It would have been useful if the cost for this scheme was expressed in $/ton of CO2 sequestration. As it presented, I can't tell if this is a cheap or expensive way to approach this problem.
See the "Main Paper" under "Research Links". There is a section titled "Cost Estimates": "... if the 'green hydrogen' produced were to be sold in commercial markets, in its low-cost low-pressure form, the cost offset that results yields LCCA(net) = $55 per tonne of CO2 mineralized (H2 = $2 per kg) or $10 per tonne of CO2 mineralized (H2 = $3 per kg). Conservatively, no value is allocated to the carbonate mineral produced or production of softened water that reduces the energy need of downstream desalination operations (if any)."
@@kenjohnson6101 Thanks for the recap, the economics sound very good! Having both green hydrogen and desalinated water as byproducts of a carbon capture method would be really great. I am wondering if the economics could be even better if this is done at an offshore wind farm that is far out of the mainland, as it could avoid the need for a costly grid connection. (like some other green hydrogen energy island projects)
Alien tech analyst: "hmm so you're mainly burning dense carbon-based fuels AND leaking the by-products into your atmosphere, so you must be balancing that by drawing down carbon elsewhere right? (*Becoming concerned*) You are balancing that, right???
One simple thing we should all be repeating over and over is that warm oceans hold less carbon than cold ones. We accelerate return of our absorbed pollution by tolerating more warming.
@@erdelegy You might be interested in my reply to Xeno - you might (I hope) find it a smidgeon re-assuring as I don't think the feedback you and Xeno refer to is fully correct due the increase in the CO2 partial pressure in the atmosphere meaning the Ocean remains a CO2 sink for some time.
@@erdelegy there's really no evidence to suggest that it's anything more than a stupid idea. CO2 has been higher before and wasn't responsible for run away climate. Also, I have seen compelling objectice evidence of data manipulation to adjust historical data to fit the AGW narrative. I don't know if it's true or false, but just seeking truth here, it was persuasive. All the evidence suggests is there is a strong bias in climate research to find warming from anthropogenic CO2. It's really hard to tell if the research results are confirmation bias or something to be believed. I mean really ... Climate science researchers from the late 80s said lots of crazy shit that was all wrong (Hansen) and climategate was a thing ...
As part of this, I would highly recommend looking into GreenWave and the work Bren Smith is doing in growing a large community of small-scale farmers that carbon sequester via seaweed growth alongside mussels and oysters as a business model.
I have previously suggested, on this channel I think, that instead of developing a whole new technology for direct carbon capture, we work WITH the natural systems to enhance their capacity to absorb CO2 while creating useful biomass. Examples include replanting mangroves, kelp forests and sea grass beds that have been dramatically reduced in recent decades. Also by expanding mussel and oyster farms and dumping the shells in DEEP water so that they sink out of the trophic zone to the sea floor and sequester the carbon long term. I also suggested reusing obsolete oil tankers to create Integrated marine farms that included pumping up cold, nutrient-rich seawater into the ships’ tanks and growing phytoplankton, zooplankton, seaweeds, corals, oysters, mussels, sea urchins, small fish and fish of edible size.
So many spill over benefits, kelp sequesters carbon and reduces ocean acidification (with strong local effects), but adsorbs phosphates and nitrate from run off, provide fish habitat and shade, provides incomes to people displaced by necessary fish quotas, provides feedstock for fertilizer and methane production, and has some evidence of reducing wave energy and coastal erosion (although this is contradicted in other stories and I imagine requires very large scale implementation). Any country with a carbon credit system that doesn't support this (ei, all of them I believe) is almost trying to fail.
@@martinmidgley5610 One reason, in my opinion, is that there is a larger chance of failure the more complex the solution becomes. I wouldn't necessarily say "instead of", but I would certainly work on the assumption that many of the technologies that are reliant on both large economic and energy investment will not happen at all. Concentrate on the simple technologies, the ones that are resilient and can be done locally. As the world warms, as food supplies falter, energy supplies falter and politics becomes angrier and more corrupt it is highly likely that the conditions to allow the big scale industrial projects to go ahead will cease to exist. You can well imagine a situation where a project, or projects, like this are given large amounts of public funding only for the price of materials X, Y and Z required for the production to double in price and the contracted company goes bust. Or some crony just trousers the money and fucks off. Or they half-arse the project, cutting corners and costs and the projected benefits suddenly dwindle to 30% of the initial projection: "well we've still managed to create the "green" hydrogen, however we've had to run a diesel generator for 8 years to assist in the process. There are many, many scenarios where you can/do/will see projects like this fail (but be spun to look like they're a success), and it is easily possible to imagine a scenario where we don't meet targets because of a shortfall that could have been met by more democratic, simple, accessible technologies. These projects will get the backing though, as they fit the criteria of control, power and centralisation that they bring. Edit: they also take a lot of time to generate results, and if they don't work we're ten years further down the road to failure!
The Netherlands, Holland, have been fighting the encroachment of the sea for many years. They have windmills for pumping water. More recently they have invested in electricity generating wind turbines. It would be interesting to investigate if the calcium carbonate could be used to automatically build sea defences as it was being created. I'm sure the Netherlands government would be interested in investigating the possibility of doing this if they have not already done so!
They now build one more major offshore windpark, 70 generators I believe. This is like one big nuclear powerblock can produce. As ab example, this is the power equired to pump all the rain out of the lowlands into the North Sea. But the solid stuff you mention would certainly be useful. Now the Dutch get state from quarries in Germany...
The technique has been used to prevent beach erosion (by regrowing damaged coral reefs), and the original concept was developed by someone looking for a way to grow affordable housing components out of seawater. Doing that on a national scale is probably theoretically possible, but maybe not feasible
This general process has fascinated me for a while (its very similar to the Biorock/Seacrete/Electrified Reef system). The primary magnesium mineral product created is hydromagnesite, which is used in fire suppression systems. If there were a market for the minerals being generated by this capture process, it would go a long way toward spurring adoption. I just wrote an article about how you could use the mineral as a coating around magnesium powder as a way to safely use the metal as an energy carrier and hydrogen producer.
Interesting! You might also be interested in Project Vesta, which seeks to dump Olivine into oceans to mimic and accelerate the natural geological process for creating limestone
hol-up. 1.4 trillion for a world wide effect? That's dirt cheap. The US, China, or the EU could do it unilaterally if they wanted. If the price tag were to get split up internationally, This could definitely get done.
A big thank you from myself and my environmental sustainability class in our first year of uni. This summery along with others on your channel have been a huge help towards furthering our understanding :)
Thank you for putting this out there! I love this technique a lot, especially because you could produce carbon neutral cement with all that limestone. By producing and selling the hydrogen and the cement, a plant could help offset its costs.
This is the most detailed and honest solution description I've seen so far. It is also the most realistic technical solution. As far as the cost goes, as long as we value our survival in monetary terms we cannot afford to survive. I suspect this one will get built at least in prototype and perhaps on a larger scale though maybe not until we stop worrying about the economic cost. Of course, you could compare its cost with the cost of not doing it and get a very reasonable ROI. This is definitely a keeper though I think more work needs to be done on the Chlorine and Hydrogen waste issue, and how to distribue the calcium carbonate so that it doesn't just accumulate in the extraction area. Imaging tons of this stuff just clogging up the intake pipes.
I don't think that this would be much of a problem. As industry would quickly utilize the bi products. The calcium carbonate would be used by the aggregate industry and the chemical industry. It could dramatically reduce the amount of mining/quarrying required for those materials. Likewise the chemical industry would soon use the available chlorine and hydrogen. If it was up to me I would combine this with (As suggested) de salination /mineral extraction from seawater plants. It is usually overlooked that there are huge quantities of metallic and other elements dissolved in seawater. If you could utilize renewables to help extract them from the seawater as it is processed you could also reduce the need for mining etc. Ideally I would build large industrial estates around such installations to use as much of the products and bi products that the process produce.
@@nicholaskelly6375 No, no, no. The calcium carbonate must be sequestered to keep the carbon out of the atmosphere. If industry gets its grubby little hands on it then it'll just end up as CO2 again.
@@kimwelch4652 How if it is used as aggregate in the construction industry then it still remains inert! I am not suggesting using it to make cement etc. Using sythlimestone would allow a substantial reduction in quarrying. Most limestone quarried in the UK is used as aggregate and nothing else. Anything that would help to reduce quarrying would be desirable. Also you could crush it under pressure to produce building blocks. Which could replace bricks. Again such a use would be useful environmentally as it would replace brick kilns etc etc. Such artificial stone has been used in the past successfully. A friend of mine developed a system to make blocks out of waste limestone dust and they were very successful. Not all industrial uses are harmful.
@@nicholaskelly6375 Maybe, but my long experience is that our "constructions" always come with consequences usually bad. For one thing what was there before we built over it? Creation always involves destruction. What do our creations destroy?
@@kimwelch4652 Agreed but we are in bind. Certainly dumping the sythlimestone in the deep sea will be problematic and could actually generate considerable CO2 due to transport costs. Just look at the effect of burning biomass from Arkansas in the UK. I saw a study that indicated that by shipping said biomass to Drax Power Station generated some 6 times more C02 than the coal coming from Kellingley Colliery! This sort of thing is completely unacceptable. As I noted earlier most limestone extraction in the UK is used as aggregate and remains inert. I accept your concerns and am often suspicious of such ideas I would encourage the use of these materials to avoid mining them.
I like this better than anything that keeps CO2 as a gas, that can leak out eventually. Also the infrastructure would be used even after we get to "net zero", to clean up the mess and reduce ocean's acidity. I don't think we would do it on such a massive scale though, it seems more logical to bet on 10 different things at a 10 times smaller scale each. But like was said in the video, what's really needed is to really invest in large scale prototypes to see if it works or not, even taking some degree of gamble in the process.
I've heard this one before. Technologically possible solution. No mechanism in capitalism to incentivize it. No major government willing to go against the short-term interests of capital.
Isn't that what the theme of the 2020s needs to be for COP26 to in any way be possible... Also the desire to get off Russia's commodities? Given how happy countries are to print money and spend it on their own expenditure or even helicopter it onto people... Why not print the money and fund these initiatives before the money printer blows up?
It is quite possible the energy companies can use this technology to produce hydrogen at places where there is plenty of sunshine/wind and transport the hydrogen by ships to Europe or elsewhere. They can then offset the co2 produced in the transportation and some more using this technology.
Carbon credits are becoming more valueable every year. So aside from selling the byproduct, you can simply sell carbon credits to comoanies that need to offset their carbon footprint. I think this plus seaweed/algae can become very profitable businesses
Thanks for the informative video! Wow, it really is a lot cheaper to avoid emitting a tonne of carbon, than to emit and then sequester it... We *really* need international carbon pricing
China is now the world largest emitter of Carbon Dioxide and they are not going to stop raising the standard of living of their population so that amount is only going to increase. They have nuclear weapons so you will have a hard time trying to force them to produce less CO2. That suggests that sequestration is the way to go. An additional possible sequestration method might be to fertilize the blue water ocean far from shore to promote plankton growth and sequester carbon in fish and whales.
An advantage of the solid production is that it is easy for the bean counters to measure. An observable process also helps the multitudes who don't trust nature to do it's thing in private.
For me, the greatest challenge is the greed included int our economic model! As you mentionned it, if our governments announce the use of such methods, soon we would see some "Greenwashing" tempting to say that we all can continue to consume at the same rate!
Curious: have you analysed track record of communist and later former communist states? I mean especially how "greed" meant less CO2 emission under capitalism, as careful calculation meant that central planners were able to run projects that even before including externalities were already unprofitable.
@@useodyseeorbitchute9450 Why do you suppose that I whish a communist system just because I say there is unlimited greed in the present neo-con system? I simply remember what the tobaco producers did with the scientific proofs about cancer, and I also know what the big Oil said about global warming and the use oil when science first discovered the warming effet of CO2...These reactions where caused by greed. It looks like humans prefer a system that will kill them than to change things and loose money and/or comfort...If we choose to do what we must, we will probably loose some of our high standard of living for a long while. Some very rich poeple will eventually have to spend money on the common good...This is what happens in some capitalist countries in northern Europe...And it does not mean we all have to become stalinists!
@@BitBert " Why do you suppose that I whish a communist system" Wish? It would be a bit too strong word. You want to get rid of some undesirable features of capitalism, just you seem to forget what is the main alternative. You are not asking for mass graves. However, you are asking for somewhat less profit oriented and more centrally planned system, aren't you? Then, yes, you are asking for swapping one flaws for another, and should be reminded how the other flaws look like. "This is what happens in some capitalist countries in northern Europe" They score top on economic freedom rankings on almost all categories except taxes hitting everyone and being used to run quite generous safety net. Whichever cultural (or genetic) features allowed creation of such system, I notice a general pattern that everyone praises them, but no one outside of their area managed to replicate their model. No one is for example admiring France, even though they have gov spending over 50% of GDP. If it was so simple France would have already have Scandinavia at home.
