[geo] Is Capturing Carbon from the Air Practical? | MIT Technology Review
Poster's note : big takeaway for me was the enormous size of market for EOR CO2 http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531346/can-sucking-co2-out-of-the-atmosphere-really-work/ Physicist Peter Eisenberger had expected colleagues to react to his idea with skepticism. He was claiming, after all, to have invented a machine that could clean the atmosphere of its excess carbon dioxide, making the gas into fuel or storing it underground. And the Columbia University scientist was aware that naming his two-year-old startup Global Thermostat hadn’t exactly been an exercise in humility.But the reception in the spring of 2009 had been even more dismissive than he had expected. First, he spoke to a special committee convened by the American Physical Society to review possible ways of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through so-called air capture, which means, essentially, scrubbing it from the sky. They listened politely to his presentation but barely asked any questions. A few weeks later he spoke at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory in West Virginia to a similarly skeptical audience. Eisenberger explained that his lab’s research involves chemicals called amines that are already used to capture concentrated carbon dioxide emitted from fossil-fuel power plants. This same amine-based technology, he said, also showed potential for the far more difficult and ambitious task of capturing the gas from the open air, where carbon dioxide is found at concentrations of 400 parts per million. That’s up to 300 times more diffuse than in power plant smokestacks. But Eisenberger argued that he had a simple design for achieving the feat in a cost-effective way, in part because of the way he would recycle the amines. “That didn’t even register,” he recalls. “I felt a lot of people were pissing on me.”CTO and co-founder Peter Eisenberger in front of Global Thermostat’s air-capturing machine.The next day, however, a manager from the lab called him excitedly. The DOE scientists had realized that amine samples sitting around the lab had been bonding with carbon dioxide at room temperature—a fact they hadn’t much appreciated until then. It meant that Eisenberger’s approach to air capture was at least “feasible,” says one of the DOE lab’s chemists, Mac Gray.Five years later, Eisenberger’s company has raised $24 million in investments, built a working demonstration plant, and struck deals to supply at least one customer with carbon dioxide harvested from the sky. But the next challenge is proving that the technology could have a transformative impact on the world, befitting his company’s name. The need for a carbon-sucking machine is easy to see. Most technologies for mitigating carbon dioxide work only where the gas is emitted in large concentrations, as in power plants. But air-capture machines, installed anywhere on earth, could deal with the 52 percent of carbon-dioxide emissions that are caused by distributed, smaller sources like cars, farms, and homes. Secondly, air capture, if it ever becomes practical, could gradually reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As emissions have accelerated—they’re now rising at 2 percent per year, twice as rapidly as they did in the last three decades of the 20th century—scientists have begun to recognize the urgency of achieving so-called “negative emissions.” The obvious need for the technology has enticed several other efforts to come up with various approaches that might be practical. For example, Climate Engineering, based in Calgary, captures carbon using a liquid solution of sodium hydroxide, a well-established industrial technique. A firm cofounded by an early pioneer of the idea, Eisenberg’s Columbia colleague Klaus Lackner, worked on the problem for several years before giving up in 2012.“ Negative emissions are definitely needed to restore the atmosphere given that we’re going to far exceed any safe limit for CO2, if there is one. The question in my mind is, can it be done in an economical way?” A report released in April by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that avoiding the internationally agreed upon goal of 2 °C of global warming will likely require the global deployment of “carbon dioxide removal” strategies like air capture. (See “The Cost of Limiting Climate Change Could Double without Carbon Capture Technology.”) “Negative emissions are definitely needed to restore the atmosphere given that we’re going to far exceed any safe limit for CO2, if there is one,” says Daniel Schrag, director of the Harvard University Center for the Environment. “The question in my mind is, can it be done in an economical way?” Most experts are skeptical. (See “What Carbon Capture Can’t Do.”) A 2011 report by the American Physical Society identified key physical and economic challenges. The fact that carbon dioxide will bind with amines, forming a molecule called a carbamate, is well known chemistry. But carbon
