Bill Gates-Backed Carbon Capture Plant Does the Work of 40M Trees | Hacker News Reader

Bill Gates-Backed Carbon Capture Plant Does the Work of 40M Trees

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22 pointsDarmody10 comments

Video: CO2 processing cost: "$94-232 per ton".

"According to <i>The Economist</i>, a single round trip flight from New York to San Fransisco produces two to three tons of carbon dioxide per person; an American who takes no flights emits roughly 19 tons of carbon in a year." - https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jp54zb/nasa-wants-to-fly-...

"On average, one acre of new forest can sequester about 2.5 tons of carbon annually." - http://urbanforestrynetwork.org/benefits/air%20quality.htm

From that "$94-232 per ton" number I was curious how much it would cost to "fix" CO2 emissions with just this tech alone.

According to this [1] page I stumbled apon, there's about 3 trillion tonnes of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Now obviously we don't want to get rid of all of that CO2 or else we would all die, and a ton isn't quite a tonne, but roughly speaking it means it would cost on the order of 100 trillion dollars to do a "reset" on the earths CO2 levels with this technology.

Of course I have no idea how long it would take, no idea how the costs may change with time, no idea what other technologies are used alongside this one to also help with CO2 emissions, and of course we're continually putting CO2 into the atmosphere so it's not at all the full cost.

But I think it's neat to see a dollar number in some way. Just think, a few more orders of magnitude lower and it might almost be something we could just do.

[1] https://micpohling.wordpress.com/2007/03/30/math-how-much-co...

For context, that'd be about 1.25 years of current world GDP [1]. If we maintain a 3.6% growth rate for 100 years, the economy will be 34 times larger, so it'd take two weeks of the world's total economic output to capture all that carbon. (In the worst case scenario there'd be about twice as much carbon by then, so stretch that to a month. [2])

Of course we might not be able to smoothly convert the entire world GDP to carbon capture plants for a fortnight, and there'd be deleterious global warming effects in the meanwhile, but overall napkin math paints a pretty optimistic picture for geoengineering.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product [2] https://e360.yale.edu/assets/site/_600xAUTO_stretch_center-c... from https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-the-world-passed-a-carbon...

"they release pure carbon dioxide which can be stored underground or used to create products like...fuels"

sounds really smart indeed

ps. they address this issue citing that they would need more federal funding to bury more co2 underground instead of using it for making fuels carbon neutral..it's so hard to see that for 100$ now we would sacrifice our very own life if somebody doesn't pay us $150 to do otherwise

The thermodynamics of this are a disaster, which will drive their cost of capture higher than this range. Capturing CO2 from coal fired power plants costs about $100/tonne and is easier due to substantially higher concentration than doing so from air. Their pilot plant requires significant electrical and heat input which they get from burning natural gas -and then capturing that flue gas. I think this is a PR exercise for the primary investors.

Fascinating! Did not know that this was possible before watching this video, and also did not know that a physical Ton of carbon -- has an economic/monetary value ($), and that this amount varies by Country due to markets, tax incentives, etc.

potentially dumb q, but how are they expecting to expel carbon from "atmospheric air" when the turbines are mere meters from the ground...?

Well, trees are also several meters from the ground. Algae is underwater and does its job.

What I like about this is that it can be placed in zones with high CO2 concentration.

thanks, that makes sense

Atmosphere doesn't mean high altitude, it's all the gas around our planet, including what you are breathing right now.

Also, the CO2 concentration is pretty much constant (as a function of height) below the turbopause, because of mixing, so it doesn't matter at which altitude you extract it.

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