Assuming this technology becomes widely implemented, might it be worthwhile to transport the solid carbon to land areas, such as, but not necessarily limited to, deserts, in order to build up or restore some of these depleted soils so that plant life can once again gain a foothold and contribute to removing CO2 from the atmosphere? I'm thinking this solid carbon could be used in "Green Belt" initiatives around the world.
@@nunyabiz1780 Thank you for the specific percentage. Although I have a forestry degree and worked in fire management - and therefore have/had a pretty good understanding of the atmosphere - I had forgotten the percentage. Not that it had anything to do with what i wrote. What's the percent of ocean water that is absorbed CO2? It's not a question of one or the other. CO2 is going to have to be removed from both the oceans and the atmosphere.
@@mikeaustin4138 I'm trying to make the point that its a trace gas in the atmosphere, the world isn't ending because of it. Plants could benefit from more of it. Taking from land where we grow food is good if you want famine. spending money on removing it is a dead weight loss to the economy that will make us all poorer. There have been plant extinctions in the past when co2 dropped below where it is today...kentucky blue grass was a resulting mutation.
What about making building materials out of the solidified carbon end product? Then it could be sold, at least partly offsetting the cost of solidifying it.
Singapore has a shortage of sand and was buying it up from Malaysia before they were stopped because some Malaysian islands were at high risk of disappearing. With this you could install new islands in shallow water when needed.
It's so encouraging to see research into such matters is being undertaken. This tech seems to make sense on many levels. Thanks JHAT for keeping us in the loop!!
I always find your videos very interesting! You mention cleaning up chlorine produced from electrolysis of seawater on an industrial scale. I've had this idea for years but came up against the amount of chlorine produced when applying electrolysis to sea water. My thoughts were, how can we convert into energy, the extreme pressures created at depth by water. What I came up with was, electrolysis of water at depth would naturally produce gases under pressure. If the oxygen component was allowed to expand as it reached the surface it would increase in volume and could be used to drive turbines to produce electricity which would be feed back down into the electrolysis process If the energy required was greater than what the oxygen turbines could produce, this could be supplement by other green energy or even a proportion of the hydrogen produced from the electrolysis. The result would be green hydrogen and if use at sea, chlorine, which would need to be processed. I also wondered if this whole process could be tacked onto fresh water hydro projects, if they had sufficient fall and pressure. Which would eliminate the chlorine problem. Keep up the excellent work, you are making a difference!
This method would cause a depletion of minerals in the ocean such as magnesium and calcium, which might affect sea life negatively. However, I'm not sure that the scale of the depletion would have a barely noticeable, moderate, or disastrous affect. As with many of these proposals, we should consider doing *all* of the reasonably good ones, not just putting all of our eggs in one basket, and then praying for divine providence that the side affects on the ecosystem, economy, etc. are not too devasting... if we have a many-pronged approach, we can shut down those that are causing large problems, while still having other effective solutions operational.
i dont think that is a problem compared to acidification. those minerals also get washed into the oceans from agricultural and industry runoff into the water cycle. Even if you are correct, they could be replaced i believe
Thank you for this video! You cover the subject so well it's hard to find anything to talk about. ;) It sounds wonderful. An industrial, _realistic_ way to remove huge amounts of CO2 from the ocean, and eventually the air as well. Unlike other methods of carbon sequestration this taps into a natural planetary cycle, so there's a place for the carbon to go where it won't immediately come back up again. I'm suspicious of carbon capture methods that try to stuff billions of tons of gas back into geologic formations - because that kind of storage gets less efficient the more you do it. As the CO2 concentration increases it will find or force open every small crack and come back to the surface. By contrast this single step carbon process locks the carbon into mineral form and sends the rocks tumbling to the bottom of the sea, where they can be slowly covered by sand and remain locked away for a future geologic era. If it's purely an economic problem, surely we can solve that. The problem of course is that it didn't cost anything to emit all those greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for all those years, and we have to pay those costs now in the form of mitigation strategies. Our economic system isn't really set up for transactions where the costs come due a hundred years after the profits. But the money was there for Covid, like you said. And this is an even bigger problem. Surely some way can be found to find the funds, perhaps involving carbon taxes so we can control future emissions as well.
Thank you. I have worked on CCS/U. I still didn't read the paper, but this technology sounds much better than all the other CCS/U methods I'm familiar with. However, only after a pilot plant is operating for a year or so, could we asses its practicality.
Have there been any considerations of using the sCS2 sequestered carbon products of limestone and magnesite as green(er) building materials? Could there be some financial offset in utilizing these products of the process instead of just sinking them to the ocean floor?
I mentioned this elsewhere in the comments, but roughly speaking the original application for this kind of electrolysis process was to literally grow affordable housing components out of the sea. Might be time to revisit that application...
This is an interesting idea;however, there are a few concerns that I have not seen any discussion. If we take calcium (~400 ppm in seawater) and magnesium (~1200 ppm in seawater) , we will be removing a beneficial mix of minerals that are used by many marine animals and plants. We need to be careful not to create another problem. Also, many have suggested using the solids for concrete. Again this is an interesting idea; however, to make concrete, you take calcium carbonate, heat it up using natural gas to drive off, what for it, carbon dioxide. You have actually added more CO2 to the atmosphere. In addition, much of the solids generated would contain magnesium carbonate, which will affect the quality of the concrete to some degree.
Another brilliant video. You summarise the science beautifully, and I loved the touch of humour. I wish I could afford to sponsor your series. The best I can do is “like” (love) them, turn on notifications, and subscribe to the channel. Keep going you good thing.
I am wondering if the carbon removed from ocean water in the process at the start of your story has any use as an agricultural input. Calcium carbonate Calcium bicarbonate ......apparently I need about 1 ton per ac on my 160ac patch of dirt. If it is the same or a like chemical compound there might be a commercial use for the stuff. Certainly a better use than just dropping it back into the oceans IMO Sea weed/kelp is a wonderful fertilizer too.....and it seem so be cheaper and thus easier to start up/ramp up than building these plants to remove carbon from the oceans At the end of the day yes we will need to work with nature. Sea weed/kelp might just be the natural way to go all the way around might as well make it a win [no trillion dollar cost] win [less inputs steel concrete copper etc etc] win a marketable product that will both help solve food insecurity as more and more of our agricultural zones are hit by drought
Excellent. The concept can be expanded to include fission nuclear power to run it and adding ability to filter lithium, uranium, and so on from the sea water as it is processed.
Yeah, after that 3rd Working Group video you put out a couple of weeks ago Dave, anytime I hear R&D I immediately jump to thinking that wind and solar rollout should be the primary emphasis of financial investment. I do think that climate change still requires a "silver buckshot" approach, but the majority project we should all be implementing, at least in terms of energy, is wind and solar installation, whether residential, commercial, or utility-wide. I think the point about stacking this ocean scrubbing tech with water desalination plants makes things very financially feasible, compared to having exclusive facilities. Coastline is expensive, as many diverse interests act to make claim to that finite resource. I also echo the worry about geoengineering and the prospect that IF and when we get CO2 emissions to Net Zero and work back the clock to pre-industrial levels, *we need to be very careful in not tipping the scales too far in the opposite direction by not emitting enough/capturing too much CO2 for what the global ecosystem needs.* We need to reach a steady state equilibrium where CO2, and all other GHGs, are monitored, and develop protocols and policies for knowing when to engage emissions or capture technologies to counterbalance disturbances to the system. Those protocols and policies are light-years away, relatively speaking, but we can't lose sight of the other side of the pendulum that we call climate change.
Assuming the IF and when... We will have a lot more time to explore solutions, we will know a lot more than we know right now, AND then we can go back to the usual political, big-money driven choices!
I just love Daveday, I mean Sunday's 👍😂 even after a devastating few days on a personal level, your video engages, educates and entertains me in such a way that just for that few moments, I can feel positive about mankind and the efforts of so many unheralded individuals, who are working away tirelessly trying to save our planet 👍😊👌Thank you for your positive weekly messages Dave and for your wonderful dry humour 😂 keep up the brilliant work my friend 👍😊👌
Check out Wolf Hilberz as well as Seacrete and Biorock. He was helping restore coral reefs by directly supplying electricity without the multi billion dollar factory.
Absolutely spot-on take on this: Yes, we need CDR but must not use it as a reason to delay ramping down the use of combustion fuels. There is something poetic about sending carbon back to a geological store, that's where a lot of the CO2 in the air came from (coal).
Ok, so, chemistry and all that again... Chemist here, having some notes. You correctly pointed out that by electrolysis of saltwater, chlorine would be produced, which is supposed to be absorbed by active carbon and removed from the process. Coating the anode would not change anything about that. So, besides the fact that this would hardly work to keep the chlorine bound for ever, I don't think you made any calculations about how many Active Carbon would be needed to do that. Because for each CO2 (from carbonic acid, H2CO3) to absorb, two hydrogens would be generated, and thus, one molecule of Chlorine (Cl2) would be formed. As Carbonate and Cl2 have _roughly_ the same mass, it means: To bind 20 billion tons of carbonate, you'd produce 20 billion tons of Chlorine gas (actually even more) per year, which has to be absorbed. And to do so with active carbon, this could easily add up to 100 billion tons or more of toxic waste. Where do you get that active carbon from? Coking wood and producing even more CO2? And where would you put all that toxic waste? So, I think it's easy to see that this approach is not useful by any means. Except... ...yes, except there will be a way _not_ to produce Chlorine by the electrolysis, but Oxygen! This would need a very special anode material which maybe has yet to be developed. But without that, the electrolysis approach will end up in a bigger catastrophe than it is allegedly acting against.
I recently saw a vid where they can make char from carbon extracted from the atmosphere, couldnt they do that from the carbon extracted from the oceans too? yeah i never went beyond GCSE chemistry n i preferred biology anyways XD if this is a numpty question XD
Indeed. All that the paper states is, "Although the electrolysis of Cl- containing waters is challenging due to the tendency to produce Cl2(g) under acidic conditions, (30) this latter issue can be mitigated by using oxygen evolution reaction (OER)-selective coatings in the anode. (95−97) Alternately, it would be necessary to apply commercial adsorption technologies, for example, that utilize organic carbon-based solids (e.g., coal, activated carbon) and/or zeolites to immobilize the Cl2(g) evolved and prevent its emission into the atmosphere. (98,99)" Since any significant Cl2(g) production would make this process wholly untenable, I would have thought that far more attention (ie a quantitative analysis) would have been given to this problem.
@@kimwarburton8490 Hm, I don't know the video you refer to, maybe you can tell me how to find it. However, it's surely not impossible to produce char carbon from the CO2 in the atmosphere (there are little other sources for carbon in the air), but then again, the CO2 could be directly removed by that process. Althogh I think it is very expensive and might be not very efficient. There also are approaches to use the CO2 in the atmosphere and reform it into fuel, which again is also not cheap to do. But when having access to a extemely cheap source of energy, sure, why not give it a try and see what the long-term results are.
@@human_isomer It was this one ruclips.net/video/KpGvHpB7SQ0/видео.html But i was wondering if the char could be made with the carbon extracted from the ocean, with the idea that that could be used to neutralise the chlorine at the same rate it's produced. This method looks to be longterm more efficient use of the energy. both direct air and this newer ocean technique require huge amounts of energy and we will want to get the best bang for our buck.
@@kimwarburton8490 Thanks, just watched that, and besides a few minor flaws (as usual when chemistry is involved), it was interesting. Regarding your question: In theory it's possible to produce the char coal from the carbonate that is solidified in the ocean electrolysis process, but I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense. First of all, it's complicated and would use a lot of energy (don't want to go into the details here). Second: The chlorine wouldn't be locked into the char forever. Absorbing chlorine in char coal is a physical process, similar to the sponge in the above video absorbing water: Over time, the chlorine will leak out again. And chlorine is one very toxic and harmful substance. So the chlorine-soaked char would have to be disposed in a place where it can never possibly escape from again - similar to radioactive waste disposal, but much much larger. That's neither technically nor economically nor environmentally reasonable. As mentioned earlier: Seawater electrolysis would only be useful when a way is found to generate oxygen instead of chlorine. In this case, no char coal is needed to absorb the oxygen, and the carbonates could be safely disposed on the ground of the oceans. And it would actually be the reversed process the CO2 was generated from. But all the energy that was set free when the carbon was burnt would have to be put back into that reaction, and with the losses on top, this would easily double or triple the energy necessary. If we only knew a process that could do that for free and without so much energy required... 🌳🌲🌴🌳🌲
Ok... I quote "It will consume more than 20PWh (T=10^15) of electricity". In 2018 world's electricity consumption was 22 315 TWh (T=10^12), there is a small gap of roughly 1000 between these 2 figures... It means that to implement this "solution" we need to increase the world electricity production by 1000... See where I'm going with this?
22,315 TWh is 22.3 PWh. This would more like a 2 fold increase in world electricity production. This is still a large amount of electricity. Instead of subsidizing fossil fuels they should be taxed. Carbon tax and dividend is the best way to make the conversion away from fossil fuels. It was almost implemented in the US but there was one Democratic Senator (and of course 50 Republican Senators) who stopped this.
@@ericnordman5893 Fu... you are right! I missed the comma... Still we would need to produce twice the world's electricity. I agree with the rest of your comment.