Re: [geo] Is Capturing Carbon from the Air Practical? | MIT Technology Review
The current market for CO2 for EOR is closer to 50 million tons a year (about 80% of that supplied from natural reservoirs). Estimated demand in the US could be 10x higher, about 500 million tons. Not sure where the 3 billion tons figure comes from unless it an estimate based on using CO2 to produce oil from residual oil zones. Sent from my iPad On Oct 7, 2014, at 6:33 AM, Andrew Lockley andrew.lock...@gmail.commailto:andrew.lock...@gmail.com wrote: Poster's note : big takeaway for me was the enormous size of market for EOR CO2 http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531346/can-sucking-co2-out-of-the-atmosphere-really-work/ Physicist Peter Eisenberger had expected colleagues to react to his idea with skepticism. He was claiming, after all, to have invented a machine that could clean the atmosphere of its excess carbon dioxide, making the gas into fuel or storing it underground. And the Columbia University scientist was aware that naming his two-year-old startup Global Thermostat hadn't exactly been an exercise in humility.But the reception in the spring of 2009 had been even more dismissive than he had expected. First, he spoke to a special committee convened by the American Physical Society to review possible ways of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through so-called air capture, which means, essentially, scrubbing it from the sky. They listened politely to his presentation but barely asked any questions. A few weeks later he spoke at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory in West Virginia to a similarly skeptical audience. Eisenberger explained that his lab's research involves chemicals called amines that are already used to capture concentrated carbon dioxide emitted from fossil-fuel power plants. This same amine-based technology, he said, also showed potential for the far more difficult and ambitious task of capturing the gas from the open air, where carbon dioxide is found at concentrations of 400 parts per million. That's up to 300 times more diffuse than in power plant smokestacks. But Eisenberger argued that he had a simple design for achieving the feat in a cost-effective way, in part because of the way he would recycle the amines. That didn't even register, he recalls. I felt a lot of people were pissing on me.CTO and co-founder Peter Eisenberger in front of Global Thermostat's air-capturing machine.The next day, however, a manager from the lab called him excitedly. The DOE scientists had realized that amine samples sitting around the lab had been bonding with carbon dioxide at room temperature--a fact they hadn't much appreciated until then. It meant that Eisenberger's approach to air capture was at least feasible, says one of the DOE lab's chemists, Mac Gray.Five years later, Eisenberger's company has raised $24 million in investments, built a working demonstration plant, and struck deals to supply at least one customer with carbon dioxide harvested from the sky. But the next challenge is proving that the technology could have a transformative impact on the world, befitting his company's name. The need for a carbon-sucking machine is easy to see. Most technologies for mitigating carbon dioxide work only where the gas is emitted in large concentrations, as in power plants. But air-capture machines, installed anywhere on earth, could deal with the 52 percent of carbon-dioxide emissions that are caused by distributed, smaller sources like cars, farms, and homes. Secondly, air capture, if it ever becomes practical, could gradually reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As emissions have accelerated--they're now rising at 2 percent per year, twice as rapidly as they did in the last three decades of the 20th century--scientists have begun to recognize the urgency of achieving so-called negative emissions. The obvious need for the technology has enticed several other efforts to come up with various approaches that might be practical. For example, Climate Engineering, based in Calgary, captures carbon using a liquid solution of sodium hydroxide, a well-established industrial technique. A firm cofounded by an early pioneer of the idea, Eisenberg's Columbia colleague Klaus Lackner, worked on the problem for several years before giving up in 2012. Negative emissions are definitely needed to restore the atmosphere given that we're going to far exceed any safe limit for CO2, if there is one. The question in my mind is, can it be done in an economical way? A report released in April by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that avoiding the internationally agreed upon goal of 2 °C of global warming will likely require the global deployment of carbon dioxide removal strategies like air capture. (See The Cost of Limiting Climate Change Could Double without Carbon Capture Technology.) Negative emissions are definitely needed to restore the atmosphere given that we're
