Technology Defeats Climate Change

 

I’ve written about the scientific basis for why I’m skeptical about catastrophic anthropogenic climate change before — have fun reading that one! — but if you didn’t find my rationale convincing, the reasons to ignore catastrophists are really piling up. If it’s true that “tomorrow’s technologies will solve today’s problems,” we live in an age of wonders.

Why is that? Harvard scientists have announced the invention of an energy-efficient means of carbon capture:

You read that correctly: this is a chemical process for extracting CO2 from the atmosphere that has been invented and demonstrated at small scale. The implications of this technological leap forward are obvious and large.

What are the details? According to Yahoo! News;

Carbon Engineering, a Canadian-based clean energy company, outlined the design of a large industrial plant that it said could capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a cost of between $94 and $232 a tonne.

Also,

CE has operated a pilot plant on a 0.5-hectare industrial site in Squamish, BC, since 2015.

The design goal for the pilot were (1) to test each unit operation for which there is significant technical risk at a scale the equipment supplier judged sufficient to allow specification of commercial-scale hardware, and (2) to test the most important units as components of a closed-loop process. The pilot plant builds on previous prototype data that CE acquired for each unit, and on work with SPX, RHDHV, and Technip to design and size the contactor, pellet reactor, and calciner, respectively. CE’s pilot data have been used to refine the commercial-scale plant design described earlier.

The upshot of some of this technical mumbo-jumbo (I’ve read through it and there’s nothing remotely magical going on in there) is that CE (Carbon Engineering) is able to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via this chemical process and reduce that carbon to a liquefied form. The resulting carbonate product can be used in a technique called the Fischer-Tropsch Process to polymerize the captured carbon into liquid fuels, such as diesel, gasoline or jet fuel (kerosene.)

Although the F-T Process is somewhat more energy intensive, the actual carbon capture technology itself clocks in with a price tag of around just $0.12 per pound — making the captured carbon hydrate reasonably cheap as fuel feedstock.

This is fantastic news on a variety of fronts. Not only could it “save the planet” if you’re the sort of person who is genuinely concerned about anthropogenic climate change, but the reaction to this news should serve as a dye test, distinguishing the honestly concerned from “Watermelons” – you know, people who masquerade as green on the outside but are thoroughly red on the inside.

The future is going to be great.

Published in Environment
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  1. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Y’all are so dang smart! I knew you could do it!
    (I’m excited if Majestyk is. Just sayin’.)

    Now back to my knitting…

    • #31
  2. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Hilariously, BTW, I had just emailed a male relative/environmentalist with the sad news from the WSJ that Climate Change as a subject for public policy is essentially dead. I suggested it had been murdered by the SJWs who were more interested in who was using which bathroom…then this news broke, and I had to re-email him to say “my bad! Turns out we’re going to fix it with science! So…back to the microaggressions! Yay!”

    • #32
  3. Jules PA Inactive
    Jules PA
    @JulesPA

    @katebraestrup you make me laugh. 😂

    • #33
  4. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    If we lose the hysteria about CO2 we’ll go back to knowing that’s it’s vital and that we need more of it.  How does the left turn that into subsidies and more control?   

    • #34
  5. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    Brian Watt (View Comment):

    Mark Wilson (View Comment):

    Phil Turmel (View Comment):

    I’m not impressed at all. The technology is purely for capturing CO2 in still-oxidized form. The real energy consumption is in reducing the CO2 back to C in some fuel form. That takes at least as much energy as was released when it was burned in the first place. Which is fine if that energy is coming from a nuke, but otherwise you’re just oxidizing in a power plant to reduce in a fuel plant. And losing some to conversion along the way. Dumb.

    I think you touched on the key point but then brushed it aside. Take as an assumption that we will continue to need the energy density of hydrocarbon fuels for the transport economy. With a nuclear power source (or fusion!) we can eventually shift the hydrocarbon fuel economy away from finite and conflict-prone fossil fuel reserves and toward an infinitely renewable home-grown industry — all without having to replace all our vehicles with newfangled Teslas and Bolts. This would make our transportation potentially cheaper, cleaner, and higher performing than battery-powered electric vehicles.

    We are so close…we need more banana peels and discarded beer cans to continue development.

    Is that the diagram for an oscillation overthruster?

    • #35
  6. Steve C. Member
    Steve C.
    @user_531302

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Brian Watt (View Comment):

    Mark Wilson (View Comment):

    Phil Turmel (View Comment):

    I’m not impressed at all. The technology is purely for capturing CO2 in still-oxidized form. The real energy consumption is in reducing the CO2 back to C in some fuel form. That takes at least as much energy as was released when it was burned in the first place. Which is fine if that energy is coming from a nuke, but otherwise you’re just oxidizing in a power plant to reduce in a fuel plant. And losing some to conversion along the way. Dumb.

    I think you touched on the key point but then brushed it aside. Take as an assumption that we will continue to need the energy density of hydrocarbon fuels for the transport economy. With a nuclear power source (or fusion!) we can eventually shift the hydrocarbon fuel economy away from finite and conflict-prone fossil fuel reserves and toward an infinitely renewable home-grown industry — all without having to replace all our vehicles with newfangled Teslas and Bolts. This would make our transportation potentially cheaper, cleaner, and higher performing than battery-powered electric vehicles.

    We are so close…we need more banana peels and discarded beer cans to continue development.