I imagine setting up this process on all existing oil rigs around the globe so as not to concentrate it on coasts. Decommissioning the rigs from drilling oil obviously as well 😋
We will be needing those oil rigs for a while longer but as they reach the end of their lifetime, they can be fitted with wind turbines to produce limestone and remove carbon from the oceans rather than dismantling them.
_"Our Spaceship's about to crash!_ _"Look at the instruments. Data are clear!"_ _We need to deploy the parachute NOW!"_ - --"Ah, no. The button's all the way over there. And parachutes cost money. Think about the effects on our budget. Plus effort? Be sensible." _"But the spaceship costs a LOT more money than a parachute! And we need to be alive to produce either!"_ ---"Ah, but that only costs money in the FUTURE. Just sit tight. If it makes you feel better, we'll adopt a "concerned" outlook. Oh look, there's my house." ... This is a recurring feeling regarding climate change. A not-so Merry-Go-Round. I really hope people will start moving in an actual direction. We need to be building all of these, as prototypes, and see which one works.
The Significant Other, partner of Dave Borlace "Are you gonna clean that up?" and the following exasperated "Yes" is my favourite scene ever on this channel! Sorry, that may show how shallow I am, but I loved it!
Thank you for an interesting video. I wonder what effect that process may have on the ocean's bicarbonate-borate buffering system that maintains ocean pH around 8.3 or so? It seems from nothing but a quick think that it would have a major effect on pH, at least in the locale of the plant where CO2 removal was taking place. And, then there is the resulting imbalance of ions in the outflow that may have adverse affects on both biotic and abiotic components. Also, I'm leery that activated charcoal would be up to the task of removing the significant amount of Cl that would be generated. Nonetheless, I'm encouraged that people are thinking about ways to sequester carbon. I only hope it happens sooner rather than never.
@Dave Borlace I don't know if you read all these, but I have done a load of research Ch I to desalination, reverse osmosis dialysis can remove about 25% of the cost of desalination via producing energy via the salinity differential of briny and non salty water... Adding a further 9% saving would lead to a 34% reduction on costs. Whether this can be done with renewable or SMR nuclear technology is only theory at this point.
Another great video that. Is among your best. I am encourage by the UCLA work. Your reporting is importantly spreading the information to those who need some encores about Climate Charge. Thank You!!!
Such thoughtful and balanced reporting. Thank you so much. Perhaps the calcium carbonate rocks could be used as building materials, a substitute for cement or perhaps road base. Just a thought.
So using the figures at the 8:09 time on the video, it would take about 2,200 kWh to convert 1 ton. 2,200 kWh will take a moderately efficient EV ~15,000km. Also 2,200 kWh equals the energy in 1.5 barrels of oil so the oil equivalent necessary to remove 10Gt of CO2 annually would be 15 billion barrels of oil. The current worldwide oil production is ~ 35 billion barrels. Clearly there is no easy way to pull CO2 from the biosphere!
I think this comment (and another further up about the chemistry involved) should be pinned. If there's one criticism (healthy, hopefully!) I have of Dave's approach, is that there is no in depth follow up to the original videos to discuss the problems raised in the comments (or elsewhere). The unanswered questions like yours are the difference between a viable and ridiculous solution and will obviously detract from other solutions. Obviously, people will then say "it's important to have many different solutions in the pipeline... ", but if a solution can't ever be worked, it should be discarded. If you are correct that an increased production of 15billion boe would be required, then it is imperative to discuss how that is going to be sourced. The video mentions using otherwise unusable power at peak times, but I'm guessing that wouldn't nearly cover the figure required. Thus we need a balance calculation to say that we're going to need another X thousand wind turbines to address the shortfall. Then we need to calculate the energy used to make those turbines, and so on, so that we can see the total energy cost to actually calculate viability. It seems to me that most of the large scale schemes promoted have huge caveats built in, and also massive energy requirements to implement and run. For the forseeable, a large percentage of that energy requirement will be fulfilled by fossil fuels, which is obviously problematic. Beyond that though, it often looks like the energy return on energy invested (which rarely gets discussed, it's usually discussed in the entirely nebulous concept of dollar cost), or in this case the carbon sequested on energy invested, on many of these schemes makes them physically unviable, rather than just financial or political.
Why don't we use seaweed? It grows insanely quickly, it provides habitat for marine life, it can be harvested as food or fertilizer, it sucks out CO2 from the oceans to deacidify the oceans, and it pumps in oxygen into the sea.
This is an very win win situation...love it! Knowing concrete industry is one of the CO² unfriendly industry's , and limestone can actualy been used for concrete production ☆♡ Grts from the netherlands Johny geerts
Unfortunately, in order to use limestone in concrete, you have to heat it up to make CaO, which releases the CO2 from the limestone, negating the whole point of creating the limestone to begin with.
Thank you so much for you work! You give me a little bit of hope back with each video, in a mature, balanced way. There seems to be a way out, perhaps.
I always appreciate your videos because they provide interesting perspectives. But this time you have gotten it wrong. There is a serious flaw in this argument: precipitation CaCO3 for seawater is actually releasing extra CO2. Ca++ + 2HCO3- = CaCO3 + H2O + CO2 My former post has obviously not been published because I had added a link to prove my point. So I will try again without using a link but only the content. Let me also add that chlorine is not 'absorbed' by activated carbon but converted into acid (HCl) and CO2. That is not a win-win but lose-lose situation as the extra acid in large scale will reduce the pH sea water even more. There is a common misconception: Almost everyone seems to think that limestone deposition, which is a sink of oceanic bicarbonate, must also be a sink of atmospheric CO2, when in fact it is a source! I cannot publish the link, but I can show your the text and anybody interested can find the original by googling for specific word combinations. Ca++ + 2HCO3- = CaCO3 + H2O + CO2 This is an interesting point because limestone deposition is, along with volcanic outgassing, the major source of atmospheric CO2 on a geological time scale, while dissolution of limestone, along with weathering of aluminosilicate minerals, is the major sink. This is widely misunderstood by those not knowledgeable about the chemistry of the carbon cycle. Almost everyone seems to think that limestone deposition, which is a sink of oceanic bicarbonate, must also be a sink of atmospheric CO2, when in fact it is a source! This common error is due to the fact that bicarbonate is the major form of inorganic carbon in the ocean, and because the ocean is a pH-buffered chemical system. In effect for each molecule of bicarbonate precipitated as limestone one molecule is released as CO2 in order to maintain charge and pH balance. Therefore brucite formation at the expense of aragonite has a net effect of reducing the effects of ocean acidification caused by increased CO2 in the atmosphere. However, to put this into perspective, about half of all the net limestone burial in the ocean used to take place in coral reefs (Milliman, 1993), at least back when coral reefs were healthy and growing, before global warming, new diseases, and pollution killed most of them. About an order of magnitude more limestone was formed by planktonic organisms, but almost all of that dissolves when their microscopic skeletons fall into deep water, where they dissolve because of the lower temperature, higher pressure, and the higher acidity of deep waters caused by decomposition of organic matter that is formed at the ocean surface by photosynthesis and falls to the deep sea where it is oxidized by decomposing organisms and bacteria. However, the rate at which we are now adding CO2 to the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion is about 100 times greater than the natural sources from global limestone burial (Ware et al., 1991), indicating how greatly human pollution has overwhelmed natural sources. Consequently global ocean acidification caused by fossil fuel-caused CO2 buildup cannot be effectively countered by manipulating limestone deposition, unless fossil fuel CO2 sources are greatly reduced and a mechanism is developed to directly remove CO2 from the atmosphere. If allowed to build up in the atmosphere, fossil fuel CO2 will only be very slowly neutralized over hundreds of millennia to millions of years by dissolution of terrestrial limestone rocks on land and marine limestone sediments.
Can I correct a misconception here? The reaction Ca2+ + 2HCO3- = CaCO3 + H2O + CO2 is correct, resulting from the fact that at ocean pH (~ 8.2) most of the dissolved C is in the form of HCO3- not CO32-. Each molecule of CaCO3 that precipitates leaves behind an H+ ion, meaning that the system gets more acidic as CaCO3 precipitates. The more acidic the system, the more CO2 is forced from solution into the gaseous phase (hence the release of CO2). However, consider the following reaction: CO2 + OH- = HCO3-. Adding OH- to a solution in contact with gaseous CO2 results in a dissolution of CO2 into solution. SO - let's re-imagine your first equation, but this time adding OH-. We get Ca2+ + 2HCO3- + OH- = CaCO3 + H2O + HCO3-. In other words, if you can add OH- during the precipitation of CaCO3, you don't get CO2 released into the atmosphere. This is what the authors of the paper are proposing: they use electrolysis of aqueous NaCl (the "chloralkali process" - 2NaCl + 2H2O = 2NaOH + H2 + Cl2) to generate OH- which allows the precipitation of CaCO3 without release of CO2 back into the atmosphere. It requires energy, but it produces Cl2 and H2 gas which may be sold to offset some of the energy costs. It probably only makes sense if the energy for electrolysis comes from renewable sources, not fossil fuels. My pedigree: 25 years research experience in Environmental Chemistry, specializing in carbonate systems.
So, carbon capture from the ocean can potentially be done cheaper than direct air capture, I always suspected this to be the case, now just need to figure out the best method to implement it without harming various aquatic ecosystems. At the same time, I feel it is a bit naïve to believe that reducing overall energy expenditure by society is a genuine avenue that can realistically be pursued. Yes, there is room for gains in per capita efficiencies, but asking people to give up on amenities and restricting the developing world from access to standard comforts is not going to go over well. To truly transition off of oil I think it is likely that we would need to radically expand clean energy production to the point where it dwarfs that which we currently gain from geologically sourced oil and other hydrocarbons.
I agree with your assessment. We can work towards more efficient use of energy, but asking people to reduce thier quality of life is a no go. The key to everything is switching energy production from unclean sources to clean sources.
This is the most fundamental question. It takes 4.3MWh to electrolyse a ton of water, but I'm not sure how much carbon that yields. I suspect it's a tiny amount and that this process is a very irresponsible waste of precious energy resources
@@kimwarburton8490 Fair point. I guess I'm just unconvinced that we'll ever be in the position of having so much excess electricity from renewables that a hydrogen economy makes sense. It's so much more thermodynamically sensible to just use the electricity directly rather than "unburning" water only to burn it again.
@@sammason2300 agree, but there will be a need for green hydro, such as airplanes n ships, industrial processes, as an energy storage, i think diesal cars can b easily n cheaply converted. But ur right, in most applications, warming/cooling homes n workspaces etc, green elec makes most sense
This is promising. Biological carbon capture seems good, but... We do have to remember decaying plants release Nitrogen, which kills fishes. So some of each then? Are we really in danger of removing too much C02?
As always, no silver bullet. We don't necessarily need $2 trillion of these systems. They have to be part of a larger system of multiple approaches combined to achieve the same effect.
Thoghts on using thirsty cement in parking lots and have native shade trees in them as well. Why it will help stop flooding and increase groundwater and the trees will reduce heat and give back o2. Thoughts 🤔
Thanks Dave. Another well explained presentation with a message that everybody needs to understand - and you are very good at making it unbderstandable
John Martin, 1988: "Give me half a tanker of iron, and I will give you an ice age." This seems like a VERY expensive, highly technological solution to a problem algae might be able to solve for nearly free. Adding iron to ocean ecosystems causes algae blooms, the algae absorbs CO2, dies, and sinks to the bottom (the same mechanism that makes limestone). The only real argument against trying iron is, "We don't know how long the carbon stays sequestered. It may not be permanent." So what? Iron is cheap - if we have to do it again in 300 years, fine. Several years ago Greenpeace blockaded a ship in port to keep it from conducting a small-scale test. Why? Because they were afraid it would work.
It seems that humans have destroyed mangrove forests and kelp regions all over the world. Those would be the ideal areas to begin. Plus there is nothing wrong with a varied approach that uses multiple measures that would each only have a marginal effect. As times goes by consequences would be apparent and efforts could be dialed up or dialed down to fit the circumstances.
Microsoft has devised a way to get people visiting its news site (the one that keeps coming up when my cursor strays to the bottom right of my laptop screen) to 'plant new Mangroves' for free while learning how to use its weather app. You simply do a few tasks daily, explore features for hidden energy, and this goes towards a 'growing virtual tree.' Once you get to 100%, this sponsors a real tree to be planted. (I'm not sure if everyone's trees end up in the same place. I have 3 completed and one half-completed trees in Kenya so far).
Scientists have taken a look at the most plausible suggested solutions and rank-ordered them in terms of speed, low cost, proven benefits, fewest unknowns, etc. Top ranked is capping old oil and gas wells, then growing mangrove and seaweed "plantations", then growing hemp to replace pulp for paper mills and water-thirsty cotton for clothing. Stop the endless wrangling and get to work!
Very good video - gives me great hope (apart from the human race inevitably wrecking everything in their usual way because it's inconvenient to believe that climate change is real).