RE: [geo] Is Capturing Carbon from the Air Practical? | MIT Technology Review
EOR is certainly useful for oil and gas companies, but of course a large part of that CO2 propellant is coming back to the surface together which the oil or gas that they push out of the reservoir, Olaf Schuiling From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com [mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Lockley Sent: dinsdag 7 oktober 2014 12:33 To: geoengineering Subject: [geo] Is Capturing Carbon from the Air Practical? | MIT Technology Review Poster's note : big takeaway for me was the enormous size of market for EOR CO2 http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531346/can-sucking-co2-out-of-the-atmosphere-really-work/ Physicist Peter Eisenberger had expected colleagues to react to his idea with skepticism. He was claiming, after all, to have invented a machine that could clean the atmosphere of its excess carbon dioxide, making the gas into fuel or storing it underground. And the Columbia University scientist was aware that naming his two-year-old startup Global Thermostat hadn’t exactly been an exercise in humility.But the reception in the spring of 2009 had been even more dismissive than he had expected. First, he spoke to a special committee convened by the American Physical Society to review possible ways of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through so-called air capture, which means, essentially, scrubbing it from the sky. They listened politely to his presentation but barely asked any questions. A few weeks later he spoke at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory in West Virginia to a similarly skeptical audience. Eisenberger explained that his lab’s research involves chemicals called amines that are already used to capture concentrated carbon dioxide emitted from fossil-fuel power plants. This same amine-based technology, he said, also showed potential for the far more difficult and ambitious task of capturing the gas from the open air, where carbon dioxide is found at concentrations of 400 parts per million. That’s up to 300 times more diffuse than in power plant smokestacks. But Eisenberger argued that he had a simple design for achieving the feat in a cost-effective way, in part because of the way he would recycle the amines. “That didn’t even register,” he recalls. “I felt a lot of people were pissing on me.”CTO and co-founder Peter Eisenberger in front of Global Thermostat’s air-capturing machine.The next day, however, a manager from the lab called him excitedly. The DOE scientists had realized that amine samples sitting around the lab had been bonding with carbon dioxide at room temperature—a fact they hadn’t much appreciated until then. It meant that Eisenberger’s approach to air capture was at least “feasible,” says one of the DOE lab’s chemists, Mac Gray.Five years later, Eisenberger’s company has raised $24 million in investments, built a working demonstration plant, and struck deals to supply at least one customer with carbon dioxide harvested from the sky. But the next challenge is proving that the technology could have a transformative impact on the world, befitting his company’s name. The need for a carbon-sucking machine is easy to see. Most technologies for mitigating carbon dioxide work only where the gas is emitted in large concentrations, as in power plants. But air-capture machines, installed anywhere on earth, could deal with the 52 percent of carbon-dioxide emissions that are caused by distributed, smaller sources like cars, farms, and homes. Secondly, air capture, if it ever becomes practical, could gradually reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As emissions have accelerated—they’re now rising at 2 percent per year, twice as rapidly as they did in the last three decades of the 20th century—scientists have begun to recognize the urgency of achieving so-called “negative emissions.” The obvious need for the technology has enticed several other efforts to come up with various approaches that might be practical. For example, Climate Engineering, based in Calgary, captures carbon using a liquid solution of sodium hydroxide, a well-established industrial technique. A firm cofounded by an early pioneer of the idea, Eisenberg’s Columbia colleague Klaus Lackner, worked on the problem for several years before giving up in 2012.“ Negative emissions are definitely needed to restore the atmosphere given that we’re going to far exceed any safe limit for CO2, if there is one. The question in my mind is, can it be done in an economical way?” A report released in April by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that avoiding the internationally agreed upon goal of 2 °C of global warming will likely require the global deployment of “carbon dioxide removal” strategies like air capture. (See “The Cost of Limiting Climate Change Could Double without Carbon Capture Technology.”) “Negative emissions are definitely needed to restore the atmosphere given
