each year is massive, but not comparatively to the scale of CO2 emission.
Something that we consume would be closer in scale. Plastic we build something with it, it usually last at least a couple of years. But something like gasoline we consume on a regular basis. The world consume about 366 millions of tons of gasoline per year. Now we are getting closer to the scale of CO2 emission.
Obviously, removing CO2 from the atmosphere to create gasoline which gonna release CO2 in the atmosphere isn’t the ideal situation. But it’s not like we can stop using gasoline all together, so at least this way we wouldn’t be adding new CO2 into the atmosphere.
The question is can we produce gasoline cheap enough? Right now no, but as the technology improve and the price of gasoline keep increasing we might reach a point where it become a lot closer in price, but it could take a long time.
So the problem is that we don’t *want* the carbon we capture. The planet already has a very robust carbon cycle, with CO2 floating around, getting slurped up by the biosphere into things like trees, sitting there for a while, then progressively drizzling it’s way back into the atmosphere through processes like decomposition (when the tree dies), etc. A very very small amount of carbon ends up *sequestered* and turning into chemicals like peat moss or (eventually) coal and oil, but this happens on geological timescales.
When carbon is sequestered in this fashion, it no longer participated in the carbon cycle, and thus no longer contributes to the balance of our biosphere (including warming effects). Our problem is not that we’ve added CO2 to the atmosphere. Our problem is that we got the CO2 *from the ground*. We have been taking massive amounts carbon that has been out of circulation for hundreds of millions of years and adding it all back into the system all at once.
Put another way: burning tree logs isn’t a problem (the carbon you release was already in the biosphere), but burning oil absolutely is (the carbon you release hasn’t seen oxygen since before mammals were cool).
The only useful thing we can do with captured carbon is bury it in the ground, taking it back out of circulation and ensuring it can no longer interact with the biosphere. As mentioned, there is actually a very natural process for doing this, it’s just so very very slow compared to how rapidly we’re digging up ancient hydrocarbons and lighting them on fire, so it’s not a great situation all around.
This, btw, is why you can’t “offset” carbon emissions by planting trees.
we can do it, it is the reverse of what happened when we burned the carbon in an engine. doing so costs energy (releasing that energy is why we burned it in the first place) and there are much easier ways to get raw materials.
There is a concrete that is being made in New York City that uses sequestrated CO2 to make a stronger concrete, it’s the only product I’ve seen so far that’s potentially viable but theres a long way between high priced new tech concrete and mass affordable adoption
We technically can, but in practice it’s just doesn’t make economical sense. Take carbon fiber for example, we know of several ways to synthetize it. But not all method are equal, the one we use the most is the cheapest method.
Now we want to extract CO2 from the atmosphere, then transform that CO2 into carbon fiber. What are the chances that this specific method will be cheaper than the cheapest method we developed so far or that we will develop in the future? Chance are, creating carbon fiber that way will always be more expensive.
Then there is the problem of scale. We produce around 140,000 tons of carbon fiber each year worldwide. This seem a lot, but we emit 37,000,000 tons of CO2 each year, around 27% of that mass is carbon so about 10 billions of carbon each year, which is more than 70 times more than our current production of carbon fiber. My point here is that even if 100% of our production of carbon fiber was made from atmospheric CO2, this would remove about 1% of the CO2 we emit into the atmosphere each year. It wouldn’t help, it would only make carbon fiber more expensive.
This is also the problem with most things we can or want to make out atmospheric carbon. We just don’t need most of those material in large enough quantity to make a dent in the massive emission of CO2.
Even plastic we only produce 380 millions tons each year. Even if we could create a replacement for plastic made exclusively of carbon and that 100% of all the plastic we do would be done this way, it would only represent less than 4% of our emission.
Material we used to make stuff, we typically don’t use a lot of it on the grand scheme of things. Don’t get me wrong, 380 millions tons each year is massive, but not comparatively to the scale of CO2 emission.
Something that we consume would be closer in scale. Plastic we build something with it, it usually last at least a couple of years. But something like gasoline we consume on a regular basis. The world consume about 366 millions of tons of gasoline per year. Now we are getting closer to the scale of CO2 emission.
Obviously, removing CO2 from the atmosphere to create gasoline which gonna release CO2 in the atmosphere isn’t the ideal situation. But it’s not like we can stop using gasoline all together, so at least this way we wouldn’t be adding new CO2 into the atmosphere.
The question is can we produce gasoline cheap enough? Right now no, but as the technology improve and the price of gasoline keep increasing we might reach a point where it become a lot closer in price, but it could take a long time.
There is a concrete that is being made in New York City that uses sequestrated CO2 to make a stronger concrete, it’s the only product I’ve seen so far that’s potentially viable but theres a long way between high priced new tech concrete and mass affordable adoption
we can do it, it is the reverse of what happened when we burned the carbon in an engine. doing so costs energy (releasing that energy is why we burned it in the first place) and there are much easier ways to get raw materials.
It can be done. It takes energy. The same energy we got by burning the fossil fuels in the first place, plus more to account for inefficiencies. A lot more, since internal combustion engines are very inefficient.
If we had a sufficient energy source we could reduce CO2, but then we wouldn’t need hydrocarbon fuels in the first place.
It’s much more efficient to use new, green energy sources as a replacement for fossil fuel, than burn dirty carbon and try to re-capture the CO2 out of the air.
It can be done. It takes energy. The same energy we got by burning the fossil fuels in the first place, plus more to account for inefficiencies. A lot more, since internal combustion engines are very inefficient.
If we had a sufficient energy source we could reduce CO2, but then we wouldn’t need hydrocarbon fuels in the first place.
It’s much more efficient to use new, green energy sources as a replacement for fossil fuel, than burn dirty carbon and try to re-capture the CO2 out of the air.
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