Man made climate change is fake . Climate change is real and there's nothing you and can do about it but to adapt to earth's natural changes. Environmentalists are Charletons out to shake down governments
Yet another example of “fossil fuel industry causes problem -> government needs to pay for it to get fixed” The fossil fuel industry should be taxed for every penny these plants cost!
This will be key! Removing carbon from ocean water is much easier than removing it from the air... the issue is dealing with all of the salt... and water... and plants and animals that come with it.
Everyone: The problem with solving the climate crisis is financial. The super rich: Yeah it sure is. Too bad about that. Everyone: But like we could do it if we abolished the profit incentive, right? The materials and willpower are there, just not the money. The super rich: Hey hey hey! Let's not get extremist here, it's not like the end of the world is the end of the world!
Wonderful. Another high-tech, vast-cost, CO2 sequestration method that requires thousands more electric power plants to operate, while at the same time ignoring the most powerful sequestration engine on Earth that requires zero electric power: photosynthesis. It ignores the global train-wreck agricultural system that destroys natural carbon sequestration in organic matter in soil (roots and microbiota) and replaces it all with petrochemicals. It ignores the fact that regenerative agriculture is as productive as petrochemical agriculture yet requires far fewer inputs. Do the brilliant high tech nerds pay any attention at all to the world around them?
Rather than the expensive system described,it is far simpler to install a wind turbine generator in the ocean on a metal tower with a rectifier to make some DC. Attach the cathode to the steel tower and run a cable out a bit to a sacrificial anode. The tower will start collecting limestone on it. If you hang oysters on the tower, they will grow five times faster than in ordinary circumstances and they will survive stress much better. The oysters are filter feeders and they will consume a lot of the algae that blooms because of fertilizer run off.
High tech nerds don't even know where food comes from, why would they know about regenerative agriculture? While there ARE some farmers doing it, as a group, farmers are a conservative bunch, and they have to be, given the high cost of machinery, fuel, pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, AND the vagaries of the price they receive for their produce. But many of them are also used to receiving price support payments, so with a support system to reduce the risk, I think enough of them would get on board to make a difference in saving the soil, using cover crops to reduce heat, evaporation, and CO2 releases, aid in water retention, and even increase rainfall!
You’ll get no disagreement from me about how our agricultural practices need massive rethinking and the extent that they can help solve the climate apocalypse we’re facing. However, I think we’ll need all available techniques to confront the problem, this one also has some possible profit angles which makes it more likely to be taken up by the banker types. As little as I like relying on them to solve the planet level crisis we’re in, the financial system IS capable of marshalling massive resources when profits can be made. It would be fantastic to see sustainable agricultural practices be more profitable than the scorched earth mechanisms typically employed today, that alone would go a long way to reducing our CO2 footprint for food production.
@grindupBaker reducing the mg level in any area will also lower it in other areas. so near a reef or not the reef would still see a long term effect. that is, if my memory is serving me and i have gotten things correct.
What unsettles me about dumping CO2 as-is or as part of some more convoluted chemical lingo stuff is that it's not removing just the carbon but also oxygen... is that really a good idea? We're actively borking the chemical balance of the atmosphere by digging up and burning hydrocarbons, don't we need to get rid of Carbon and Hydrogen and KEEP the Oxygen for our air to remain friendly to human life?
Yeah this one is a recipe for people complaining about tuna or dolphins becoming airated and then the woke nonsense starts. What's wrong with planting a lot of big trees..? Entirely natural and does the same job.
A reasonable naturally raising concern it seems - but in reality not an issue. The molar constitution of the Earths atmosphere is about 78 % Nitrogen N2, 21 % Oxygen O2 and 1 % all the rest. Specifically Carbon Dioxide CO2 makes about 0.04 %. Thus even doubling that to 0.08 % (god or whoever forbid) would decrease the O2 content to 20.6 % - hardly noticeable change by itself.
Since there's about 21% or so of oxygen in the atmosphere, and the amount of co2 we added so far is some 230 parts per million, which is about 1:1000 of the concentration of oxygen, which amounts to 210000 ppm. So, don't think this particular issue is a point of concern, as there are 1000 molecules of O2 for every particle of CO2 added.
1500 MWh for 660 ton CO2 means ~440 gr CO2/kWh, which is similar to the emissions of a Gas power plant. So basically the energy required by this technology for sequestration is the same that would emit the same amount of CO2 in a gas power plant, which is not too bad.
Great video. A durable solution will likely not involve mass behavior change (“business as usual”) - unless the alternative is easier than what we do now. The only exception to this (that I can think of) is the ‘don’t litter’ campaigns in the 70s. As an aside - It would be interesting (in future videos) if you did an in depth comparison to similar global problems where we’ve had success in reducing impacts. i.e. global food shortages, pollution of waterways… All “non-individual-level” solutions (As you often point out) have a downside. Reducing CO2 production means nuclear power or human engineered geo-thermal wells or massive batteries (all with significant downsides). By contrast, individual behavior changes could, technically, have little to no downsides. The problem is, they are virtually impossible en masse. To me behavior change is a losing argument. Any real solution will require industrial level efforts in energy production or CO2 capture and as little change to “business as usual” as practical. i.e. Jets will still use fossil fuels for the next 50+ years. Thank you for all your hard/thought provoking work, your videos are fantastic!
I would like to see all those ten's of trillions of dollars be directed toward individual people. Proper incentives would allow more people to implement electric vehicles, solar power and other renewables. This could help carbon capture become "personal" to many more millions of humans, and thus create a stronger "virtuous cycle".
One problem with your idea is that individuals are responsible for at most 1/3 of CO2 emissions, while concrete production, power generation, and transportation (shipping, aircraft, etc) make up the bulk of the remaining 2/3 (iirc), things which individuals have almost no influence.
@@yeroca You make a good point. There a lot of moving parts to this problem. Personal power generation and more importantly, energy consciousness is what I would like to see promoted more... at the individual level.
Thanks. Heather Willauer at NREL has done some work on CO2 removal from seawater to study feasibility of synthesizing jet fuel. One possible application could be thermal power plants like Diablo Canyon in Californa that moves about 816 B gallons per year of seawater for cooling. Imagine using that flow for CO2 removal.
I like her process, too. But at least one of her presentations showed that the water at the outlet had a lower pH (more acidic), rendering it less able to pull and hold CO2 from the atmosphere.
For once, I can agree. CO2 removal (alongside with oxygenation of the oxygene deserts) is the most efficient way to slow down climate change and it's impact on marine life.
I don’t like these hair brained schemes because they distract from no brainer solutions like increasing energy efficiency and conservation. Like better building codes to insulate buildings to conserve heat.
@@TheBooban China is now the largest emitter of Carbon Dioxide in the world and as they continue to raise the standard of living of more of their population, they are going to continue to emit even more. Even if you reduce the carbon emissions of the US and Europe to zero, the increase in Chinese emissions will exceed the reduction. If you are concerned about atmospheric carbon, you really ought to be thinking about sequestration.
One thing that's key here is that the CaCO3 produced by this process must not be allowed to decompose back into CO2. That means no using it for cement (releases CO2) and I wouldn't advise leaving it 'out in the open' on land (e.g. as a construction material) because CaCO3 is actually quite a soluble rock, and dilute carbonic acid in rainwater or other acid rain sources would dissolve it releasing CO2 again. Ocean burial works, but it needs to be remembered that CaCO3 dissolves in the deep ocean. While that CO2 would take hundreds of years to re-appear at the surface, we'd potentially be leaving a 'time bomb' for generations to come. The best place to bury that CaCO3 would actually be shallow oceans (e.g. the edges of continental shelves) where the waters will not dissolve the CaCO3 and the rock would be rapidly buried by sediments coming from the land.
'It just requires the political will". There's a phrase that shows up the fundamental undemocratic nature of the world's political systems. If it represented the majority opinion of most countries' populations, the will would have been there 20 years ago.
I'm so glad you made a video about this topic. It caught my eye like a year ago and I cant stop thinking this is a real possible tool to fight climatechange. So far ocean decarbonization seems to be such a promising candidate but yet direct air capture is the only method getting the most attention thanks to oil lobbyists. Oil companies use liquid carbon for fracking, so one can understand why they wouldnt care about other solutions. More research is needed in order to know the long term impacts, but we need to compare all possible solutions and weigh in the pros and cons. Honestly, an ocean aproach has so many advantages and useful byproducts that it cant be overlooked
Thanks for this very encouraging video. About the costs, living on an uninhabitably warm planet will far exceed any costs of biological/geological carbon removal. Your last point, it won't mean anything if we do not vastly reduce our emissions, however is spot on. Thanks again, great video.
Interesting approach. Will the decarbonized water be safe for wildlife to put directly back into the ocean? Perhaps the solidified carbon could be formed into something useful (building bricks, etc.) instead of being returned to the ocean.
Now ... Errr about 30 years ago, that could've worked without totally upsetting economy and society. If we make a dead stop now, we'll soon find out things are derailing, much like Europe is going to find out soon, they're getting off oil and gas in emergency mode. That's why German chancellor Scholz is going slow with oil import sanctions against Russia. Rushing things will ruin even the German economy within a year, with most of Western Europe going right after it. Overnight quitting fossil will be fine for climate (if not the fossil aerosol dimming effect, worth about 1 centigrade of cooling) but folks in the street will be very much upset losing their lifestyle - that's all they're interested in - _yet_
Could they use the pumped water as stored energy via hydroelectric? Build a reservoir high up, pump the water up there when energy is in excess, release the water back into the ocean when energy is needed.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
It would have been useful if the cost for this scheme was expressed in $/ton of CO2 sequestration. As it presented, I can't tell if this is a cheap or expensive way to approach this problem.
Exactly. Or at least express the energy requirement in kWh/ton CO2 which ought to be incontrovertibly known with a high degree of precision
See the "Main Paper" under "Research Links". There is a section titled "Cost Estimates":
"... if the 'green hydrogen' produced were to be sold in commercial markets, in its low-cost low-pressure form, the cost offset that results yields LCCA(net) = $55 per tonne of CO2 mineralized (H2 = $2 per kg) or $10 per tonne of CO2 mineralized (H2 = $3 per kg). Conservatively, no value is allocated to the carbonate mineral produced or production of softened water that reduces the energy need of downstream desalination operations (if any)."
@@kenjohnson6101 thank you!
2% of global GDP for 10 Gt of CO2
@@kenjohnson6101 Thanks for the recap, the economics sound very good! Having both green hydrogen and desalinated water as byproducts of a carbon capture method would be really great.
I am wondering if the economics could be even better if this is done at an offshore wind farm that is far out of the mainland, as it could avoid the need for a costly grid connection. (like some other green hydrogen energy island projects)
"Are you going to clean that up?"
Applies to the whole world, really...
I can almost hear my mum's voice already😂
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
Alien tech analyst: "hmm so you're mainly burning dense carbon-based fuels AND leaking the by-products into your atmosphere, so you must be balancing that by drawing down carbon elsewhere right? (*Becoming concerned*) You are balancing that, right???
The whole analogy is too perfect.
only an amoeba would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
One simple thing we should all be repeating over and over is that warm oceans hold less carbon than cold ones. We accelerate return of our absorbed pollution by tolerating more warming.
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
@@erdelegy You might be interested in my reply to Xeno - you might (I hope) find it a smidgeon re-assuring as I don't think the feedback you and Xeno refer to is fully correct due the increase in the CO2 partial pressure in the atmosphere meaning the Ocean remains a CO2 sink for some time.
only an amoeba would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
@@erdelegy they have no brains
@@erdelegy there's really no evidence to suggest that it's anything more than a stupid idea. CO2 has been higher before and wasn't responsible for run away climate.
Also, I have seen compelling objectice evidence of data manipulation to adjust historical data to fit the AGW narrative. I don't know if it's true or false, but just seeking truth here, it was persuasive. All the evidence suggests is there is a strong bias in climate research to find warming from anthropogenic CO2. It's really hard to tell if the research results are confirmation bias or something to be believed. I mean really ... Climate science researchers from the late 80s said lots of crazy shit that was all wrong (Hansen) and climategate was a thing ...
As part of this, I would highly recommend looking into GreenWave and the work Bren Smith is doing in growing a large community of small-scale farmers that carbon sequester via seaweed growth alongside mussels and oysters as a business model.
I have previously suggested, on this channel I think, that instead of developing a whole new technology for direct carbon capture, we work WITH the natural systems to enhance their capacity to absorb CO2 while creating useful biomass. Examples include replanting mangroves, kelp forests and sea grass beds that have been dramatically reduced in recent decades. Also by expanding mussel and oyster farms and dumping the shells in DEEP water so that they sink out of the trophic zone to the sea floor and sequester the carbon long term. I also suggested reusing obsolete oil tankers to create Integrated marine farms that included pumping up cold, nutrient-rich seawater into the ships’ tanks and growing phytoplankton, zooplankton, seaweeds, corals, oysters, mussels, sea urchins, small fish and fish of edible size.
