A team of scientists has figured out how to convert planet-warming carbon dioxide into a harmless powdery fuel that could be converted into clean electricity
I guess they must use something similar to this, probably shortening some steps and using efficient solvent at the right temperature and pressure and with the right electrocatalist.
Well, I still prefer photosynthesis which produces sugar (and +). Plants are self replicating, use free solar energy, captues CO2 straight from the air and all this probably at a tiny fraction of the cost.
My understanding is that pumping algae into the ocean is actually a really bad idea. In a barren pond or abandoned quarry? Sure, great place for it. However, iirc, if the algae blooms it’ll suck a lot of oxygen out of the water and I think puts CO2 back into the water (can’t remember if it just sucks up oxygen, or if it does both). That can cause marine life to suffocate and result in mass die-offs.
The problem is that if algae dies, it’s most likely die at the same time making a sudden and great O2 shortage making animals die, which creates the same process.
It’s more about the imbalance caused by algae blooms. They breed prolifically, and die off en masse more or less constantly as they bloom. When they die, they decompose and release carbon dioxide back into the water. So algae blooms hoover up carbon dioxide and concentrate it in a specific spot of ocean water, which can cause problems regarding anoxia and also ocean acidication.
The issue is that after a couple hundred years of intentionally eating literally everything in the ocean and dumping tons of our garbage and industrial waste there, oceanic ecosystems are even more fragile than usual and we don’t exactly have the ecological spare room to tinker with wild algae blooms on a scale large enough to make an impact on climate change. It would be trivial to ruin oceanic ecosystems, and by extension, many land-based ecosystems, with a megascale algae bloom.
Vats of algae in controlled environments might be a way to go, though?
Plants have a cycle, where sometimes they absorb more CO2 and sometimes they give off more. It’s not permanent storage.
With fossil fuels, we are taking CO2 that gas been sequestered for hundreds of millions of years, and injecting it either directly into the atmosphere, or into plant lifecycle where it is temporarily stored until it goes into the atmosphere. Plants help but are too temporary a solution
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
A bog or bogland is a wetland that accumulates peat as a deposit of dead plant materials – often mosses, typically sphagnum moss. It is one of the four main types of wetlands. Other names for bogs include mire, mosses, quagmire, and muskeg; alkaline mires are called fens. A baygall is another type of bog found in the forest of the Gulf Coast states in the United States. They are often covered in heath or heather shrubs rooted in the sphagnum moss and peat. The gradual accumulation of decayed plant material in a bog functions as a carbon sink.Bogs occur where the water at the ground surface is acidic and low in nutrients. A bog usually is found at a freshwater soft spongy ground that is made up of decayed plant matter which is known as peat. They are generally found in cooler northern climates and are formed in poorly draining lake basins. In contrast to fens, they derive most of their water from precipitation rather than mineral-rich ground or surface water. Water flowing out of bogs has a characteristic brown colour, which comes from dissolved peat tannins. In general, the low fertility and cool climate result in relatively slow plant growth, but decay is even slower due to low oxygen levels in saturated bog soils. Hence, peat accumulates. Large areas of the landscape can be covered many meters deep in peat.Bogs have distinctive assemblages of animal, fungal, and plant species, and are of high importance for biodiversity, particularly in landscapes that are otherwise settled and farmed.
Yeah, woody perrenials lock up CO2 for centuries and we have a lot of abandoned mines and whatever holes are leftover from oil drilling that we could theoretically bury plant material in.
Still whatever we do would need to be on unprecedented scales and the World is just not going to do that. At least not until the effects are so acute that it is too late.
Yes, and this (“World is just not going to do that”) is very bad since things will get worse and many people may die (sooner than they would have) in the next 50, 100 years.
if you look at very long time scale, thousand years and more, things will balance up. (…?)
But we don’t really know : there might be big volcanoes or completely new technologies like Geo engineering. Of course the future is (mostly) unknown.
Making sodium formate (HCOONa), using electrochemistry :
CO2 + H2 =>> formic acid
H2O =>> H2 + 1/2O2
NaCl + H2O =>> NaOH + 1/2H2 + 1/2Cl2
formic acid + NaOH =>> sodium formate
I guess they must use something similar to this, probably shortening some steps and using efficient solvent at the right temperature and pressure and with the right electrocatalist.
Well, I still prefer photosynthesis which produces sugar (and +). Plants are self replicating, use free solar energy, captues CO2 straight from the air and all this probably at a tiny fraction of the cost.
I prefer algae… much more space in the ocean…
My understanding is that pumping algae into the ocean is actually a really bad idea. In a barren pond or abandoned quarry? Sure, great place for it. However, iirc, if the algae blooms it’ll suck a lot of oxygen out of the water and I think puts CO2 back into the water (can’t remember if it just sucks up oxygen, or if it does both). That can cause marine life to suffocate and result in mass die-offs.
I never understood that- isn’t algae a plant therfore o2 producer?
It dies off and sucks oxygen, but its a balance
The problem is that if algae dies, it’s most likely die at the same time making a sudden and great O2 shortage making animals die, which creates the same process.
It’s more about the imbalance caused by algae blooms. They breed prolifically, and die off en masse more or less constantly as they bloom. When they die, they decompose and release carbon dioxide back into the water. So algae blooms hoover up carbon dioxide and concentrate it in a specific spot of ocean water, which can cause problems regarding anoxia and also ocean acidication.
The issue is that after a couple hundred years of intentionally eating literally everything in the ocean and dumping tons of our garbage and industrial waste there, oceanic ecosystems are even more fragile than usual and we don’t exactly have the ecological spare room to tinker with wild algae blooms on a scale large enough to make an impact on climate change. It would be trivial to ruin oceanic ecosystems, and by extension, many land-based ecosystems, with a megascale algae bloom.
Vats of algae in controlled environments might be a way to go, though?
Plants have a cycle, where sometimes they absorb more CO2 and sometimes they give off more. It’s not permanent storage.
With fossil fuels, we are taking CO2 that gas been sequestered for hundreds of millions of years, and injecting it either directly into the atmosphere, or into plant lifecycle where it is temporarily stored until it goes into the atmosphere. Plants help but are too temporary a solution
You are mostly right, but what I meant (sorry I was not explicit) was this :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
article | about
Yeah, woody perrenials lock up CO2 for centuries and we have a lot of abandoned mines and whatever holes are leftover from oil drilling that we could theoretically bury plant material in.
Still whatever we do would need to be on unprecedented scales and the World is just not going to do that. At least not until the effects are so acute that it is too late.
Yes, and this (“World is just not going to do that”) is very bad since things will get worse and many people may die (sooner than they would have) in the next 50, 100 years.
if you look at very long time scale, thousand years and more, things will balance up. (…?) But we don’t really know : there might be big volcanoes or completely new technologies like Geo engineering. Of course the future is (mostly) unknown.
Yeah, the earth will be just fine. Humans and human civilization are what is at stake.