Sucking carbon dioxide from air is cheaper than scientists thought

[progressoid]

This artist's rendering shows Carbon Engineering's design for an 'air contactor' to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.credit: Carbon Engineering

Siphoning carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere could be more than an expensive last-ditch strategy for averting climate catastrophe. A detailed economic analysis published on 7 June suggests that the geoengineering technology is inching closer to commercial viability.

The study, in Joule, was written by researchers at Carbon Engineering in Calgary, Canada, which has been operating a pilot CO2-extraction plant in British Columbia since 2015. That plant — based on a concept called direct air capture — provided the basis for the economic analysis, which includes cost estimates from commercial vendors of all of the major components. Depending on a variety of design options and economic assumptions, the cost of pulling a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere ranges between US$94 and $232. The last comprehensive analysis of the technology, conducted by the American Physical Society in 2011, estimated that it would cost $600 per tonne.

Carbon Engineering says that it published the paper to advance discussions about the cost and potential of the technology. “We’re really trying to commercialize direct air capture in a serious way, and to do that, you have to have everybody in the supply chain on board,” says David Keith, acting chief scientist at Carbon Engineering and a climate physicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.


more: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05357-w?utm_source=twt_nnc&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=naturenews&sf191287565=1

[lapfog_1]

1. at $100 per tonne...

we are now only $4 Trillion a year away from neutral CO2 (no MORE CO2 than present at the time of construction of untold thousands of these carbon sink machines). Maybe $5T a year to reduce carbon back to 1970 levels.

expensive... around a $10,000 a year tax on every carbon user in the world ( WAG because I don't how many people live in a carbon producing lifestyle) - could be less.

[StevieM]

4. I think the hope is that carbon capture, like solar power, can be brought down dramatically in price

over the course of many years.

Maybe it can be a global effort starting in 2050 and lasting for 50-100 years. In the mean time, we should strive to reduce carbon emissions to 90 percent less than 1990 levels by the time that 2050 arrives.

[Throck]

2. Some idiot will want to carbonate beverages with it.

[progressoid]

6. Super Mega Soda Stream!

[Delmette2.0]

3. This is the dumb question for the day.

What to we use all that carbon for once it is removed from the air?

[lapfog_1]

5. We could all use some bling, right?

seriously, the uses of carbon nanotubes have only started to be explored

[caraher]

9. Their intent is to make liquid fuels using the carbon

Which makes the process at best carbon neutral, depending on the energy source they use to capture the carbon.

[hunter]

7. Better yet, don't put the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the first place...

This process uses 366 kilowatt hours per ton of carbon dioxide extracted.

Then you use more energy to turn that carbon dioxide into fuel.

After we quit fossil fuels this might be a useful thing, but until then it's just more wishful thinking.

The only way to quit fossil fuels is to quit fossil fuels.

In any case, I should've used a catchier title...

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127117756

[NNadir]

8. Overcoming the entropy of mixing requires energy.

The question of whether or not this is a perpetual motion machine depends on the source of energy.