So many spill over benefits, kelp sequesters carbon and reduces ocean acidification (with strong local effects), but adsorbs phosphates and nitrate from run off, provide fish habitat and shade, provides incomes to people displaced by necessary fish quotas, provides feedstock for fertilizer and methane production, and has some evidence of reducing wave energy and coastal erosion (although this is contradicted in other stories and I imagine requires very large scale implementation). Any country with a carbon credit system that doesn't support this (ei, all of them I believe) is almost trying to fail.
@@ajayvee6677 Why "instead of"? How about "as well as"?
@@martinmidgley5610 One reason, in my opinion, is that there is a larger chance of failure the more complex the solution becomes. I wouldn't necessarily say "instead of", but I would certainly work on the assumption that many of the technologies that are reliant on both large economic and energy investment will not happen at all. Concentrate on the simple technologies, the ones that are resilient and can be done locally. As the world warms, as food supplies falter, energy supplies falter and politics becomes angrier and more corrupt it is highly likely that the conditions to allow the big scale industrial projects to go ahead will cease to exist. You can well imagine a situation where a project, or projects, like this are given large amounts of public funding only for the price of materials X, Y and Z required for the production to double in price and the contracted company goes bust. Or some crony just trousers the money and fucks off. Or they half-arse the project, cutting corners and costs and the projected benefits suddenly dwindle to 30% of the initial projection: "well we've still managed to create the "green" hydrogen, however we've had to run a diesel generator for 8 years to assist in the process. There are many, many scenarios where you can/do/will see projects like this fail (but be spun to look like they're a success), and it is easily possible to imagine a scenario where we don't meet targets because of a shortfall that could have been met by more democratic, simple, accessible technologies. These projects will get the backing though, as they fit the criteria of control, power and centralisation that they bring.
Edit: they also take a lot of time to generate results, and if they don't work we're ten years further down the road to failure!
@@ricos1497
You are so right man, because its all about making profit again.
The Netherlands, Holland, have been fighting the encroachment of the sea for many years. They have windmills for pumping water. More recently they have invested in electricity generating wind turbines.
It would be interesting to investigate if the calcium carbonate could be used to automatically build sea defences as it was being created.
I'm sure the Netherlands government would be interested in investigating the possibility of doing this if they have not already done so!
They now build one more major offshore windpark, 70 generators I believe. This is like one big nuclear powerblock can produce. As ab example, this is the power equired to pump all the rain out of the lowlands into the North Sea. But the solid stuff you mention would certainly be useful. Now the Dutch get state from quarries in Germany...
I mean, every little bit would surely be helpful to you guys, but with that said, wouldn't it be a lot cheaper to just dredge?
They distroyd the swamp 😭
The technique has been used to prevent beach erosion (by regrowing damaged coral reefs), and the original concept was developed by someone looking for a way to grow affordable housing components out of seawater. Doing that on a national scale is probably theoretically possible, but maybe not feasible
We'll have to wait a bit until the North sea gets warmed up enough to grow coral
This general process has fascinated me for a while (its very similar to the Biorock/Seacrete/Electrified Reef system). The primary magnesium mineral product created is hydromagnesite, which is used in fire suppression systems. If there were a market for the minerals being generated by this capture process, it would go a long way toward spurring adoption. I just wrote an article about how you could use the mineral as a coating around magnesium powder as a way to safely use the metal as an energy carrier and hydrogen producer.
Interesting!
You might also be interested in Project Vesta, which seeks to dump Olivine into oceans to mimic and accelerate the natural geological process for creating limestone
I agree. If there is a commercially viable use for the byproduct that may spur this technology.
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
Currently growing corals with this method for an experiment!
Countries are already slow to launch projects like these to capture CO2. Unfortunately they are already necessary
hol-up. 1.4 trillion for a world wide effect?
That's dirt cheap. The US, China, or the EU could do it unilaterally if they wanted.
If the price tag were to get split up internationally, This could definitely get done.
Put a profit motive to it, tech companies will do it alone.
@@herp_derpingsonhow about being internationally recognized as the saviours of humanity. How’s that for motivation?
@@alexs25867 nah
A big thank you from myself and my environmental sustainability class in our first year of uni. This summery along with others on your channel have been a huge help towards furthering our understanding :)
Thank you for putting this out there! I love this technique a lot, especially because you could produce carbon neutral cement with all that limestone.
By producing and selling the hydrogen and the cement, a plant could help offset its costs.
This is the most detailed and honest solution description I've seen so far. It is also the most realistic technical solution. As far as the cost goes, as long as we value our survival in monetary terms we cannot afford to survive. I suspect this one will get built at least in prototype and perhaps on a larger scale though maybe not until we stop worrying about the economic cost. Of course, you could compare its cost with the cost of not doing it and get a very reasonable ROI. This is definitely a keeper though I think more work needs to be done on the Chlorine and Hydrogen waste issue, and how to distribue the calcium carbonate so that it doesn't just accumulate in the extraction area. Imaging tons of this stuff just clogging up the intake pipes.
I don't think that this would be much of a problem.
As industry would quickly utilize the bi products.
The calcium carbonate would be used by the aggregate industry and the chemical industry.
It could dramatically reduce the amount of mining/quarrying required for those materials.
Likewise the chemical industry would soon use the available chlorine and hydrogen.
If it was up to me I would combine this with (As suggested) de salination /mineral extraction from seawater plants.
It is usually overlooked that there are huge quantities of metallic and other elements dissolved in seawater.
If you could utilize renewables to help extract them from the seawater as it is processed you could also reduce the need for mining etc.
Ideally I would build large industrial estates around such installations to use as much of the products and bi products that the process produce.
@@nicholaskelly6375 No, no, no. The calcium carbonate must be sequestered to keep the carbon out of the atmosphere. If industry gets its grubby little hands on it then it'll just end up as CO2 again.
@@kimwelch4652 How if it is used as aggregate in the construction industry then it still remains inert!
I am not suggesting using it to make cement etc. Using sythlimestone would allow a substantial reduction in quarrying.
Most limestone quarried in the UK is used as aggregate and nothing else.
Anything that would help to reduce quarrying would be desirable.
Also you could crush it under pressure to produce building blocks.
Which could replace bricks.
Again such a use would be useful environmentally as it would replace brick kilns etc etc.
Such artificial stone has been used in the past successfully.
A friend of mine developed a system to make blocks out of waste limestone dust and they were very successful. Not all industrial uses are harmful.
@@nicholaskelly6375 Maybe, but my long experience is that our "constructions" always come with consequences usually bad. For one thing what was there before we built over it? Creation always involves destruction. What do our creations destroy?
@@kimwelch4652 Agreed but we are in bind. Certainly dumping the sythlimestone in the deep sea will be problematic and could actually generate considerable CO2 due to transport costs.
Just look at the effect of burning biomass from Arkansas in the UK.
I saw a study that indicated that by shipping said biomass to Drax Power Station generated some 6 times more C02 than the coal coming from Kellingley Colliery!
This sort of thing is completely unacceptable. As I noted earlier most limestone extraction in the UK is used as aggregate and remains inert. I accept your concerns and am often suspicious of such ideas I would encourage the use of these materials to avoid mining them.
I like this better than anything that keeps CO2 as a gas, that can leak out eventually. Also the infrastructure would be used even after we get to "net zero", to clean up the mess and reduce ocean's acidity. I don't think we would do it on such a massive scale though, it seems more logical to bet on 10 different things at a 10 times smaller scale each. But like was said in the video, what's really needed is to really invest in large scale prototypes to see if it works or not, even taking some degree of gamble in the process.
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
Thanks for the video!
I'm curious about how the chlorine could be removed and neutralised, it seams a big thing to me.
The chlorine could be re-used to purify drinking water if it can be easily tapped from source.
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
Would this limestone rock be able to be used in making cement?? Maybe seaweeds and shellfish are a more sustainable and helpful approach?
Portland cement is made by calcining limestone - releasing the CO2 from CaCO3 to obtain CaO.
Yes, you just need to heat the limestone and get it to release the CO2 back to the atmosphere.
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
I've heard this one before.
Technologically possible solution. No mechanism in capitalism to incentivize it. No major government willing to go against the short-term interests of capital.
Isn't that what the theme of the 2020s needs to be for COP26 to in any way be possible... Also the desire to get off Russia's commodities?
Given how happy countries are to print money and spend it on their own expenditure or even helicopter it onto people... Why not print the money and fund these initiatives before the money printer blows up?
It is quite possible the energy companies can use this technology to produce hydrogen at places where there is plenty of sunshine/wind and transport the hydrogen by ships to Europe or elsewhere. They can then offset the co2 produced in the transportation and some more using this technology.
No XR or any other radical group demanding it, as it only provide scrubbing CO2 without global socialist revolution.
Carbon credits are becoming more valueable every year. So aside from selling the byproduct, you can simply sell carbon credits to comoanies that need to offset their carbon footprint. I think this plus seaweed/algae can become very profitable businesses
@@juezna Carbon credits are not helpful. There are so many problems with them, it'd be better to leave a short comment & simply call them a scam.
Thanks for the informative video!
Wow, it really is a lot cheaper to avoid emitting a tonne of carbon, than to emit and then sequester it...
We *really* need international carbon pricing
China is now the world largest emitter of Carbon Dioxide and they are not going to stop raising the standard of living of their population so that amount is only going to increase. They have nuclear weapons so you will have a hard time trying to force them to produce less CO2.
That suggests that sequestration is the way to go.
An additional possible sequestration method might be to fertilize the blue water ocean far from shore to promote plankton growth and sequester carbon in fish and whales.
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
An advantage of the solid production is that it is easy for the bean counters to measure. An observable process also helps the multitudes who don't trust nature to do it's thing in private.
Interesting, good point!
For me, the greatest challenge is the greed included int our economic model! As you mentionned it, if our governments announce the use of such methods, soon we would see some "Greenwashing" tempting to say that we all can continue to consume at the same rate!
Curious: have you analysed track record of communist and later former communist states? I mean especially how "greed" meant less CO2 emission under capitalism, as careful calculation meant that central planners were able to run projects that even before including externalities were already unprofitable.
@@useodyseeorbitchute9450 Why do you suppose that I whish a communist system just because I say there is unlimited greed in the present neo-con system? I simply remember what the tobaco producers did with the scientific proofs about cancer, and I also know what the big Oil said about global warming and the use oil when science first discovered the warming effet of CO2...These reactions where caused by greed. It looks like humans prefer a system that will kill them than to change things and loose money and/or comfort...If we choose to do what we must, we will probably loose some of our high standard of living for a long while. Some very rich poeple will eventually have to spend money on the common good...This is what happens in some capitalist countries in northern Europe...And it does not mean we all have to become stalinists!
@@BitBert " Why do you suppose that I whish a communist system" Wish? It would be a bit too strong word. You want to get rid of some undesirable features of capitalism, just you seem to forget what is the main alternative. You are not asking for mass graves. However, you are asking for somewhat less profit oriented and more centrally planned system, aren't you? Then, yes, you are asking for swapping one flaws for another, and should be reminded how the other flaws look like.
"This is what happens in some capitalist countries in northern Europe" They score top on economic freedom rankings on almost all categories except taxes hitting everyone and being used to run quite generous safety net. Whichever cultural (or genetic) features allowed creation of such system, I notice a general pattern that everyone praises them, but no one outside of their area managed to replicate their model. No one is for example admiring France, even though they have gov spending over 50% of GDP. If it was so simple France would have already have Scandinavia at home.
Assuming this technology becomes widely implemented, might it be worthwhile to transport the solid carbon to land areas, such as, but not necessarily limited to, deserts, in order to build up or restore some of these depleted soils so that plant life can once again gain a foothold and contribute to removing CO2 from the atmosphere? I'm thinking this solid carbon could be used in "Green Belt" initiatives around the world.
you understand co2 is 0.03% of the atmosphere?
@@nunyabiz1780 Thank you for the specific percentage. Although I have a forestry degree and worked in fire management - and therefore have/had a pretty good understanding of the atmosphere - I had forgotten the percentage. Not that it had anything to do with what i wrote. What's the percent of ocean water that is absorbed CO2? It's not a question of one or the other. CO2 is going to have to be removed from both the oceans and the atmosphere.
@@mikeaustin4138 I'm trying to make the point that its a trace gas in the atmosphere, the world isn't ending because of it. Plants could benefit from more of it. Taking from land where we grow food is good if you want famine. spending money on removing it is a dead weight loss to the economy that will make us all poorer. There have been plant extinctions in the past when co2 dropped below where it is today...kentucky blue grass was a resulting mutation.
if you green the sahara you'll hurt the rain forests in brazil
What about making building materials out of the solidified carbon end product? Then it could be sold, at least partly offsetting the cost of solidifying it.
trees could serve a similar function
@@caden.927 😊
Singapore has a shortage of sand and was buying it up from Malaysia before they were stopped because some Malaysian islands were at high risk of disappearing. With this you could install new islands in shallow water when needed.
It's so encouraging to see research into such matters is being undertaken. This tech seems to make sense on many levels. Thanks JHAT for keeping us in the loop!!
I always find your videos very interesting!
You mention cleaning up chlorine produced from electrolysis of seawater on an industrial scale.
I've had this idea for years but came up against the amount of chlorine produced when applying electrolysis to sea water.
