This is the chemical engineering entropy/exergy detail that I was studying decades ago, but I was too impatient and bored with it to plough through in such excruciating detail in the DAC concept. Kudos to Mike Landmeier for taking that on.
But in this form, his work serves us well. With sufficient due diligence, he and others confirm the enduring fallacy of inefficiency and exergy destruction of CDR as presently executed. The catch is that I am also involved in carbon capture at scale, with one project able to prevent (via carbon emissions reduction) 4.5 gigatons of carbon equivalent from being emitted to the atmosphere, in just one day, from a Great Lake. That's big, about what the US or China emits annually, but in this case, it happens 400 times faster, and also threatens millions of casualties from toxic gas release.
In terms of what to do and how to do it, I have sometimes alluded to the apocryphal story of Paddy, the Irishman, being asked by an American tourist in Dublin, "Excuse me, sir, could you help me to find my way to Cork? I have a car." "Well," said Paddy, "If I were to be making my way to Cork, I wouldn't be starting here!" The joke is a head scratcher.
30 years ago, I remember laughing at the story, but I was curious to figure out any deeper meaning. Today I can relate. If I were to try to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere, I wouldn't start there with DAC. I would start in the hydrosphere, the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers. These contain more CO2, by far, than the atmosphere. The CO2 is in an uneasy equilibrium between the sea and the sky, migrating between the two. DAC's not just hobbled by the disastrously high cost, but its incapacitating inefficiency.
My take on the complete solution starts with making direct capture of CO2 via these water surfaces less transient, more permanent, and facilitating nature's uptake by conversion of CO2 to algal mass. Further steps, with the right conditions in certain lakes and seas, will anaerobically digest the sinking, dead algae, producing biomethane and biogenic CO2. These bioproducts can be recovered at a low cost and sometimes in vast quantities.
That solution is a game-changer, as nature does all the hard work. We guide it and ensure it does not waste the hard work by burping that gas out again. From the hydrosphere, bioenergy can be produced at very low cost. CO2 can either be stored at depth for millennia or produced as a low-cost feedstock for <$10/ton, way below the $100 - $800 per ton cost from DAC. Then the cost of SAF (Synthetic Aviation Fuel), not to mention protein, lower carbon concrete, and other uses, is not so overburdened that they need 45Q and other, larger subsidies.
It all depends on the economics of using CO2. The energy costs of DAC are less than $100 per ton of CO2; uses of the liquid (supercritical) CO2, worth more than $100 per ton, are feasible. A refundable carbon tax or enhanced oil recovery is potentially viable, and DAC is not local.
Another use would be land elevation to counter sea level rise or land sinking. At $100 per ton for CO2 (about 1 M3 of volume addition), the cost would be much less than property taxes per Ha in most metropolitan areas and cheaper than dykes. A 10 cm elevation would only cost about $100/Ha (10,000 m² or approximately 10 housing lots), which would counteract about 25 years of global warming-induced sea level increase. With very deep injection, the area impacted would be vast, encompassing an entire neighborhood or even a small city. The city of Long Beach, CA, used water injection to elevate some of its sinking areas due to oil extraction by as much as 1 meter.
This is the chemical engineering entropy/exergy detail that I was studying decades ago, but I was too impatient and bored with it to plough through in such excruciating detail in the DAC concept. Kudos to Mike Landmeier for taking that on.
But in this form, his work serves us well. With sufficient due diligence, he and others confirm the enduring fallacy of inefficiency and exergy destruction of CDR as presently executed. The catch is that I am also involved in carbon capture at scale, with one project able to prevent (via carbon emissions reduction) 4.5 gigatons of carbon equivalent from being emitted to the atmosphere, in just one day, from a Great Lake. That's big, about what the US or China emits annually, but in this case, it happens 400 times faster, and also threatens millions of casualties from toxic gas release.
In terms of what to do and how to do it, I have sometimes alluded to the apocryphal story of Paddy, the Irishman, being asked by an American tourist in Dublin, "Excuse me, sir, could you help me to find my way to Cork? I have a car." "Well," said Paddy, "If I were to be making my way to Cork, I wouldn't be starting here!" The joke is a head scratcher.
30 years ago, I remember laughing at the story, but I was curious to figure out any deeper meaning. Today I can relate. If I were to try to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere, I wouldn't start there with DAC. I would start in the hydrosphere, the oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers. These contain more CO2, by far, than the atmosphere. The CO2 is in an uneasy equilibrium between the sea and the sky, migrating between the two. DAC's not just hobbled by the disastrously high cost, but its incapacitating inefficiency.
My take on the complete solution starts with making direct capture of CO2 via these water surfaces less transient, more permanent, and facilitating nature's uptake by conversion of CO2 to algal mass. Further steps, with the right conditions in certain lakes and seas, will anaerobically digest the sinking, dead algae, producing biomethane and biogenic CO2. These bioproducts can be recovered at a low cost and sometimes in vast quantities.
That solution is a game-changer, as nature does all the hard work. We guide it and ensure it does not waste the hard work by burping that gas out again. From the hydrosphere, bioenergy can be produced at very low cost. CO2 can either be stored at depth for millennia or produced as a low-cost feedstock for <$10/ton, way below the $100 - $800 per ton cost from DAC. Then the cost of SAF (Synthetic Aviation Fuel), not to mention protein, lower carbon concrete, and other uses, is not so overburdened that they need 45Q and other, larger subsidies.
It all depends on the economics of using CO2. The energy costs of DAC are less than $100 per ton of CO2; uses of the liquid (supercritical) CO2, worth more than $100 per ton, are feasible. A refundable carbon tax or enhanced oil recovery is potentially viable, and DAC is not local.
Another use would be land elevation to counter sea level rise or land sinking. At $100 per ton for CO2 (about 1 M3 of volume addition), the cost would be much less than property taxes per Ha in most metropolitan areas and cheaper than dykes. A 10 cm elevation would only cost about $100/Ha (10,000 m² or approximately 10 housing lots), which would counteract about 25 years of global warming-induced sea level increase. With very deep injection, the area impacted would be vast, encompassing an entire neighborhood or even a small city. The city of Long Beach, CA, used water injection to elevate some of its sinking areas due to oil extraction by as much as 1 meter.