A New US Plant Will Use Captured CO2 to Make Millions of Gallons of Jet Fuel::Replacing half of a plane’s regular fuel with CO2-derived fuel can result in 90 percent fewer lifecycle emissions.
Isn’t the point of carbon capture to remove emissions from the atmosphere? Someone please correct me if I’m wrong but this company sounds like it’s taking captured CO2 and guaranteeing that it gets released straight into the upper atmosphere where it’s nearly impossible to recapture. Unless I’m misunderstanding, this doesn’t seem like it’s any better than generating fuel from crude
Yeah, though it’s better than releasing new CO2 that is still in the ground. Just re-releasing already released CO2.
It would be nice if a company or government focused on capturing the CO2 and not releasing it again.
It would be nice if a company or government focused on capturing the CO2 and not releasing it again.
Climeworks and Carbfix do that:
- capture atmospheric CO2
- dissolve the CO₂ in water – sparkling water of sorts
- pump it underground into basalt rock
- there it forms solid carbonate minerals via natural processes
I hope techniques like these become included in carbon pricing. They cause negative emissions = they get paid.
Agreed, it’s a half step forward. Leaving fossil fuels underground is still progress, even if we aren’t sequestering CO2 in the atmosphere.
I’m optimistic that building a market like this can drive design efficiency for direct air capture tech. If that efficiency is improved it could make capture and sequestration a more plausible option for govts in the future.
Fingers crossed!
Ahh cant wait to have CO2 cycles like we do El nino and el nina…
Quarterly reports are in, profits are booming! We will be cutting fuel production, hence stagnating metric tons of CO2 in the air until the next quarterly reports!
Not much else to say except yes you’re right. Unfortunately, the average person doesn’t care or understand the difference.
It is an important difference though. Theoretically this could make aviation carbon neutral. We could also find a deep hole in the ground to pump it so it is stored, though presumably we could turn it into something more inert than jet fuel.
Right, I think this is the point others are missing. Yes, carbon capture does not seem like a feasible way to reduce climate change. We all agree.
However, what do we do about aviation? We need to reduce carbon emissions across the board and that definitely includes aviation. However we really don’t have the technology, nor does one appear in the foreseeable future. While there have been some promising experiments with batteries, that’s not going to be useful without some huge improvements in battery tech. impractically huge. It may never happen. We’ve had much better luck with bio-fuel of various sorts but everyone here probably understands those downsides. So what can we do? Harvesting carbon from the atmosphere to create synfuel, at least helps aviation get closer to carbon neutral. I have no idea whether it can actually work or is just another boondoggle, but certainly like to see the attempt.
Yes, we know carbon capture is not a reasonable way to fight climate change, but is it a helpful way to reduce carbon emissions from aviation?
Theoretically, it could make aviation almost carbon neutral due to inherent inefficiencies, but what good will that do? We need to be heavily carbon negative in order to even have a the tiniest, faintest glimmer of hope to avert our own extinction if we continue to do nothing about this problem.
Reducing consumption is the only way to achieve this but that requires either a monumental shift in human behavior, or simply less humans. And, since we seemingly aren’t making the choice, I wonder which one nature will choose for us…
I don’t disagree, but the modern world relies on Air Travel and nobody is going to be willing to stop that. We don’t yet have energy storage density to a spot where electric flight is “economical”. It exists and works well from what I understand but we can’t build a passenger jet with it for instance.
You are right though. If we don’t make huge shifts then earth is just gonna shed us and recover over a few million years.
It’s definitely better than nothing, I’ll agree, but also underwhelming from where we need to be because it makes such little difference. Most greenhouse gasses come from factory farming and the activities of corporations. We should still make these baby steps in green technology even if it’s too late to change our fate, because the science of it is or could be valuable for an easier, more comfortable, or slower extinction process - as morbid as that sounds.
