Comment by gabrielblack | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gabrielblack | Hacker News Reader

I haven't read the article yet, but, judging the title, IMHO seems just another marketing balloon: under the skin only hot air. The "device absorbs CO2 emissions while it charges" : I don't think that something like that can solve the problem of global warming or even reduce the side effects in a way we can measure, justifying the hype about that characteristic.

EDIT: I've read the article: "is the size of a two-pence coin", so how many fraction of ug of Co2 can absorb of the "Around 35 billion metric tons of CO2 are released into the atmosphere per year" ? But the last part is fantastic: "The results from Temprano's contribution help narrow down the precise mechanism at play inside the supercapacitor when CO2 is absorbed and released", so when the battery discharge release the Co2 again , right? So what is the point of the whole article?

The best developed method of removing CO2 from waste gas streams is:

https://www.sulzer.com/en/shared/applications/amine-treater-...

In that case you are heating and cooling a liquid in which the CO2 dissolves and then goes out of solution. In one phase you are removing CO2 from the waste gas stream, in the other one you are producing a stream of pure CO2.

That device works basically the same but with electricity rather than heat.

Ok, but, if I've understood correctly , at the end of article they suggest that the CO2 captured while the battery was in recharging state is released when the same battery is in use. In other words the battery doesn't capture permanently the CO2 as the gas stream method you just mentioned: the battery isn't like a black hole for CO2, it simply "breath" releasing the CO2 when it's discharging. So in what way that should be a solution for the global warming ? If they want capture the CO2 in discharging phase, they need to store a big number of coin size batteries in an industrial facility that needs batteries for some reason, plus you are using electricity that likely was produced burning fossil combustibles to remove CO2 from air. So no laptop or cellphone removing CO2 from our atmosphere.

The best answer right now for CO2 disposal is to compress it to 1500 psi and inject into a saline aquifer. The gas has to be really pure to do that and that kind of device could do that purification.

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