My thoughts were, how can we convert into energy, the extreme pressures created at depth by water.
What I came up with was, electrolysis of water at depth would naturally produce gases under pressure.
If the oxygen component was allowed to expand as it reached the surface it would increase in volume and could be used to drive turbines to produce electricity which would be feed back down into the electrolysis process
If the energy required was greater than what the oxygen turbines could produce, this could be supplement by other green energy or even a proportion of the hydrogen produced from the electrolysis.
The result would be green hydrogen and if use at sea, chlorine, which would need to be processed.
I also wondered if this whole process could be tacked onto fresh water hydro projects, if they had sufficient fall and pressure. Which would eliminate the chlorine problem.
Keep up the excellent work, you are making a difference!
Excellent idea and a good concept that can be looked into seriously,
Great post my friend. I appreciate all your efforts to keep my eyes open to all these developments.
Cheers Gef.
This method would cause a depletion of minerals in the ocean such as magnesium and calcium, which might affect sea life negatively. However, I'm not sure that the scale of the depletion would have a barely noticeable, moderate, or disastrous affect.
As with many of these proposals, we should consider doing *all* of the reasonably good ones, not just putting all of our eggs in one basket, and then praying for divine providence that the side affects on the ecosystem, economy, etc. are not too devasting... if we have a many-pronged approach, we can shut down those that are causing large problems, while still having other effective solutions operational.
i dont think that is a problem compared to acidification. those minerals also get washed into the oceans from agricultural and industry runoff into the water cycle. Even if you are correct, they could be replaced i believe
Would be good to see an update on this based on some of the work Heimdall have been doing. Looks like they're estimating $450/ton of CO2 removal.
Thank you for this video! You cover the subject so well it's hard to find anything to talk about. ;)
It sounds wonderful. An industrial, _realistic_ way to remove huge amounts of CO2 from the ocean, and eventually the air as well. Unlike other methods of carbon sequestration this taps into a natural planetary cycle, so there's a place for the carbon to go where it won't immediately come back up again. I'm suspicious of carbon capture methods that try to stuff billions of tons of gas back into geologic formations - because that kind of storage gets less efficient the more you do it. As the CO2 concentration increases it will find or force open every small crack and come back to the surface. By contrast this single step carbon process locks the carbon into mineral form and sends the rocks tumbling to the bottom of the sea, where they can be slowly covered by sand and remain locked away for a future geologic era.
If it's purely an economic problem, surely we can solve that. The problem of course is that it didn't cost anything to emit all those greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for all those years, and we have to pay those costs now in the form of mitigation strategies. Our economic system isn't really set up for transactions where the costs come due a hundred years after the profits. But the money was there for Covid, like you said. And this is an even bigger problem. Surely some way can be found to find the funds, perhaps involving carbon taxes so we can control future emissions as well.
Thank you. I have worked on CCS/U. I still didn't read the paper, but this technology sounds much better than all the other CCS/U methods I'm familiar with. However, only after a pilot plant is operating for a year or so, could we asses its practicality.
Have you read about the work of Wolf Hilberz as well as Seacrete and Biorock?
Have there been any considerations of using the sCS2 sequestered carbon products of limestone and magnesite as green(er) building materials? Could there be some financial offset in utilizing these products of the process instead of just sinking them to the ocean floor?
I mentioned this elsewhere in the comments, but roughly speaking the original application for this kind of electrolysis process was to literally grow affordable housing components out of the sea. Might be time to revisit that application...
@grindupBaker
How about using it in those hemp blocks featured in an earlier episode on this channel?
Do a search for Wolf Hilberz as well as Seacrete and Biorock.
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
@@markkelly6259 Thanks! Kewl info! "Patents and Trademark expired" is promising. Not seeing anything of industrial scale though.
....always blessed by 'just have a think' info, you are a gifted presenter, thank you for sharing ...richard
This is an interesting idea;however, there are a few concerns that I have not seen any discussion. If we take calcium (~400 ppm in seawater) and magnesium (~1200 ppm in seawater) , we will be removing a beneficial mix of minerals that are used by many marine animals and plants. We need to be careful not to create another problem. Also, many have suggested using the solids for concrete. Again this is an interesting idea; however, to make concrete, you take calcium carbonate, heat it up using natural gas to drive off, what for it, carbon dioxide. You have actually added more CO2 to the atmosphere. In addition, much of the solids generated would contain magnesium carbonate, which will affect the quality of the concrete to some degree.
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
you understand co2 is 0.03 percent of the atmosphere?
@@nunyabiz1780 I am not sure if the point you are making? Actually CO2 is about 400 ppm in the atmosphere or 0.04% by volume.
@@nunyabiz1780 what exactly was the point of any of what you said here?
@@Sedr1s co2 isn't an air pollutant, this is all political. slow killing the baby boomers with clot shots has more merit.
Let’s do water capture, biological water capture and air capture.
If one of them is shown to be having unforeseen consequences, ramp up the other two.
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
Another brilliant video. You summarise the science beautifully, and I loved the touch of humour. I wish I could afford to sponsor your series. The best I can do is “like” (love) them, turn on notifications, and subscribe to the channel. Keep going you good thing.
I am wondering if the carbon removed from ocean water in the process at the start of your story has any use as an agricultural input. Calcium carbonate Calcium bicarbonate ......apparently I need about 1 ton per ac on my 160ac patch of dirt. If it is the same or a like chemical compound there might be a commercial use for the stuff. Certainly a better use than just dropping it back into the oceans IMO
Sea weed/kelp is a wonderful fertilizer too.....and it seem so be cheaper and thus easier to start up/ramp up than building these plants to remove carbon from the oceans
At the end of the day yes we will need to work with nature. Sea weed/kelp might just be the natural way to go all the way around might as well make it a win [no trillion dollar cost] win [less inputs steel concrete copper etc etc] win a marketable product that will both help solve food insecurity as more and more of our agricultural zones are hit by drought
Excellent. The concept can be expanded to include fission nuclear power to run it and adding ability to filter lithium, uranium, and so on from the sea water as it is processed.
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
Yeah, after that 3rd Working Group video you put out a couple of weeks ago Dave, anytime I hear R&D I immediately jump to thinking that wind and solar rollout should be the primary emphasis of financial investment.
I do think that climate change still requires a "silver buckshot" approach, but the majority project we should all be implementing, at least in terms of energy, is wind and solar installation, whether residential, commercial, or utility-wide.
I think the point about stacking this ocean scrubbing tech with water desalination plants makes things very financially feasible, compared to having exclusive facilities. Coastline is expensive, as many diverse interests act to make claim to that finite resource.
I also echo the worry about geoengineering and the prospect that IF and when we get CO2 emissions to Net Zero and work back the clock to pre-industrial levels, *we need to be very careful in not tipping the scales too far in the opposite direction by not emitting enough/capturing too much CO2 for what the global ecosystem needs.*
We need to reach a steady state equilibrium where CO2, and all other GHGs, are monitored, and develop protocols and policies for knowing when to engage emissions or capture technologies to counterbalance disturbances to the system.
Those protocols and policies are light-years away, relatively speaking, but we can't lose sight of the other side of the pendulum that we call climate change.
Well said Nick
Assuming the IF and when... We will have a lot more time to explore solutions, we will know a lot more than we know right now, AND then we can go back to the usual political, big-money driven choices!
I just love Daveday, I mean Sunday's 👍😂 even after a devastating few days on a personal level, your video engages, educates and entertains me in such a way that just for that few moments, I can feel positive about mankind and the efforts of so many unheralded individuals, who are working away tirelessly trying to save our planet 👍😊👌Thank you for your positive weekly messages Dave and for your wonderful dry humour 😂 keep up the brilliant work my friend 👍😊👌
I wonder if the leftover limestone can also be used to help promote coral reef growth and general ecosystem rehabilitation
Check out Wolf Hilberz as well as Seacrete and Biorock. He was helping restore coral reefs by directly supplying electricity without the multi billion dollar factory.
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
Absolutely spot-on take on this: Yes, we need CDR but must not use it as a reason to delay ramping down the use of combustion fuels. There is something poetic about sending carbon back to a geological store, that's where a lot of the CO2 in the air came from (coal).
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
Ok, so, chemistry and all that again... Chemist here, having some notes. You correctly pointed out that by electrolysis of saltwater, chlorine would be produced, which is supposed to be absorbed by active carbon and removed from the process. Coating the anode would not change anything about that. So, besides the fact that this would hardly work to keep the chlorine bound for ever, I don't think you made any calculations about how many Active Carbon would be needed to do that. Because for each CO2 (from carbonic acid, H2CO3) to absorb, two hydrogens would be generated, and thus, one molecule of Chlorine (Cl2) would be formed. As Carbonate and Cl2 have _roughly_ the same mass, it means: To bind 20 billion tons of carbonate, you'd produce 20 billion tons of Chlorine gas (actually even more) per year, which has to be absorbed. And to do so with active carbon, this could easily add up to 100 billion tons or more of toxic waste. Where do you get that active carbon from? Coking wood and producing even more CO2? And where would you put all that toxic waste?
So, I think it's easy to see that this approach is not useful by any means. Except...
...yes, except there will be a way _not_ to produce Chlorine by the electrolysis, but Oxygen! This would need a very special anode material which maybe has yet to be developed. But without that, the electrolysis approach will end up in a bigger catastrophe than it is allegedly acting against.
I recently saw a vid where they can make char from carbon extracted from the atmosphere, couldnt they do that from the carbon extracted from the oceans too? yeah i never went beyond GCSE chemistry n i preferred biology anyways XD if this is a numpty question XD
Indeed.
All that the paper states is,
"Although the electrolysis of Cl- containing waters is challenging due to the tendency to produce Cl2(g) under acidic conditions, (30) this latter issue can be mitigated by using oxygen evolution reaction (OER)-selective coatings in the anode. (95−97) Alternately, it would be necessary to apply commercial adsorption technologies, for example, that utilize organic carbon-based solids (e.g., coal, activated carbon) and/or zeolites to immobilize the Cl2(g) evolved and prevent its emission into the atmosphere. (98,99)"
Since any significant Cl2(g) production would make this process wholly untenable, I would have thought that far more attention (ie a quantitative analysis) would have been given to this problem.
@@kimwarburton8490 Hm, I don't know the video you refer to, maybe you can tell me how to find it.
However, it's surely not impossible to produce char carbon from the CO2 in the atmosphere (there are little other sources for carbon in the air), but then again, the CO2 could be directly removed by that process. Althogh I think it is very expensive and might be not very efficient. There also are approaches to use the CO2 in the atmosphere and reform it into fuel, which again is also not cheap to do. But when having access to a extemely cheap source of energy, sure, why not give it a try and see what the long-term results are.
@@human_isomer It was this one ruclips.net/video/KpGvHpB7SQ0/видео.html
But i was wondering if the char could be made with the carbon extracted from the ocean, with the idea that that could be used to neutralise the chlorine at the same rate it's produced. This method looks to be longterm more efficient use of the energy. both direct air and this newer ocean technique require huge amounts of energy and we will want to get the best bang for our buck.
@@kimwarburton8490 Thanks, just watched that, and besides a few minor flaws (as usual when chemistry is involved), it was interesting.
Regarding your question: In theory it's possible to produce the char coal from the carbonate that is solidified in the ocean electrolysis process, but I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense. First of all, it's complicated and would use a lot of energy (don't want to go into the details here). Second: The chlorine wouldn't be locked into the char forever. Absorbing chlorine in char coal is a physical process, similar to the sponge in the above video absorbing water: Over time, the chlorine will leak out again. And chlorine is one very toxic and harmful substance. So the chlorine-soaked char would have to be disposed in a place where it can never possibly escape from again - similar to radioactive waste disposal, but much much larger. That's neither technically nor economically nor environmentally reasonable.
As mentioned earlier: Seawater electrolysis would only be useful when a way is found to generate oxygen instead of chlorine. In this case, no char coal is needed to absorb the oxygen, and the carbonates could be safely disposed on the ground of the oceans. And it would actually be the reversed process the CO2 was generated from. But all the energy that was set free when the carbon was burnt would have to be put back into that reaction, and with the losses on top, this would easily double or triple the energy necessary.
If we only knew a process that could do that for free and without so much energy required... 🌳🌲🌴🌳🌲
Best science/planetary health channel of all. Thank you.
Ok... I quote "It will consume more than 20PWh (T=10^15) of electricity". In 2018 world's electricity consumption was 22 315 TWh (T=10^12), there is a small gap of roughly 1000 between these 2 figures... It means that to implement this "solution" we need to increase the world electricity production by 1000... See where I'm going with this?
By 1,001 if we humans want the electricity we were already using in 2018. 😉
22,315 TWh is 22.3 PWh. This would more like a 2 fold increase in world electricity production. This is still a large amount of electricity. Instead of subsidizing fossil fuels they should be taxed. Carbon tax and dividend is the best way to make the conversion away from fossil fuels. It was almost implemented in the US but there was one Democratic Senator (and of course 50 Republican Senators) who stopped this.
@@ericnordman5893 Fu... you are right! I missed the comma... Still we would need to produce twice the world's electricity. I agree with the rest of your comment.
