98 comments on CO2 Capture and Storage: The Energy Costs
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It's surprising that biological carbon capture, using algae etc., hasn't got more attention yet. I'm not aware of any planned projects in the works, but some tests have been done in the U.S. On the surface of it it seems more scaleable and manageable than geosequestration.
Silly question, but if separating the CO2 from the flue stream is such an expense, has anyone looked at a method of emission capture that just takes everything? Obviously the volumes would be massive, but if you could hold a large volume somewhere, and CO2 being a heavier gas was left to drift to the bottom, you could then release the top portion every so often. Talking completely out of my field of expertise here, but I have to ask!
Most biological organisms will eventually decay and release their CO2 to atmosphere.
Unless their corpses are sent deep underground or undersea where no aerobic bacteria can digest them, and that's difficult to impossible.
I think it's much easer to avoid generating CO2 in the first place---nuclear is better, and we should keep the carbon geologically sequestered as permanently unmined coal.
Well the current plans revolve around using the organisms as a source of fuel, but obviously you'd still have the problem of capturing the left over carbon from that process.
Obviously it's in principle easier to avoid mining the coal in the first place, but even a crash program to replace the world's current fossil-fuel powered plants with nuclear ones would still generate a hellavu lot of CO2.
I hate nukes, but I think you are right.
I hope that Fusion, (IEC Polywell) can play a role. P-B11 fusion is so much cleaner than nukes, and can burn the fission waste.
Dr. Bussards IEC Fusion program... the cure for peak oil ?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/27/213841/746
Even if it was perfected tomorrow, it wouldn't make a dint in the immediate problem of peak oil, a liquid fuels crisis.
However this thread is about CCS, a 'cure' for global warming. Fusion (of any sort) would definitely be a big help there...providing we could actually get it working within the next few decades. I'm not holding my breath.
Carbon capture is needed but problematic, and I agree with the prior comment that there is an advantage to not creating the C02 in the first place. So anything that can partially replace liquid fuels... over time.. say the next 20-30 years, is really good. Unless I miss the mark, generating electricty by solar, wind maybe fusion can play a part in replacing most liquid fuels by ... say.. 2050.
Average US driver drives 30 miles a day.. right ? So there is a portion of liquid fueled vehicles that can easily be replaced by electric. Given time... -sigh-
The P-B11 fusion thing is theoretically very attractive, but I believe there is a problem in keeping the plasma dense enough to make it go. A conceptual problem - like particle physicists doing the math and needing to put two pounds of beans into a one pound bag to make it fly ...
Decay is a biological process. If the dead algae biomass is sterile, it will not decay. How keep it sterile? Store it amongst the canisters of spent nuclear fuel in a nuclear spent fuel storage site. That's a pretty deadly environment, I think. ;-)
Micro-organisms are hardly little things. And yes, some even live in nuclear reactor waste tanks, oddly enough.
Plus check out this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinococcus_radiodurans
"You can never solve a problem on the level on which it was created."
Albert Einstein
Sorry, there's no way to mix two gasses and then have the heavier one "fall to the bottom". They are all perpetually mixed, each having it's own partial pressure. If that weren't so, we'd all be breathing pure 100% oxygen, since O2 molecule is heavier that N2...
Hmm, fair enough - but surely the CO2 *tends* to be more concentrated towards the bottom? Some sort of iterative process then comes to mind (sorry, just thinking like a programmer!).
That's only true to a (very good) approximation.
Uranium is enriched using gas centrifuges. You're right that it'll never work as a CO2 separation technique for the (energy limited) purposes of carbon sequestration through.
Altough still not viable, CO2 separation by centrifuges is much less energy intensive than separation of U isotopes. There are other methods of separating gases, that won't work for uranium, but work very well when you have a biger mass difference.
Also, altough the GP is partialy right, that you can't really separate gases once they are mixed, he's also partialy wrong because those gases will have different concentrations at top and botton of the recipient. That may be usefull on some way.
The problem is that flue gases of conventional CPP contain a lot of Nitrogen and Oxygen and then CO2 etc. You can NOT carbon capture this mix - because if your try to liquify it you would need very low temperatures and high pressures (courtesy to the Nitrogen content). After heated under the ground or sea-bed the liquid air will turn into high-pressure gas which will soon escape through the rocks pores.
The same problem does not apply to pure CO2 - it is liquified relaitvely easily and will stay liquid under moderate pressure underground or underwater.
Capturing flue gases in gaseous form is clearly out of questions - the exhaust gases of conventional CPPs have in the order of 10,000 times the volume of fuel burnt; we will run out of underground storage before making even a minor dent in carbon emissions.
Fair enough, I figured if it were that simple someone would have already proposed it.
So is there really no "passive" form of CO2 capture? No possibility of some sort of membrane that allows nitrogen and oxygen through but not CO2?
Slow pyrolysis of farm and forestry waste produces gaseous and liquid fuels as well as solid charcoal. When mixed with soil the charcoal will remain stable for thousands of years. There is an additional benefit that by using the gaseous and liquid fuels some fossil fuel use is avoided.
Thats what I was saying. Research is being conducted. What will it look like. Will the harvester be fueled by the plants it is carbonizing ? Send all possible fuels to one refinery ? Before we used oil chemicals were derived from wood like methanol which is used in production of biodiesel.
Plant a crop in a field to put carbon into soil, every diferent plant is going to give a diferent result. The source of this method is tropical rainforest using hardwood charcoal. Japan has used chared rice hull in controling golden apple snail in rice production, the rice char is also used to make a light weight soil for roof top gardening.
Depending on what it was, how it is processed and the amount of time it is in the ground, charcoal can have negative and positive effects for agriculture.