Test Facility Begins Capturing Carbon from Air
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/542226/test-facility-begins-capturing-carbon-from-air/[font size=4]Pilot plant in Canada tries to demonstrate carbon capture on an industrial scale.[/font]
By Richard Martin on October 9, 2015
Carbon Engineering’s air contactor passes ambient air through liquid to produce a carbon dioxide-rich solution.
[font size=3]On Friday a group of government officials, environmentalists, and local bigwigs gathered in the coastal town of Squamish, British Columbia, about an hour north of Vancouver, to mark the onset of what could one day be a new industry: creating carbon-neutral transportation fuel made from carbon dioxide captured from air.
The company that built the plant, Carbon Engineering, was founded by a Canadian scientist named David Keith. A Harvard professor of applied physics, Keith has made headlines before for his outspoken advocacy for more research into geoengineering (specifically, seeding the lower stratosphere with sulfuric acid to reflect sunlight and cool the planet). With the carbon capture venture, though, Keith is being careful not to overhype his company’s technology: while Carbon Engineering’s process should be able to strip carbon dioxide out of the air at a rate of around one ton per day, Keith emphasizes that it’s not designed for or capable of measurably reducing the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Rather, the motivation is to produce fuels for transportation applications, such as jet aircraft and heavy-duty trucks and buses.
The process uses a large wall of fans, known as a contactor, to push air through a liquid that reacts with the CO2. That carbon dioxide-rich solution is then put through several processing steps to create a purified stream of CO2 gas and the liquid that is returned to the contactor. Keith and his team have cleverly combined industrial processes that are already in use in existing industries, for instance in paper mills.
…
It’s also only half the process needed to actually make fuel. The recovered CO2 must then be combined with hydrogen to make hydrocarbon fuels. Supported by funding from British Columbia’s provincial government, Carbon Engineering plans to install an electrolyzer to split water to obtain hydrogen that it will then use to supply fuel for BC Transit buses. That’s at least a year down the road.
…[/font][/font]
= new reply since forum marked as read
Maybe you missed these bits in the OP:
>> it's not designed for or capable of measurably reducing the greenhouse
>> gases in the atmosphere. Rather, the motivation is to produce fuels for
>> transportation applications
>> It’s also only half the process needed to actually make fuel.
>> The recovered CO2 must then be combined with hydrogen to make hydrocarbon
>> fuels.
>> Supported by funding from British Columbia’s provincial government,
>> Carbon Engineering plans to install an electrolyzer to split water to
>> obtain hydrogen
So,
1) It is not capable of making any headway w.r.t. greenhouse gases.
2) This project is only half of any functional process.
3) It requires the wasteful production of hydrogen before it can do anything at all.
>> Keith has made headlines before for his outspoken advocacy for more research
>> into geoengineering (specifically, seeding the lower stratosphere with
>> sulfuric acid to reflect sunlight and cool the planet).
This guy has a reputation for supporting various "gee whiz" scams that only
succeed in three things: making a profit for himself, damage the environment
in the process and divert environmental funds away from genuine projects.
It really isn't the silver bullet that you seemed to have viewed it as in your initial reply.
