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Comment by manigandham | Hacker News Reader

This article is about Carbon Engineering: https://carbonengineering.com/

There's also Prometheus Fuels which is a YC company doing the same thing: https://www.prometheusfuels.com/

The science is sound, but whether the process is economically viable remains to be seen.

I’ve been mulling entering carbon sequestration space using biochar but what’s mainly stopping me is the fact that no amount of industrialization can even put a dent in how much new carbon is being introduced every year when now in terms of burning newly pumped fossil fuel.

Isn't biochar more a play for soil protection?

Given that it’s pretty hard to reclaim carbon from it I’m thinking it’ll be a great way to just bury it and sell carbon sequestration credits (as a more legitimate sister to carbon credits).

What's your charring methodology?

I believe Charm industrial is using the biochar process, but producing oil and pumping it into the ground. Even in fields, it’s a solid idea.

And like you said, it’s recognized as being a very stable store of carbon for a very long time.

The trick is getting feedstock nearby so you aren’t pumping tons of CO2 into the air to acquire, move and process it.

Also https://terraformindustries.com/

Discussion of economics: https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/2023/01/09/terrafo...

Seems like the natural gas angle may be better due to higher efficiencies of existing equipment (power plants) that burns natural gas. Maybe the same can be done with gasoline?

And of course you can't reasonably run a plane on natural gas AFAIK.

> And of course you can't reasonably run a plane on natural gas AFAIK.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-155 , up to 2 hours flight, flew in 1980-s. Not much, but at least a proof of concept.

Might make sense for air travel and cross-ocean shipping. Time will tell if pure hydrogen or e-fuels are more economical.

Also works as a backup of last resort for power systems through power to gas/x.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-X

> Also works as a backup of last resort for power systems through power to gas/x.

Yep. The current mode of operation to simply trim the output of solar and wind in case of oversupply is an utter waste when the power could be used in power-to-gas plants.

Unfortunately, the cost of building proposed power-to-gas plants is high enough that it doesn’t make economical sense to run them just a few hours a day.

Theoretically, if power-to-gas plants can be manufactured at scale, you could make gas generation plants further away from where energy is being consumed. We already have tons of infrastructure on this planet for moving gasoline around.

You could also keep ICE engines in use without worrying about their carbon footprint. Excess renewable power turns into fuel to be used in cars, boats, trains (diesel electric freight cars), and airplanes.

Using this tech for off peak leveling on the grid might not be cost effective, but it can certainly be used to support the existing infrastructure we have to allow for a more graceful transitional period.

Will the cost stay high in a large scale production?

I have never seen an estimate on that, or a plant design detailed enough for extrapolating it. Do you know how those plants are built?

Ammonia - NH4 - is often proposed as a solution for shipping. Note there is no carbon in the chemical formula, thus there is no carbon dioxide resulting from burning it.

Hydrogen will be made from renewables by 2030.

There is an N in that formula, though, so burning ammonia is going to result in nitrous/nictric oxide. NOx is also a greenhouse gas (indirectly, apparently), and the hazy brown component of smog. One of the oxides is laughing gas. On the whole, I think pumping CO2 into the atmosphere is better than pumping smog and laughing gas.

Solar power wasn't economically viable once, nor was Wind power.

Sucking fuel out of the air anywhere you like has to be more viable than sailing out to sea and building a huge rig to drill underwater for pockets of gunk that you then have to refine. Imagine an airport that creates its own fuel instead of needing constant resupply.

> Sucking fuel out of the air anywhere you like has to be more viable than [...]

Pretty sure it absolutely isn't.

obviously not, right now. but if this tech can be scaled up it would be.

yes, it's not a certainty. but solar power was once seen as only useful in space where you couldn't run a diesel engine. Then it got more efficient, and cheaper, and now it is cheapest form of energy per MW on Earth

> but if this tech can be scaled up it would be.

It's not that it is "not a certainty". It actually seems very unlikely that this could work.

> and now it is cheapest form of energy per MW on Earth

Thanks to fossil fuels, that have been used at pretty much every step of the process of building and transporting the solar panels. And then it only works with good weather. Not that solar is completely bad, but it does not look like it will be the replacement for fossil fuels.

It is not enough to be cheap as a marginal source of energy in a world with cheap fossil fuels. At some point it would need to work on its own...

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