Carbon Sequestration: Sifting Through The Finalists
I haven't been following the news lately, but last I checked our atmosphere hit a milestone in human history by finally reaching the 400 parts per million concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide. In doing some preliminary research for this entry, I find that the number has since been revised downward . . . to 399.89 ppm.
Well, excuse us. That's entirely different, but still, as the article fairly explains, it's not the number captured in amber and preserved for all time that matters most, but rather "the rate of rise that is most important." That, sadly has not really slowed.
Ah, but I'm not here to boom all gloom and doom on y'all. I'm here now to crow about what is talked about, but not enough, and what should be heralded across the intertubes as more important than an arbitrary odometer moment: There is good news to be had.
You see, a rich guy has offered a prize for a viable process to remove CO2 from our atmosphere. $25 million will be granted in the Virgin Earth Challenge to the most viable candidate. So far, there are eleven finalists. While all of these candidates should be praised for their efforts, assessing the eleven requires looking to the future beyond a company's prospectus.
So let's look at who on that list of eleven should be rejected, and why.
First, let's look at the techno-narcissists in the bunch, the companies and people who feel a technical problem requires a profitable technical solution. There's Carbon Engineering, which is developing "industrial-scale capture of CO2 from ambient air". Here's a little picture simplifying their process.
Without dwelling overmuch on the folks at Carbon Engineering, let's move on to Coaway.
COAWAY's process involves a complete cycle of CO2 capture, isolation, and regeneration of the CO2 aborbent leveraging existing low-quality heat sources such as cooling towers. The process can be cost-effectively deployed at any suitable existing manufacturing or processing facility, and can provide a very rapid return on investment through carbon credits and the sale of the extracted CO2.
All well and good. Moving on to Killimanjaro Energy, who "is developing technologies to capture carbon dioxide from the air for beneficial commercial use in a variety of existing and new industries." Next, Global Thermostat "offers low-cost solutions to capture CO2 promoting sustainable and harmonious use of the earth's resources. It utilizes low-cost process heat left over in a range of industrial activities to capture carbon from air."
To recap and review, can anyone tell me what these companies have in common? I gave it away right in the emboldened introduction: they share an outlook of technological narcissism. What is that? Simply, it is an outlook that looks at existing problems and attempts to solve them with complex solutions (and this final part is the kicker) that do not challenge economic conditions. Carbon Engineering would capture atmospheric CO2 by burning natural gas, a process that releases CO2. Coaway is a bit better in that it uses waste heat to fuel the process of capture, as does Global Thermostat, thus relying less on external energy inputs (which inherently release CO2 themselves). Killimanjaro Energy, from what I can glean, relies on chemical capture and might be less energy intensive, but still mentions that the captured CO2 will become "a vast resource" that can lead to "transformation into useful products."
Here's a question; what if there are no "useful products" needed by the market? What then will any of these companies do with the gas they capture? Sequestration is more than simple capture. Putting the tiger in something other than a flimsy cage is the only thing that will ensure it will not eat the villagers later.
To be fair, I have heard about some strategies for the captured gas. Oil companies use it to re-pressurize dwindling fields of crude. I have to admit, putting the has into a geologic formation that kept the unburned point source of that gas safe for millions of years does have a fair amount of appeal to it. Others are mentioning that basalt weathers when exposed to CO2, changing the gaseous molecules into a rocky crust. Pressurize basalt seams with CO2 and that weathering accelerates.
Ah, but all of these sequestration techniques share one common element. Like the company processes I've dismissed above, they all rely on using energy to get the job done. Need to run the machinery these above finalists want you to run? Add energy, or at least use some waste heat to run it. Want to shove gas in a hole? You must overcome the pressure to do so. Same with injecting gas into a rock fissure. Each and every solution here treats problematic atmospheric carbon as yet another reason to consume energy and produce more problematic atmospheric carbon.
They're like drunks trying to drink themselves sober.