We can’t afford to just change farming and corporations: we really need to cut carbon emissions everywhere we can. Let’s go for aviation, AND figure out the other industries
We can’t afford it? Then we go extinct. What is the higher price? Anyway, it’s probably out of our hands by now. Like I mentioned, nature will probably choose for us, and she always takes the path of least resistance.
You can’t just say we need to stop flying: no one will do that, but it’s also not the only choice. If this is a practical way to reduce carbon from aviation, let’s do it. I don’t see anything else likely nor do I see giving up flying.
We need to cut carbon emissions across the board quite seriously, but some industries/technologies will work better than others. Maybe this is all we can do for aviation, but it does help. We’ll just need to make it up elsewhere
it’s all very complex but there are some simple bits of it - oil in crude is carbon that was cycling through the atmosphere before the dinosaurs and got collected by plants which got buried (due to there not being bugs to eat them) it’s been locked there for ages so when we take some out the ground and add it to the atmosphere that increases the total amount, when we take it from the atmosphere and use it then we’re doing the same thing that plants have been doing for billions of years and just borrowing it to make use of for a while then putting it back. without any question if we could wave a wand and replace all the crude oil to oil infrastructure with infrastructure for taking it from the air and reusing it then it would be a good thing.
Is taking carbon from the bottom of the atmosphere and putting it near the top a bad thing? probably, possibly, maybe - that gets into really complex physics which i wouldn’t even pretend to understand, but it also gets into the existential angst of having to compare with the lifetime ecological and climate damage done by all the other options - is it better if people fly, take trains, or boats? cruise ships are really bad for everything, trains are great but require HUGE infrastructure which isn’t always possible, and i don’t even need to mention the ecological impact of a long distance car trip (or it’s supporting costs). It might actually make flying a good option ecologically, it’s possible with autonomous low-flying vehicles using it that it could be such a good option as to displace road transport in some areas thus removing the need for so many huge bridges and ecologically damaging road surfaces.
Carbon capture technology is fundamentally flawed and is used by corps for greenwash
You mean carbon credits right? This sounds like legit tech. Do you have info on why it’s flawed? I’d love to read up on it.
There are different ways to do it, some decent, some bullshit. And it’s only useful if it’s powered by renewable energy like wind/solar. But it’s largely unregulated, so a lot of corps grossly overestimate the amount of carbon they’re capturing. Or just flat out lie.
The main problem is that it’s presented as some sort of big solution, when it’s more like putting a SpongeBob band-aid on a gunshot wound. Corps use it to justify continuing to fuck the atmosphere with things like…jet fuel, for example.
i love the hate for corporations because they are indeed evil and corrupt and terrible but the fact our society uses jet fuel isn’t just because some evil corp twiddled his mustache, 90% of Americans have taken a flight in their life - they can’t all be a corporation! If i could snap my finger and all the corporations would be replaced by community run organisations (and yes i did it just in case it works) then people would still want and need to travel.
and yes i know you’re going to say trains but the look at the absolute shitshow of the UK’s HS2 which was made almost impossible by NIMBYS and ironically environmental protestors - the country that invented trains can’t even make a trainline any more because eco warriors padlock themselves to the diggers to save their favourite tree and every middle class property owner goes even wilder at the prospect of their lovely landscape being divided by a uncrossable river of loud steel which will negatively affect local house prices… The amount of lorries it would have taken off the M1 by now if it had been a simple process of building it is huge and it’d have provided a far better option than a MAN>LCY flight.
corporations exist because we give them money for goods and services we desire and require, it’s as simple as that - all this ‘big companies produce all the carbon’ only makes sense if you’re not relying on those companies for everything in your life - coca-cola wouldn’t exist as a company if everyone just drank water, just like blockbuster doesn’t exist as a company because people stopped renting DVDs.
anyway that’s not really important if we manage to get to the point where flying does not release harmful emissions into the atmosphere because then there’s absolutely no question at all flying is a great and efficient solution for travel and totally beats trains in ecological terms - having two small areas as airports require orders of magnitude less infrastructure than making a railway and maintaining it, would you rather have some electric / hydrogen planes flying quietly over the national parks or have them divided into slices with endless tunnels and bridges to facilitate a train network? I love trains, but i love cakes too even though i know they’re bad for me as they unbalance my diet. Cakes are great as a bit of a treat and in situations where extra calories and sugars are needed to make up for a deficit due to strenuous activity but they’re not an every day thing, trains are probably bit more like bread and cheese - it’s great as part of a well balanced diet, commuter trains and medium distance routes through easy terrane they’re like a cheese sandwich for lunch, but you can’t just eat bread and cheese for every meal.