I enjoyed the clever comment of the lady in the background asking you to clean up the mess.
😁
I guess it will take more than one clever lady to keep pointing up out to us to start cleanings the mess .
I imagine setting up this process on all existing oil rigs around the globe so as not to concentrate it on coasts. Decommissioning the rigs from drilling oil obviously as well 😋
We will be needing those oil rigs for a while longer but as they reach the end of their lifetime, they can be fitted with wind turbines to produce limestone and remove carbon from the oceans rather than dismantling them.
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
_"Our Spaceship's about to crash!_
_"Look at the instruments. Data are clear!"_
_We need to deploy the parachute NOW!"_
- --"Ah, no. The button's all the way over there. And parachutes cost money. Think about the effects on our budget. Plus effort? Be sensible."
_"But the spaceship costs a LOT more money than a parachute! And we need to be alive to produce either!"_
---"Ah, but that only costs money in the FUTURE. Just sit tight. If it makes you feel better, we'll adopt a "concerned" outlook. Oh look, there's my house."
... This is a recurring feeling regarding climate change. A not-so Merry-Go-Round. I really hope people will start moving in an actual direction. We need to be building all of these, as prototypes, and see which one works.
Seems that the best way is to simply stop burning stuff in the first place.
Cool you good with no medicine, diapers, or food?
The Significant Other, partner of Dave Borlace "Are you gonna clean that up?" and the following exasperated "Yes" is my favourite scene ever on this channel! Sorry, that may show how shallow I am, but I loved it!
Thank you for an interesting video. I wonder what effect that process may have on the ocean's bicarbonate-borate buffering system that maintains ocean pH around 8.3 or so? It seems from nothing but a quick think that it would have a major effect on pH, at least in the locale of the plant where CO2 removal was taking place. And, then there is the resulting imbalance of ions in the outflow that may have adverse affects on both biotic and abiotic components. Also, I'm leery that activated charcoal would be up to the task of removing the significant amount of Cl that would be generated. Nonetheless, I'm encouraged that people are thinking about ways to sequester carbon. I only hope it happens sooner rather than never.
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
@Dave Borlace I don't know if you read all these, but I have done a load of research Ch I to desalination, reverse osmosis dialysis can remove about 25% of the cost of desalination via producing energy via the salinity differential of briny and non salty water... Adding a further 9% saving would lead to a 34% reduction on costs. Whether this can be done with renewable or SMR nuclear technology is only theory at this point.
Another great video that. Is among your best. I am encourage by the UCLA work. Your reporting is importantly spreading the information to those who need some encores about Climate Charge. Thank You!!!
Thanks Dru. Much appreciated
Such thoughtful and balanced reporting. Thank you so much. Perhaps the calcium carbonate rocks could be used as building materials, a substitute for cement or perhaps road base. Just a thought.
So using the figures at the 8:09 time on the video, it would take about 2,200 kWh to convert 1 ton. 2,200 kWh will take a moderately efficient EV ~15,000km. Also 2,200 kWh equals the energy in 1.5 barrels of oil so the oil equivalent necessary to remove 10Gt of CO2 annually would be 15 billion barrels of oil.
The current worldwide oil production is ~ 35 billion barrels. Clearly there is no easy way to pull CO2 from the biosphere!
I think this comment (and another further up about the chemistry involved) should be pinned. If there's one criticism (healthy, hopefully!) I have of Dave's approach, is that there is no in depth follow up to the original videos to discuss the problems raised in the comments (or elsewhere). The unanswered questions like yours are the difference between a viable and ridiculous solution and will obviously detract from other solutions. Obviously, people will then say "it's important to have many different solutions in the pipeline... ", but if a solution can't ever be worked, it should be discarded. If you are correct that an increased production of 15billion boe would be required, then it is imperative to discuss how that is going to be sourced. The video mentions using otherwise unusable power at peak times, but I'm guessing that wouldn't nearly cover the figure required. Thus we need a balance calculation to say that we're going to need another X thousand wind turbines to address the shortfall. Then we need to calculate the energy used to make those turbines, and so on, so that we can see the total energy cost to actually calculate viability.
It seems to me that most of the large scale schemes promoted have huge caveats built in, and also massive energy requirements to implement and run. For the forseeable, a large percentage of that energy requirement will be fulfilled by fossil fuels, which is obviously problematic. Beyond that though, it often looks like the energy return on energy invested (which rarely gets discussed, it's usually discussed in the entirely nebulous concept of dollar cost), or in this case the carbon sequested on energy invested, on many of these schemes makes them physically unviable, rather than just financial or political.
Why don't we use seaweed? It grows insanely quickly, it provides habitat for marine life, it can be harvested as food or fertilizer, it sucks out CO2 from the oceans to deacidify the oceans, and it pumps in oxygen into the sea.
This is an very win win situation...love it!
Knowing concrete industry is one of the CO² unfriendly industry's , and limestone can actualy been used for concrete production ☆♡
Grts from the netherlands
Johny geerts
Unfortunately, in order to use limestone in concrete, you have to heat it up to make CaO, which releases the CO2 from the limestone, negating the whole point of creating the limestone to begin with.
Thank you so much for you work! You give me a little bit of hope back with each video, in a mature, balanced way. There seems to be a way out, perhaps.
I always appreciate your videos because they provide interesting perspectives. But this time you have gotten it wrong.
There is a serious flaw in this argument: precipitation CaCO3 for seawater is actually releasing extra CO2. Ca++ + 2HCO3- = CaCO3 + H2O + CO2
My former post has obviously not been published because I had added a link to prove my point. So I will try again without using a link but only the content.
Let me also add that chlorine is not 'absorbed' by activated carbon but converted into acid (HCl) and CO2. That is not a win-win but lose-lose situation as the extra acid in large scale will reduce the pH sea water even more.
There is a common misconception:
Almost everyone seems to think that limestone deposition, which is a sink of oceanic bicarbonate, must also be a sink of atmospheric CO2, when in fact it is a source!
I cannot publish the link, but I can show your the text and anybody interested can find the original by googling for specific word combinations.
Ca++ + 2HCO3- = CaCO3 + H2O + CO2
This is an interesting point because limestone deposition is, along with volcanic outgassing, the major source of atmospheric CO2 on a geological time scale, while dissolution of limestone, along with weathering of aluminosilicate minerals, is the major sink. This is widely misunderstood by those not knowledgeable about the chemistry of the carbon cycle. Almost everyone seems to think that limestone deposition, which is a sink of oceanic bicarbonate, must also be a sink of atmospheric CO2, when in fact it is a source! This common error is due to the fact that bicarbonate is the major form of inorganic carbon in the ocean, and because the ocean is a pH-buffered chemical system. In effect for each molecule of bicarbonate precipitated as limestone one molecule is released as CO2 in order to maintain charge and pH balance. Therefore brucite formation at the expense of aragonite has a net effect of reducing the effects of ocean acidification caused by increased CO2 in the atmosphere.
However, to put this into perspective, about half of all the net limestone burial in the ocean used to take place in coral reefs (Milliman, 1993), at least back when coral reefs were healthy and growing, before global warming, new diseases, and pollution killed most of them. About an order of magnitude more limestone was formed by planktonic organisms, but almost all of that dissolves when their microscopic skeletons fall into deep water, where they dissolve because of the lower temperature, higher pressure, and the higher acidity of deep waters caused by decomposition of organic matter that is formed at the ocean surface by photosynthesis and falls to the deep sea where it is oxidized by decomposing organisms and bacteria. However, the rate at which we are now adding CO2 to the atmosphere from fossil fuel combustion is about 100 times greater than the natural sources from global limestone burial (Ware et al., 1991), indicating how greatly human pollution has overwhelmed natural sources. Consequently global ocean acidification caused by fossil fuel-caused CO2 buildup cannot be effectively countered by manipulating limestone deposition, unless fossil fuel CO2 sources are greatly reduced and a mechanism is developed to directly remove CO2 from the atmosphere. If allowed to build up in the atmosphere, fossil fuel CO2 will only be very slowly neutralized over hundreds of millennia to millions of years by dissolution of terrestrial limestone rocks on land and marine limestone sediments.
Great post. Hopefully others will get this far down the comment section to find it! Hopefully you'll get a response too!
@@ricos1497 I hope so. I am afraid that I the reality is being overlooked.
Can I correct a misconception here? The reaction Ca2+ + 2HCO3- = CaCO3 + H2O + CO2 is correct, resulting from the fact that at ocean pH (~ 8.2) most of the dissolved C is in the form of HCO3- not CO32-. Each molecule of CaCO3 that precipitates leaves behind an H+ ion, meaning that the system gets more acidic as CaCO3 precipitates. The more acidic the system, the more CO2 is forced from solution into the gaseous phase (hence the release of CO2).
However, consider the following reaction: CO2 + OH- = HCO3-. Adding OH- to a solution in contact with gaseous CO2 results in a dissolution of CO2 into solution. SO - let's re-imagine your first equation, but this time adding OH-. We get Ca2+ + 2HCO3- + OH- = CaCO3 + H2O + HCO3-.
In other words, if you can add OH- during the precipitation of CaCO3, you don't get CO2 released into the atmosphere. This is what the authors of the paper are proposing: they use electrolysis of aqueous NaCl (the "chloralkali process" - 2NaCl + 2H2O = 2NaOH + H2 + Cl2) to generate OH- which allows the precipitation of CaCO3 without release of CO2 back into the atmosphere. It requires energy, but it produces Cl2 and H2 gas which may be sold to offset some of the energy costs. It probably only makes sense if the energy for electrolysis comes from renewable sources, not fossil fuels.
My pedigree: 25 years research experience in Environmental Chemistry, specializing in carbonate systems.
Great channel. Please keep up the great work and keep banging the drum! Reduce Reuse recycle!
So, carbon capture from the ocean can potentially be done cheaper than direct air capture, I always suspected this to be the case, now just need to figure out the best method to implement it without harming various aquatic ecosystems.
At the same time, I feel it is a bit naïve to believe that reducing overall energy expenditure by society is a genuine avenue that can realistically be pursued. Yes, there is room for gains in per capita efficiencies, but asking people to give up on amenities and restricting the developing world from access to standard comforts is not going to go over well. To truly transition off of oil I think it is likely that we would need to radically expand clean energy production to the point where it dwarfs that which we currently gain from geologically sourced oil and other hydrocarbons.
I agree with your assessment. We can work towards more efficient use of energy, but asking people to reduce thier quality of life is a no go. The key to everything is switching energy production from unclean sources to clean sources.
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
@@evancombs5159 yes and that would take time. Humans aren’t exactly great at abrupt/short term change as seen by the pandemic
Any pilot plants planned? Can't seem to find a commercial operation for SCS2.
So the question is how many kWh are required to pull 1 ton of CO2 from the sea water?
This is the most fundamental question. It takes 4.3MWh to electrolyse a ton of water, but I'm not sure how much carbon that yields. I suspect it's a tiny amount and that this process is a very irresponsible waste of precious energy resources
@@sammason2300 not if you are producing green hydrogen anyway. Of course, much better to replace fossil energy with 0-carbon energy int he first place
@@kimwarburton8490 Fair point. I guess I'm just unconvinced that we'll ever be in the position of having so much excess electricity from renewables that a hydrogen economy makes sense. It's so much more thermodynamically sensible to just use the electricity directly rather than "unburning" water only to burn it again.
@@sammason2300 agree, but there will be a need for green hydro, such as airplanes n ships, industrial processes, as an energy storage, i think diesal cars can b easily n cheaply converted. But ur right, in most applications, warming/cooling homes n workspaces etc, green elec makes most sense
It's always good to just have a think! 😃
This is promising. Biological carbon capture seems good, but... We do have to remember decaying plants release Nitrogen, which kills fishes. So some of each then? Are we really in danger of removing too much C02?
Taking too much out is easy to fix....just burn some oil and coal
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
Brilliant as always I Love the Ocean 🌊
Thank you! Cheers!
Imagine if governments redirect the "defense" budgets to defending against global warming...
We've been doing this to some extent in the West. It didn't take long for Russia to take advantage
@@sammason2300 indeed: It takes one idiot to misguide the entire world.
AT 8:10 I have a question.... could local areas by these things start to suffer from too rich oxygen in the water?
As always, no silver bullet. We don't necessarily need $2 trillion of these systems. They have to be part of a larger system of multiple approaches combined to achieve the same effect.
Thoghts on using thirsty cement in parking lots and have native shade trees in them as well.
Why it will help stop flooding and increase groundwater and the trees will reduce heat and give back o2.
Thoughts 🤔
Thanks Dave. Another well explained presentation with a message that everybody needs to understand - and you are very good at making it unbderstandable
Cheers Colin. I appreciate your feedback.
John Martin, 1988: "Give me half a tanker of iron, and I will give you an ice age."
This seems like a VERY expensive, highly technological solution to a problem algae might be able to solve for nearly free.
Adding iron to ocean ecosystems causes algae blooms, the algae absorbs CO2, dies, and sinks to the bottom (the same mechanism that makes limestone). The only real argument against trying iron is, "We don't know how long the carbon stays sequestered. It may not be permanent." So what? Iron is cheap - if we have to do it again in 300 years, fine.
