First Successful Demonstration of Carbon Dioxide Air Capture Technology Achieved

[YankeyMCC]

(snip)
The carbon capture technology was developed by GRT and Klaus S. Lackner, a professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The Tucson-based technology company began development of the device in 2004 and has recently successfully demonstrated its efficacy. The air extraction device, in which sorbents capture carbon dioxide molecules from free-flowing air and release those molecules as a pure stream of carbon dioxide for sequestration, has met a wide range of performance standards in the GRT research facility.
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The GRT’s demonstration could have far-reaching consequences for the battle to reduce greenhouse gas levels. Unlike other techniques, such as carbon capture and storage from power plants, air extraction would allow reductions to take place irrespective of where carbon emissions occur, enabling active management of global atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. The technology shows, for the first time, that carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles on the streets of Bangkok could be removed from the atmosphere by devices located in Iceland. This could present a solution to three problems that until now have posed intractable obstacles for advocates of greenhouse gas reduction: how to deal with the millions of vehicles that together represent over 20 percent of global CO2 emissions, how to manage the emissions from existing infrastructure, and how to connect the sources of carbon to the sites of carbon disposal.
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A device with an opening of one square meter can extract about 10 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year. If a single device were to measure 10 meters by 10 meters it could extract 1,000 tons each year. On this scale, one million devices would be required to remove one billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. According to the U.K. Treasury’s Stern Review on climate change, the world will need to reduce carbon emissions by 11 billion tons by 2025 in order to maintain a concentration of carbon dioxide at twice pre-industrial levels.
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Air capture offers a third important benefit. The CO2 capture device can be located at the point of CO2 end-use or sequestration, eliminating the current need to match CO2 sources with sinks. For example, the CO2 originating from all those vehicles in Bangkok can be captured in an oil field in Alberta, Canada, where it could be used on-site for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations or it could be captured in South Africa to feed a growing demand in that country for feed stocks for petrochemical production. If the goal is to sequester a given quantity of CO2 in a specific geological formation, the air capture system could be located at that physical location. Within the United States, formations in Ohio, Oklahoma and Michigan, among other sites, appear to hold promise for long-term CO2 storage underground. Air extraction could also offer a new window in negotiations between developed and developing countries over how to deploy carbon reducing technologies.
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http://www.physorg.com/news96732819.html

[GliderGuider]

1. What clever monkeys we are!

"Got a problem? Make a gizmo!"

What about NOT PUTTING SO MUCH DAMN CO2 INTO THE AIR IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Why do I think that not generating a billion tonnes of CO2 would be cheaper than building a million of these gizmos?

:banghead:

[YankeyMCC]

2. I agree

I suppose it doesn't hurt to have these but I agree the implication in the piece that this is a more effective means of counting rising C02 then reducing it at it's source seems completely counter intuitive.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. At this point,

we'll have to do both, I think.

[phantom power]

6. the argument would be...

that we need gizmos to draw down the atmospheric GHGs fast enough to save ourselves. Waiting for natural processes to restore pre-industrial equilibrium is too slow, particularly since we've gone and activated so many positive feedback loops.

As NNadir has repeatedly pointed out, we don't really lack for CO2 extraction technology. What we lack is the energy to run it.

[NNadir]

3. Unless it violates laws of thermodynamics, it's going to prove energy

intensive.

It has been possible to recover carbon dioxide from air for quite some time. People who work cement mixers do it regularly, for instance.

[Javaman]

5. To me this is right up there with the half assed idea of the "solar shade"...

All this will do, is allow people to go on polluting like nothing happened.

So let's paint a picture shall we?

We build a million of these things and scatter them around the globe.

And also suppose that the technology has been invented to "sequester" the CO2. Which all the talking heads point as the place to store it as some yet undisclosed location or AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN (say it in a menacing echo voice).

To use an analogy to make my point; when gas was high, people drove less, when gas was low people drive more.

So when there is no threat of CO2, people (corps, governments, people driving big ass SUV"s) will continue on their stupid ways until...

The earth gets indigestion (make that the ocean) because so much CO2 had been stored there (once again the guys with the high foreheads were warning us all along)and lets out the mother of all burps. Out comes the CO2 and we all die. Not over time, but poof all at once.

Suppose, just suppose, we do something like CONSERVE!!! CUT BACK ON ALL THE USELESS PLASTIC SHIT WE BUY!!! (yelling this proves effective). Or, heavens forbid, plant trees.

Sigh. My head hurts.