Agree mostly. This is an important technology and realistically in the capitalist hellscape we live in, carbon capture is going to need to be part of it. But yes this has the potential problem of letting us ignore the problem because we can just pull CO2 out of the air.
Right, the solution is to DRASTICALLY reduce our carbon output AND ALSO do carbon capture stuff. But without the former, the latter isn’t nearly enough to do anything significant. We’re currently producing A LOT more carbon than we could ever capture, even with optimistic estimates. Reduction is the most important action here.
So it’s like carbon credits…with more steps and bullshit lol great
that’s objectively false nonsense pushed by anti-technology crazies, carbon capture is without a doubt one of the most important technologies in defeating human caused climate change especially in systems utilizing things like biochar where excess biomass (non-edible parts of crops, food and container waste, coppiced trees, maintained space and etc) it can be incredibly effective - you collect up all the biomass which would have returned it’s carbon, methane, etc to the atmosphere then use that to generate power or create fuels and materials while capturing 90% of the carbon (most technologies work at much higher rates than this) this is then used for industry in one of two ways - replacing carbon that would other wise be extracted from where it’s stored in minerals (e,g, making jet fuel which then returns the carbon to the atmosphere) or in creating materials which is essentially the same as putting it back in the rocks where it’ll stay for a long time. It can also be buried in old mineshafts, oil voids, and other handy spots thus removing it from the carbon cycle entirely and reducing the total amount of atmospheric co2 (the main thing causing all these climate issues)
we of course also need to switch to more efficient ways of operating society and providing people with the things they need to live good fulfilling lives but nothing is a one size fits all total solution to everything nor should we ever expect to find anything like that.
Climate Town tackled carbon capture very well in this video. In short, hardcore greenwashing.
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A plant that captures Co2? So trees? Are we going to use wood as a jet fuel?
Attach wings to old steam trains?
Cool, do they know how they will do carbon capture? Is it going to come from the atmosphere or are they doing like Porsche: burning fuel to get the carbon to make the environmental friendly synthetic gasoline?
the first three words of the article say it’s using ‘Direct air capture’ it goes on to explain it’s able to use carbon from any source so while it’s intended to use sequestered carbon if that’s unavailable they may use carbon captured from processes such burning biomass to collect carbon (which is actually a really good way of doing it ecologically as it uses less power, systems currently under testing can actually generate more power than carbon capture requires thus making them not only free to power but a net positive).
The article also talks about it’s location in Washington state being selected to make use of hydropower for the energy intensive stages of development, what they don’t mention that might have been interesting is due to the great position of Washington state for windpower it’s an ideal location for integrated power systems where excess power which would otherwise have gone to waste is used in energy intensive chemical processes like electrolysis or sequestation - essentially in this process it’s like making a chemical battery, the excess power is converted at source into carbon then used to create high density fuels suitable for jets and rockets.
They make the claim that with a 50:50 mix {new fuel : conventional fuel, as tested by USAF) it can reduce lifecycle emissions by 90% (overall greenhouse gas impacts of a fuel, including each stage of its production and use) which would be huge for the climate, likely making air travel the more ecological option for medium to long distance travel even beating out well run train networks (of which there are vanishingly few)
Anyone point me at some papers or write ups on how DAC works these days? I think I looked at a high level when the swiss plan opened and it was just “push hot emissions through a filter and magic happens”.
I’m no longer dumping my trash in landfills, I’m burning it instead.
…but can this jet fuel melt steel beams?
