The ‘world’s largest’ vacuum to suck climate pollution out of the air just opened. Here’s how it works
The ‘world’s largest’ vacuum to suck climate pollution out of the air just opened. Here’s how it works
Mammoth will suck in air using giant fans, separate the carbon and transport it underground where it will transform into stone
This implies 3 main problems:
- They're using the captured carbon for extracting more oil, which is self-defeating. That's not surprising considering who's been behind this kind of technology.
- It means allocating geothermal energy to something else. Is there a dislocation of energy supply here? Are other energy users in Iceland using fossil fuels because they can't access geothermal due to the Climeworks?
- Places with geothermal are rare, thus it's an exceptional example, not one that can be repeated easily. Having that device be powered by fossil fuels would be, again, self-defeating.
Occidental says the captured carbon will be stored in rock deep underground, but its website also refers to the company’s use of captured carbon in a process called “enhanced oil recovery.”
Oh yes, let's just hedge our bets and use projects with the guise of being a climate solution to actually help oil companies scrape the bottom of the barrel. What the hell.
"Greenwashing". Always look at the full process and the total energy cost. Marketing can sell anything, including saving the planet.
CNN is notorious for stretching the truth in pursuit of the class interest of their owners.
AFAIK, the oil companies need a large volume of gas that's free from oxygen. I wonder how energy intensive this "carbon capture" tech is compared to capturing the 78% nitrogen that makes up our atmosphere? This implementation of the technology might be worse for the environment than doing nothing.
That's a good point. Could it be cheaper for the company even if it takes more energy because "green" solutions get subsidies?
This particular project doesn't do that. And it's all very much in the proof of concept stage. There may still come a time when this sort of technology is our last resort. In the meantime it won't hurt to keep developing it.
36 kilotons a year. Only short by 6 sig figs. You'd need over a 100,000 of these to reach net zero. And the cost for each ton removed is "closer to $1,000 a ton than $100 a ton". Let's say $500 a ton, which is less than the actual cost. That's $18 million a year for this one facility, and you'd need >$1.8 trillion annual to run all the facilities for net zero. It would become the largest single industry in the world (passing agriculture at $1.3 trillion annually)
It's something that needs to be done eventually, but can't be used to get us to net zero.
So, yeah. Neat, but something for after the transition.
Not how it works, not hoe it's being deployed, and not how they're planning to make it practical
What a garbage article. Cool tech tho, even if I don't think it'll go anywhere
Ummm it's called a forest, and we're burning them down, not planting them.
For forests to be a meaningful part of a carbon capture discussion we'd need to be intentionally cutting down and regrowing some trees (which with current technology isn't not something I'm actually suggesting). Once cut down, the tree matter would need to be stuck somewhere that wouldn't return to the carbon lifecycle. All the oil we ever burned into the atmosphere over the last century had been firmly removed from the carbon cycle for hundreds of millions of years. Essentially all living plant matter draws carbon from the atmosphere/oceans, but most of that carbon goes back to the atmosphere eventually due to all the things that eat plants, the things that eat those things, the things that eat their waste, etc. Most of the chain after plants weren't around when the organic deposits that eventually turned into oil were first laid. Heck, I'd bet none of the exact species that gorged on the carbon rich atmosphere are around now either, they've probably been outcompeted by organisms that adapted to lower carbon environments. Plants didn't even decompose initially, because nothing had evolved to do that.
Basic carbon cycle science aside, in my opinion, bringing up forests when discussing carbon capture is exactly like talking about consumer recycling. It's an easily digestible distraction away from the dozens of solutions that corporations don't want you thinking about. Wikipedia says if we covered all available land in forests we'd sequester 20 years carbon at the current rate of consumption. Bear in mind, humans are using that land for food and housing, and we're making every effort to grow the population even more.
It would be great if these approaches would actually contribute in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be the case.
This is an article with some relevant info:
Climeworks’ “Mammoth” vacuum cleaner is not a solution to the climate crisis
Climeworks’ newest DAC plant, Mammoth, is purported to capture ten times the amount of CO2 as Orca; some 36,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. (...) If 36,000 tonnes sounds like a big number, it’s not: It equates to one one-millionth of our annual global emissions. Even if Climeworks and other DAC companies do build hundreds of these DAC plants, it would not equate to even one per cent of current annual global emissions.
From our world in data on CO2 emissions:
we now emit over 35 billion tonnes each year
It's a small project. Hopefully they make money, then they can build a larger project, all while learning about the processes and engineering involved.
Then later if (when ☹️) we need to scale it we might be able to much easier.
Discarding projects like this is like dismissing solar energy 20 years ago because what impact does that small solar project have?
Eh thats 973k machines, 5k to build per country without counting the amount of electricity infrastructure needed (rounded) still too expensive
For comparison, a hectar of trees remove about 10 tons CO2 per year.
A hectar is 100m to 100m.
10 tons is ~22000 lbs
100m is ~330 feet
So a forest of 35 hectar would replace that machine. That's a very small forest that you can cross in 30 minutes by foot.
Trees don't grow where this machine is placed, though.
The epitome of capitalist dystopia. Tech won't save us of our problems as society.
Here's how it works: it doesn't
Hey whats your background in this field?
Are you also saying it will never work no matter how many iterative improvements are made for the design, and no matter how cheap production becomes after refining the manufacturing process?
I have a bachelors in chemical engineering, the energy balance on these devices never works out favourably. As soon as you scale up to any meaningful impact on GHGs, you get power inputs on the scale of entire countries.
If you'd like to do a proper literature review instead of daydreaming, I'd be happy to look it over
If only someone thought to have Trump christen it while standing very, very close.
Lonestar is our only hope