Re: [geo] Is Capturing Carbon from the Air Practical? | MIT Technology Review
If you are looking for a beneficial and high capacity use of (expensively) concentrated CO2, look no further than using it to restore carbonate saturation state in the ocean via contacting with limestone or Olaf's silicates. By my calculation you'd need to consume some 250 GT of CO2 in this fashion to generate enough alkalinity to restore surface ocean carbonate chemistry to pre-industrial levels. That would seem to dwarf anything EOR has to offer, plus it actually creates a net carbon sink not a source. But then no one is doing to get rich doing this, at least not until those estimated $Ts in economics damages from fossil-energy-(+EOR)-induced ocean acidification kick in. Greg On 10/7/14 4:05 AM, Hawkins, Dave dhawk...@nrdc.org wrote: The current market for CO2 for EOR is closer to 50 million tons a year (about 80% of that supplied from natural reservoirs). Estimated demand in the US could be 10x higher, about 500 million tons. Not sure where the 3 billion tons figure comes from unless it an estimate based on using CO2 to produce oil from residual oil zones. Sent from my iPad On Oct 7, 2014, at 6:33 AM, Andrew Lockley andrew.lock...@gmail.commailto:andrew.lock...@gmail.com wrote: Poster's note : big takeaway for me was the enormous size of market for EOR CO2 http://www.technologyreview.com/news/531346/can-sucking-co2-out-of-the-atm osphere-really-work/ Physicist Peter Eisenberger had expected colleagues to react to his idea with skepticism. He was claiming, after all, to have invented a machine that could clean the atmosphere of its excess carbon dioxide, making the gas into fuel or storing it underground. And the Columbia University scientist was aware that naming his two-year-old startup Global Thermostat hadn't exactly been an exercise in humility.But the reception in the spring of 2009 had been even more dismissive than he had expected. First, he spoke to a special committee convened by the American Physical Society to review possible ways of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through so-called air capture, which means, essentially, scrubbing it from the sky. They listened politely to his presentation but barely asked any questions. A few weeks later he spoke at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory in West Virginia to a similarly skeptical audience. Eisenberger explained that his lab's research involves chemicals called amines that are already used to capture concentrated carbon dioxide emitted from fossil-fuel power plants. This same amine-based technology, he said, also showed potential for the far more difficult and ambitious task of capturing the gas from the open air, where carbon dioxide is found at concentrations of 400 parts per million. That's up to 300 times more diffuse than in power plant smokestacks. But Eisenberger argued that he had a simple design for achieving the feat in a cost-effective way, in part because of the way he would recycle the amines. That didn't even register, he recalls. I felt a lot of people were pissing on me.CTO and co-founder Peter Eisenberger in front of Global Thermostat's air-capturing machine.The next day, however, a manager from the lab called him excitedly. The DOE scientists had realized that amine samples sitting around the lab had been bonding with carbon dioxide at room temperature--a fact they hadn't much appreciated until then. It meant that Eisenberger's approach to air capture was at least feasible, says one of the DOE lab's chemists, Mac Gray.Five years later, Eisenberger's company has raised $24 million in investments, built a working demonstration plant, and struck deals to supply at least one customer with carbon dioxide harvested from the sky. But the next challenge is proving that the technology could have a transformative impact on the world, befitting his company's name. The need for a carbon-sucking machine is easy to see. Most technologies for mitigating carbon dioxide work only where the gas is emitted in large concentrations, as in power plants. But air-capture machines, installed anywhere on earth, could deal with the 52 percent of carbon-dioxide emissions that are caused by distributed, smaller sources like cars, farms, and homes. Secondly, air capture, if it ever becomes practical, could gradually reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As emissions have accelerated--they're now rising at 2 percent per year, twice as rapidly as they did in the last three decades of the 20th century--scientists have begun to recognize the urgency of achieving so-called negative emissions. The obvious need for the technology has enticed several other efforts to come up with various approaches that might be practical. For example, Climate Engineering, based in Calgary, captures carbon using a liquid solution of sodium hydroxide, a well-established industrial technique. A firm cofounded by an early pioneer of the idea, Eisenberg's Columbia colleague Klaus Lackner, worked on the