    Is that the diagram for an oscillation overthruster?

    Nice…

    • #36
  7. CarolJoy Coolidge
    CarolJoy
    @CarolJoy

    Meanwhile the actual 0.0 cents per unit of carbon capture are good old trees, which many Global Catastrophic “Realists” are either totally ignoring or else deciding to cut down, because as we all know by now: trees = fire.

    In Great Britain they actually cut down the lovely grand old oaks lining various highways and replaced the trees with these huge metallic monstrosities that several “studies” proved now are better at carbon sinking  than any dumb old trees.

    Which puzzles me, because trees don’t capture carbon, they transform it via photosynthesis into oxygen. So until these carbon sinkers actually put oxygen in the air, and given that I am a mouth breather who likes oxygen, I’ll vote for the trees. As un-environmental a stance as that may be proven to be.

     

    • #37
  8. CarolJoy Coolidge
    CarolJoy
    @CarolJoy

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):

    Hilariously, BTW, I had just emailed a male relative/environmentalist with the sad news from the WSJ that Climate Change as a subject for public policy is essentially dead. I suggested it had been murdered by the SJWs who were more interested in who was using which bathroom…then this news broke, and I had to re-email him to say “my bad! Turns out we’re going to fix it with science! So…back to the microaggressions! Yay!”

    Sadly, the California Wall Street Journal is keeping Climate Change alive. As is the California governor and his gazillion page, state legislature- approved Global Climate Change Initiative. Among other things, this legislation  requires farmers to put diapers with charcoal filtration units on cows so they don’t pollute the atmosphere with their methane.

    • #38
  9. Mark Wilson Inactive
    Mark Wilson
    @MarkWilson

    CarolJoy (View Comment):

    Which puzzles me, because trees don’t capture carbon, they transform it via photosynthesis into oxygen. So until these carbon sinkers actually put oxygen in the air, and given that I am a mouth breather who likes oxygen, I’ll vote for the trees. As un-environmental a stance as that may be proven to be.

    You may be a little confused on the chemistry.  Trees capture carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O).  They use sunlight and six of each molecule,  rearranging the constituent atoms produce one glucose sugar molecule (C6-H12-O6) and six oxygen gas molecules (O2).  At no point is carbon transformed into oxygen — that only takes place in the cores of stars.  When the glucose is subsequently metabolized by the plant or by an animal eating it, the carbon ends up re-released as carbon dioxide.

    Any synthetic process that captures carbon dioxide and produces hydrocarbons would almost certainly have to produce oxygen gas as a byproduct.

    The main purported benefit of the technology in the original post is to have a source of raw materials for hydrocarbon fuel that is in principle unlimited because we can pull it directly from the previous combustion products already in the air, rather than digging it up from finite reserves underground.

    • #39
  10. CarolJoy Coolidge
    CarolJoy
    @CarolJoy

    Mendel (View Comment):

    Mark Wilson (View Comment):
    I think you touched on the key point but then brushed it aside. Take as an assumption that we will continue to need the energy density of hydrocarbon fuels for the transport economy. With a nuclear power source (or fusion!) we can eventually shift the hydrocarbon fuel economy away from finite and conflict-prone fossil fuel reserves and toward an infinitely renewable home-grown industry — all without having to replace all our vehicles with newfangled Teslas and Bolts. This would make our transportation potentially cheaper, cleaner, and higher performing than battery-powered electric vehicles.

    I think you’re brushing aside the key objection.

    Turning atmospheric CO2 into usable hydrocarbons is a two-step process: 1) capture the CO2, and 2) chemically reduce it into something useful (most likely methane). The development Shawn is reporting is for step 1), but step 2) is by far the most formidable hurdle in the above process.

    It’s not just a matter of CO2 reduction requiring “lots of energy”; the current methods are inefficient enough that we would likely emit more CO2 building the huge number of nuclear plants (or solar panels or whatever) required for the process.

    Plus I am  always wondering about the carbon footprint that the plants that will do the processing will leave while being constructed.  I think you re the only other person I have encountered that thinks about this as well.

    • #40
  11. CarolJoy Coolidge
    CarolJoy
    @CarolJoy

    Mark Wilson (View Comment):

    CarolJoy (View Comment):

    Which puzzles me, because trees don’t capture carbon, they transform it via photosynthesis into oxygen. So until these carbon sinkers actually put oxygen in the air, and given that I am a mouth breather who likes oxygen, I’ll vote for the trees. As un-environmental a stance as that may be proven to be.

    You may be a little confused on the chemistry. Trees capture carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O). They use sunlight and six of each molecule, rearranging the constituent atoms produce one glucose sugar molecule (C6-H12-O6) and six oxygen gas molecules (O2). At no point is carbon transformed into oxygen — that only takes place in the cores of stars. When the glucose is subsequently metabolized by the plant or by an animal eating it, the carbon ends up re-released as carbon dioxide.

    Any synthetic process that captures carbon dioxide and produces hydrocarbons would almost certainly have to produce oxygen gas as a byproduct.

    The main purported benefit of the technology in the original post is to have a source of raw materials for hydrocarbon fuel that is in principle unlimited because we can pull it directly from the previous combustion products already in the air, rather than digging it up from finite reserves underground.

    I stand corrected. And was pleased your correction was concise and polite. As well as being better science than the ideas I hold from that long ago six grade science class.

    • #41
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