pkrein

Hi HN, author here.

I wanted to address the most common theme in the comments: safety.

The regulatory burdens I've encountered and described were not related to safety requirements. They are procedural questions with no bearing on safety.

Whether an injection well is Class I disposal, Class II oilfield disposal or Class V experimental has no bearing on the (strong and reasonable) safety requirements to protect underground sources of drinking water... the problem is the delay that comes from deciding which class is most appropriate (turns out, Class V experimental).

And ditto, whether a Revoy is a tractor, a trailer, or a converter dolly for the purposes of DMV registration paperwork has no bearing or relation to the (again strong and reasonable) NHTSA FMVSS safety requirements... the problem is the delay on the procedural paperwork.

I think we can all agree that these procedural issues are not "written in blood", but are in fact regulatory bikeshedding that we'd all be better off without.

nothing in hardware is cheap until it scales up. in fact, the cost vs. scale dynamics are well understood, see Wright's Law.

the "huge assumption" is our entire roadmap... and the major things that drive cost-down are: (1) increased carbon yield by integrating existing pyrolysis technology, (2) shrinking transport distances by operating pyrolysis near injection wells, and (3) increased throughput by making our pyrolyzers larger. these take time, but are hardly shooting for the moon.

CO₂ is captured from the atmosphere in biomass as C

C in biomass is converted to C in bio-oil, with relatively small release of CO₂

C in bio-oil is injected deep underground for permanent storage/sequestration

If this process had not happened, the C in the biomass would have been entirely emitted as CO₂ through rotting or burning.

Bio-oil production itself has a small amount of net positive emissions associated with it. We also purchase renewable electricity, renewable diesel, etc. to minimize those emissions. The net carbon negativity comes from the balance of the biomass/bio-oil carbon content ending up permanently sequestered deep underground.

Wildfires.org is doing really awesome work on unblocking and accelerating environmental review and planning for all kinds of wildfire prevention treatments.

Carbon purchasing already exists.

Voluntary purchases like Frontier: https://frontierclimate.com/ and many other corporate buyers.

Regulatory cap-and-trade markets like CA ARB LCFS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-carbon_fuel_standard

Read two comments up. Biochar/ash made from the biomass goes into the soil.

It's tough for building hardware, where the engineers own building their prototype systems. Likely other roles in sales, etc. would go remote sooner.

If you or your friends are mechanical engineers, we're looking for great meche's with experience in thermal, fluids, combustion, ag processing and more. Would love to chat: https://charmindustrial.com/team or email in my profile.

Leaving the biomass on the field results in the CO₂ going back into the atmosphere (~80% within 2 years): https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.4141/cjss2010-055#T0002

By contrast, our process retains the nutrients, improves the soil health relative to the baseline of just leaving it, and you get permanent carbon removal.

Yes, we're hiring for great mechanical engineers with experience in these areas ;) Lots to do!

Want to come show us how it's done? :)

The process separates the biomass carbon into bio-oil, and the NPK in the biomass separates into the biochar/ash (2% of the N, 70% of the P, >90% of the K). That biochar/ash goes back into the soil. So we recover most of the nutrients, plus you get biochar which improves soil carbon, water retention, microbial health, etc.

https://charmindustrial.com/faq?question=how-do-you-sustaina...

Actually we aren’t burning the biomass, we’re heating it without oxygen (pyrolysis) to create a transportable biomass intermediate called bio-oil. That bio-oil is rich in carbon, molasses-like consistency, and the overwhelming odor of barbecue sauce. Today we primarily pump that bbq sauce underground as carbon removal (Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage - BiCRS), but in the future it could be used for BECCS processes like you outline.

Our customers are technology companies based in the Bay Area, check out the home page: https://charmindustrial.com

We delivered 90% of permanent carbon removals globally last year: https://twitter.com/charmindustrial/status/14511691760646430...

Academia has started referring to our category as Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage, or BiCRS (pronounced like “bikers”):

https://www.icef.go.jp/pdf/summary/roadmap/icef2020_roadmap....

Initial testing was in San Francisco, where corn stover is relatively tricky to come by because corn is not widely grown in California, and agricultural residues cannot be brought into the state because of the bugs. Wheat straw was much easier to procure in-state.

Since encountering the differences, we tracked down the rarer corn growers in California and now use corn stover for testing as well.

Not sure how we got to $0.01/kWh (half the cost of the lowest PPAs ever signed for solar in Saudi Arabia), but if the electricity cost is 10x lower than current California prices, I see how electrofuels could pencil.

Ok so the 40% efficiency and 2.5x reduction in electricity prices cancel each other out... we're still at electricity costs == energy in the jet fuel. No room for electrofuel plant capex or any other electrofuel plant opex. And to get those low electricity prices you have to only run your plant at 30% duty cycle when the sun is shining (3x capex).

How does capex and other opex fit in?

If the founders are around... trying to understand their economics. They claim to sell Jet A at the market clearing price. Jet A goes for $0.45/L. The lowest industrial electricity rates in the US are $0.05/kWh (double that in California where they are selling today.) With 100% efficiency, no capital costs and no other opex, you get $0.05/kWh * 9.5 kWh/L = $0.47/L electrofuel Jet A. How can that work?

This. Equivalent CO₂, but bio-oil has 1/3 the energy content of crude oil.