Several years ago Greenpeace blockaded a ship in port to keep it from conducting a small-scale test. Why? Because they were afraid it would work.
It seems that humans have destroyed mangrove forests and kelp regions all over the world. Those would be the ideal areas to begin. Plus there is nothing wrong with a varied approach that uses multiple measures that would each only have a marginal effect. As times goes by consequences would be apparent and efforts could be dialed up or dialed down to fit the circumstances.
Microsoft has devised a way to get people visiting its news site (the one that keeps coming up when my cursor strays to the bottom right of my laptop screen) to 'plant new Mangroves' for free while learning how to use its weather app.
You simply do a few tasks daily, explore features for hidden energy, and this goes towards a 'growing virtual tree.' Once you get to 100%, this sponsors a real tree to be planted. (I'm not sure if everyone's trees end up in the same place. I have 3 completed and one half-completed trees in Kenya so far).
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
Scientists have taken a look at the most plausible suggested solutions and rank-ordered them in terms of speed, low cost, proven benefits, fewest unknowns, etc. Top ranked is capping old oil and gas wells, then growing mangrove and seaweed "plantations", then growing hemp to replace pulp for paper mills and water-thirsty cotton for clothing. Stop the endless wrangling and get to work!
I think another simple and cheap way could be storing dry compressed seaweed.
Very good video - gives me great hope (apart from the human race inevitably wrecking everything in their usual way because it's inconvenient to believe that climate change is real).
Man made climate change is fake . Climate change is real and there's nothing you and can do about it but to adapt to earth's natural changes. Environmentalists are Charletons out to shake down governments
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
Well put together video. Could this be tied in with CMSR? eg seaborg technologies. Could the By-product rock be using in building products?
Yet another example of “fossil fuel industry causes problem -> government needs to pay for it to get fixed”
The fossil fuel industry should be taxed for every penny these plants cost!
Sounds nice. But in the history of the World, companies always pass on the costs to the consumers. So we would end up paying for it anyway.
@@davidprice3456 that might actually be a good thing… the more expensive fossil fuels get, the faster we’ll move to renewable alternatives
Can the solid byproduct be used in production of concrete or other building materials?
This has far more legs than most of the Carbon Capture ideas suggested to date 👍
This will be key! Removing carbon from ocean water is much easier than removing it from the air... the issue is dealing with all of the salt... and water... and plants and animals that come with it.
Random comment for channel interaction.
Carrot
@@Juan_lauda Celery!
Meat Sauce
Excellent video as usual - thank you!
Everyone: The problem with solving the climate crisis is financial.
The super rich: Yeah it sure is. Too bad about that.
Everyone: But like we could do it if we abolished the profit incentive, right? The materials and willpower are there, just not the money.
The super rich: Hey hey hey! Let's not get extremist here, it's not like the end of the world is the end of the world!
Could the calcium carbonate be used as a building material? If so, salescould help offset the costs.
Wonderful. Another high-tech, vast-cost, CO2 sequestration method that requires thousands more electric power plants to operate, while at the same time ignoring the most powerful sequestration engine on Earth that requires zero electric power: photosynthesis. It ignores the global train-wreck agricultural system that destroys natural carbon sequestration in organic matter in soil (roots and microbiota) and replaces it all with petrochemicals. It ignores the fact that regenerative agriculture is as productive as petrochemical agriculture yet requires far fewer inputs.
Do the brilliant high tech nerds pay any attention at all to the world around them?
Reducing Nature to it’s Simplest Organic Conclusion is obviously absurd to the Uber Educated in search of a Institutionalized Monetary based solution.
Rather than the expensive system described,it is far simpler to install a wind turbine generator in the ocean on a metal tower with a rectifier to make some DC. Attach the cathode to the steel tower and run a cable out a bit to a sacrificial anode. The tower will start collecting limestone on it. If you hang oysters on the tower, they will grow five times faster than in ordinary circumstances and they will survive stress much better. The oysters are filter feeders and they will consume a lot of the algae that blooms because of fertilizer run off.
High tech nerds don't even know where food comes from, why would they know about regenerative agriculture? While there ARE some farmers doing it, as a group, farmers are a conservative bunch, and they have to be, given the high cost of machinery, fuel, pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, AND the vagaries of the price they receive for their produce. But many of them are also used to receiving price support payments, so with a support system to reduce the risk, I think enough of them would get on board to make a difference in saving the soil, using cover crops to reduce heat, evaporation, and CO2 releases, aid in water retention, and even increase rainfall!
You’ll get no disagreement from me about how our agricultural practices need massive rethinking and the extent that they can help solve the climate apocalypse we’re facing. However, I think we’ll need all available techniques to confront the problem, this one also has some possible profit angles which makes it more likely to be taken up by the banker types. As little as I like relying on them to solve the planet level crisis we’re in, the financial system IS capable of marshalling massive resources when profits can be made.
It would be fantastic to see sustainable agricultural practices be more profitable than the scorched earth mechanisms typically employed today, that alone would go a long way to reducing our CO2 footprint for food production.
correct me if i am wrong, but dont coral reefs need magnesium along with calcium to grow? if we upset this balance.....
@grindupBaker reducing the mg level in any area will also lower it in other areas. so near a reef or not the reef would still see a long term effect. that is, if my memory is serving me and i have gotten things correct.
What unsettles me about dumping CO2 as-is or as part of some more convoluted chemical lingo stuff is that it's not removing just the carbon but also oxygen... is that really a good idea? We're actively borking the chemical balance of the atmosphere by digging up and burning hydrocarbons, don't we need to get rid of Carbon and Hydrogen and KEEP the Oxygen for our air to remain friendly to human life?
Yeah this one is a recipe for people complaining about tuna or dolphins becoming airated and then the woke nonsense starts.
What's wrong with planting a lot of big trees..? Entirely natural and does the same job.
@@thesolitaryadventurer that's fine if they aren't then chopped down and burned, we could also draw down a lot with regenerative farming.
A reasonable naturally raising concern it seems - but in reality not an issue. The molar constitution of the Earths atmosphere is about 78 % Nitrogen N2, 21 % Oxygen O2 and 1 % all the rest.
Specifically Carbon Dioxide CO2 makes about 0.04 %. Thus even doubling that to 0.08 % (god or whoever forbid) would decrease the O2 content to 20.6 % - hardly noticeable change by itself.
Since there's about 21% or so of oxygen in the atmosphere, and the amount of co2 we added so far is some 230 parts per million, which is about 1:1000 of the concentration of oxygen, which amounts to 210000 ppm.
So, don't think this particular issue is a point of concern, as there are 1000 molecules of O2 for every particle of CO2 added.
If we split water to produce hydrogen for fuel, then oxygen is a people-friendly byproduct.
1500 MWh for 660 ton CO2 means ~440 gr CO2/kWh, which is similar to the emissions of a Gas power plant.
So basically the energy required by this technology for sequestration is the same that would emit the same amount of CO2 in a gas power plant, which is not too bad.
Great video.
A durable solution will likely not involve mass behavior change (“business as usual”) - unless the alternative is easier than what we do now. The only exception to this (that I can think of) is the ‘don’t litter’ campaigns in the 70s.
As an aside - It would be interesting (in future videos) if you did an in depth comparison to similar global problems where we’ve had success in reducing impacts. i.e. global food shortages, pollution of waterways…
All “non-individual-level” solutions (As you often point out) have a downside. Reducing CO2 production means nuclear power or human engineered geo-thermal wells or massive batteries (all with significant downsides). By contrast, individual behavior changes could, technically, have little to no downsides. The problem is, they are virtually impossible en masse.
To me behavior change is a losing argument. Any real solution will require industrial level efforts in energy production or CO2 capture and as little change to “business as usual” as practical. i.e. Jets will still use fossil fuels for the next 50+ years.
Thank you for all your hard/thought provoking work, your videos are fantastic!
Please continue to investigate the incredible and almost infinite potential of soil to act as a carbon/CO2 sponge. ( Regenerative agriculture. )
I would like to see all those ten's of trillions of dollars be directed toward individual people. Proper incentives would allow more people to implement electric vehicles, solar power and other renewables. This could help carbon capture become "personal" to many more millions of humans, and thus create a stronger "virtuous cycle".
One problem with your idea is that individuals are responsible for at most 1/3 of CO2 emissions, while concrete production, power generation, and transportation (shipping, aircraft, etc) make up the bulk of the remaining 2/3 (iirc), things which individuals have almost no influence.
@@yeroca You make a good point. There a lot of moving parts to this problem. Personal power generation and more importantly, energy consciousness is what I would like to see promoted more... at the individual level.
Thanks. Heather Willauer at NREL has done some work on CO2 removal from seawater to study feasibility of synthesizing jet fuel.
One possible application could be thermal power plants like Diablo Canyon in Californa that moves about 816 B gallons per year of seawater for cooling. Imagine using that flow for CO2 removal.
Only an idiot would believe the air they exhale is a pollutant.
I like her process, too. But at least one of her presentations showed that the water at the outlet had a lower pH (more acidic), rendering it less able to pull and hold CO2 from the atmosphere.
For once, I can agree. CO2 removal (alongside with oxygenation of the oxygene deserts) is the most efficient way to slow down climate change and it's impact on marine life.
And what change would that be.....?
I don’t like these hair brained schemes because they distract from no brainer solutions like increasing energy efficiency and conservation. Like better building codes to insulate buildings to conserve heat.
@@TheBooban China is now the largest emitter of Carbon Dioxide in the world and as they continue to raise the standard of living of more of their population, they are going to continue to emit even more. Even if you reduce the carbon emissions of the US and Europe to zero, the increase in Chinese emissions will exceed the reduction.
If you are concerned about atmospheric carbon, you really ought to be thinking about sequestration.
One thing that's key here is that the CaCO3 produced by this process must not be allowed to decompose back into CO2. That means no using it for cement (releases CO2) and I wouldn't advise leaving it 'out in the open' on land (e.g. as a construction material) because CaCO3 is actually quite a soluble rock, and dilute carbonic acid in rainwater or other acid rain sources would dissolve it releasing CO2 again. Ocean burial works, but it needs to be remembered that CaCO3 dissolves in the deep ocean. While that CO2 would take hundreds of years to re-appear at the surface, we'd potentially be leaving a 'time bomb' for generations to come. The best place to bury that CaCO3 would actually be shallow oceans (e.g. the edges of continental shelves) where the waters will not dissolve the CaCO3 and the rock would be rapidly buried by sediments coming from the land.
'It just requires the political will". There's a phrase that shows up the fundamental undemocratic nature of the world's political systems. If it represented the majority opinion of most countries' populations, the will would have been there 20 years ago.
Could the limestone be used instead of dumping it into the seabed? Isn't limestone used in concrete production?
I'm so glad you made a video about this topic. It caught my eye like a year ago and I cant stop thinking this is a real possible tool to fight climatechange. So far ocean decarbonization seems to be such a promising candidate but yet direct air capture is the only method getting the most attention thanks to oil lobbyists. Oil companies use liquid carbon for fracking, so one can understand why they wouldnt care about other solutions.
More research is needed in order to know the long term impacts, but we need to compare all possible solutions and weigh in the pros and cons. Honestly, an ocean aproach has so many advantages and useful byproducts that it cant be overlooked
Thank you for sharing this information with us 🙋🏼♀️
You are welcome!
Thanks for this very encouraging video. About the costs, living on an uninhabitably warm planet will far exceed any costs of biological/geological carbon removal. Your last point, it won't mean anything if we do not vastly reduce our emissions, however is spot on. Thanks again, great video.
Interesting approach. Will the decarbonized water be safe for wildlife to put directly back into the ocean? Perhaps the solidified carbon could be formed into something useful (building bricks, etc.) instead of being returned to the ocean.
Or used as fertilizer, replacing the need to mine calcium from landscapes. A bit of magnesium in it would also be beneficial in most soils.
@@mikefox4830 Excellent idea. 👍
Could the formed rock be used as aggregate for some construction?
We, the people, need to put a lot of pressure on our leaders to get these things done. Now.
News flash: the people are dead ass asleep.
Now ... Errr about 30 years ago, that could've worked without totally upsetting economy and society.
If we make a dead stop now, we'll soon find out things are derailing, much like Europe is going to find out soon, they're getting off oil and gas in emergency mode. That's why German chancellor Scholz is going slow with oil import sanctions against Russia. Rushing things will ruin even the German economy within a year, with most of Western Europe going right after it.
Overnight quitting fossil will be fine for climate (if not the fossil aerosol dimming effect, worth about 1 centigrade of cooling) but folks in the street will be very much upset losing their lifestyle - that's all they're interested in - _yet_
We the people, need to vote differently.
Could they use the pumped water as stored energy via hydroelectric? Build a reservoir high up, pump the water up there when energy is in excess, release the water back into the ocean when energy is needed.
Double the temperature? Is that in Celsius, Fahrenheit or Kelvin?
Awesome !
Thank you, this encouraged me
You are welcome!