You can estimate that from global carbon emissions. The things yo'd have to consider are
What proportion of fuel is carbon, and what is hydrogen What proportion of fuel is biomass and thus excluded from the calculations Are all combustion processes hot enough to oxidise methane What's the relationship between CO2 in air and CO2 in flue gas - this will allow you to estimate the mass flow rate through the combustion process What's the proportion of methane in flue gas compared to air (this will give the efficiency) What role does forest fire and slash-and burn agriculture play? If anyone's got the relevant stats then this calculation would be really handy. I've never seen an estimate of the % of methane that is removed from the atmosphere by anthropogenic combustion. A 2009/1/28 Stuart Strand <[email protected]>: > > How much air flows through the global combustive generating capacity? > > > = Stuart = > > Stuart E. Strand > 167 Wilcox Hall, Box 352700, Univ. Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 > voice 206-543-5350, fax 206-685-3836 > skype: stuartestrand > http://faculty.washington.edu/sstrand/ > > Using only muscle power, who is the fastest person in the world? > Flying start, 200 m 82.3 mph! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Whittingham > Hour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hour_record > 55 miles, upside down, backwards, and head first! > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of dsw_s > Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2009 5:15 PM > To: geoengineering > Subject: [geo] Re: methane air capture > > > Compression ignition requires a suitable ratio of fuel to air. Even > if compression in a diesel engine perfectly removed methane from the > air, you're not going to process the atmosphere a few hundred cc at a > time. To remove methane from the air, I see two options: increase the > amount of hydroxyl radical if there's enough methane to deplete it, or > as you say build air-cooled CSP plants. For the CSP option you would > want a counter-flow heat exchanger and a catalytic converter on the > outgoing air. > > On Jan 27, 2:03 pm, Andrew Lockley <[email protected]> wrote: >> If you fixed up diesel engine to a wind turbine, you'd get compression >> ignition of any methane residue in the atmosphere, even without >> injecting any fuel. This would be expensive, but I think it would >> work. >> >> An alternative would be to pump air through concentrated solar power plants >> >> Any thoughts? We appear to need some bright ideas on methane >> remediation pretty soon. >> >> A > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