I saw a very interesting talk by Mike Tamir, Berkeley and Uber Autonomous Group, about an extension his research group built to detect sensationalism and emotional appeals. The idea was that detecting writing designed to anger, incite and sensationalize (versus state facts) basically separated everything we’d call fake news from journalism: https://www.fakerfact.org/about

Would this make hydrogen fuel cells (the reverse of electrolysis) have double the power density as well? That would be meaningful for reducing hydrogen fuel cell weight and cost per vehicle.

It may not be necessary for complex organic molecules to assemble out of nothing in a finely tuned primordial soup. Two recent studies to illustrate this:

1. Simple chemical droplets can divide and multiply in the right conditions: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.01571v1.pdf

2. “Evolution” from that simple beginning may be enough according to the theory of dynamic kinetic stability: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3843823/

Peter, co-founder/CEO here... tag managers from all these players only solve the issue on websites, but only 30% of the data we manage comes from websites. The rest comes from mobile apps, payment systems, helpdesks, CRMs, email, push notifications, etc. So tag management is an antiquated/web-specific category that we've been ripping-and-replacing now for a few years.

It is also a huge market, with lots of interesting adjacencies that are equally whitespace. https://segment.com/protocols is starting to push into some of those areas.

Peter, co-founder/CEO of Segment here... I'm not sure it felt that way in the moment. On December 11, 2012 we were in pretty bad emotional place. I was on the verge of quitting at several points during the prior month, and was hospitalized twice earlier that fall due to stress and anxiety during our search for product market fit.

Obviously, the Show HN on December 12, 2012 turned that around. But it still took us several months to realize we had a tiger by its tail and begin to recover psychologically.

So... for those of you searching for product market fit and not finding it yet, hang in there.

The economics you're looking at for biogas and electrolysis look roughly right to me. But our models suggest that thermal gasification of biomass can get down to $1/kg. So then you're looking at $4.50+/kg for electrolysis or $1/kg for gasification... and you can see how all that math changes.

Electrolysis also typically costs more than you'd expect as soon as you add the requirement of renewable energy supply. Usually the renewable energy supply is solar, which has a ~30% duty cycle. So 70% of the time your electrolyzer is sitting idle. This crushes your economics and makes solar-powered electrolysis untenable in all of the analyses I've seen. We didn't have any clever ideas for how to change that situation, so after looking at it ~1.5 years ago we decided to look elsewhere.

(1) When we investigated this last year the ammonia synthesis capex looked untenable and we didn't see a path to lower that capex. Re:injection wells... they are super common in Texas/Louisiana region as well, which happens to be where most of the US refining capacity and ammonia production is located, so we're very near customers there.

(2) 6000 dry lbs/acre/year = 3 dry tons/acre/year which is an extremely low yield. Even miscanthus and switchgrass get over 10 dry tons/acre/year, energy cane gets to 20 dry tons/acre/year and our grass gets to 25+ dry tons/acre/year. So that brings your $100/acre/year up to $800+/acre/year. Then for the chemistry it's important to note that much of the hydrogen gas produced is actually coming from H2O that reacts with carbon in the cellulose to produce 2 H2 + CO2. So, stoichiometrically you get significantly more than the elemental hydrogen content of the grass itself. That gets you another factor of 2 or so... and then we're at the $1750/acre/year mentioned in the parent comment.

(3) Agreed the transportation costs are better for ammonia, but we aren't actually transporting the hydrogen except over a feeder pipe into a refinery or ammonia plant. It's cheaper and simpler to transport the grass as opposed to the hydrogen, mostly because you get to avoid the pre-transport compression energy and losses. Again, as in (1) the issue with ammonia is the heavy capex based around Haber-Bosch pressure vessels and compressors... we didn't have any good ideas for reducing those costs, so there's no sense in competing there.

(4) We weren't at YC's demo day... not sure what you're referring to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Charm co-founder here...

(1) electrolysis is much more expensive than steam methane reformation, so unfortunately I don't think it's gaining much steam as a real hydrogen production method.

(2) typical ammonia fertilizer application is 0.125 tons/acre/year at a price of $500/ton = $62.50/acre/year. Our grass and gasification process yields $1,750/acre/year worth of hydrogen... so roughly a 28:1 financial return on the fertilizer input which is probably pretty close to the EROI (Energy Return on Investment)

(3) To clarify "hydrogen is quite easy"... not on an absolute basis (which is quite hard), but relative to other products that could be produced. For example, you mention ammonia, but ammonia production has enormous economies of scale benefits from complex compression systems and pressure chambers... if you run the math it doesn't work out as favorably as hydrogen, and it's substantially more complex and difficult.

(4) We are funded by an amazing group of angel investors, but that does not include YC.

Charm co-founder here... thanks for the typo find, fixed!

People have been lobbying and protesting for years, I don't believe it's going to fix things on its own. Policy makers need legitimate technology options to put support behind, and that's what we intend to develop.

Thankfully you are simply incorrect that "no-one who will buy this commodity at small scale for a much higher price". We are in active sales conversations with a number of buyers who are very much willing to pay a premium for the commodity given its reduced carbon intensity.

Charm co-founder here... Two quick notes:

(1) we agree wholeheartedly on the experts front — for the core technology around gasification we've been working with a variety of PhDs, national labs and companies with extensive previous gasification experience,

(2) the gasification technology we're developing is actually fairly novel and unfortunately in this industry that means patenting is in our future, which means that we're not going to blog about the core parts of our gasification system... instead we can blog about the surrounding systems that still represent interesting challenges. So that's why we blogged about grass flow. Rest assured 95% of our time is going into gasification ;)