No, for sequestration to be more permanent than not, the CO2 must be locked like nuclear waste. It must not rely on extra energy inputs to achieve, nor on the existing industrial infrastructure continuing to churn and do its business as usual.
It must be simple.
Back to the candidates. I think Alan Savory is on to something.
In case LJ STILL cannot embed new video
here's a link.
Reversing desertification is a great way to not only sequester carbon gasses, but also to improve food security not just for people, but for all the animals relying on the grasslands so restored. This is the guy (I believe) that inspired Joel Salatin, whom I've mentioned before. He and his process of using an increase in animals to restore their food supply well deserves to be a finalist, but some are concerned that gains made might not last. True; if the people tending the herds do not tend the herds for whatever reason, the desertification could spread again.
Which brings us to a common theme running through many of the eleven finalists: Biochar.
Biochar is charcoal, but also not so simply charcoal. It is produced through pyrolysis, thermal decomposition of organic matter without oxygen. Essentially, one heats organics until the volatile gasses are released; these gasses can then be burned to continue the process. If the temperature is high enough, the charcoal produced crystalizes into a more stable and less re-active product that proves stable for thousands of years.
And here's the kicker; the transformation from fuel to biochar produces power, not consumes it.
Which might just be why the first three listed finalists in the Virgin Challenge-Biochar Solutions, Bioecro, and Black Carbon-all focus on producing the stuff. Even if they miss out on the Virgin prize money, the technology they produce can still be useful in getting rid of biomass and producing heat and/or electricity.
It gets better. Even though the finalists here are focusing on industrial scale equipment, small stoves are being built.
My favorite; "Bee-oh-char dee rosa."
There is a great advantage to these stoves, in that they produce little to no soot. Soot is, after all, unburned fuel escaping with the hot exhaust. Since the fuel never burns directly, what would become soot is converted into biochar. The respiratory illnesses created by open cooking fires, currently killing men and (mostly) women all over the world, could be stopped with very simple, low-tech pyrolyzing stoves, the ashes of which can sequester carbon for thousands of years.
It still gets better.
You might be asking what one can do with all this crystallized charcoal produced in biochar furnaces and stoves large and small. Well, you can mix it with compost and dump it. Isn't that toxic waste? you might ask.
No. No it is not.
In fact, as an anonymous commenter posted to my first LJ entry on this topic years ago, some researchers have added biochar to soil and thus increased crop yields as high as 800%. As author Albert Bates put it, the biochar's fractal structure has some amazing properties that, once introduced to the soil, becomes not unlike an ocean's coral reef; it offers beneficial micro-organisms (especially fungi) a place to anchor, and the porous structure also retains water far better than the simple granular rock particles that form most soils. The result, like the reef in the ocean, is an explosion of life.
So, to recap, instead of letting biological waste rot and release methane (another greenhouse gas, after all), we can transform it in biochar furnaces large and small and produce useful heat and energy in the process and create a by-product that can increase crop yields and sequester carbon for thousands of years.
So please ignore the engineers who maintain that it will cost millions, if not billions to remove the excess atmospheric CO2 our industrialization dumped through smokestacks and exhaust pipes over the last 200 years. We just need to teach ranchers better animal grazing techniques and start cooking wood chips, grasses, seed hulls, and even animal manure in simple pyrolyzing stoves and furnaces.
A bit of hope for everyone. You're welcome.
X-Posted to talk_politics.
Well, excuse us. That's entirely different, but still, as the article fairly explains, it's not the number captured in amber and preserved for all time that matters most, but rather "the rate of rise that is most important." That, sadly has not really slowed.
Ah, but I'm not here to boom all gloom and doom on y'all. I'm here now to crow about what is talked about, but not enough, and what should be heralded across the intertubes as more important than an arbitrary odometer moment: There is good news to be had.
You see, a rich guy has offered a prize for a viable process to remove CO2 from our atmosphere. $25 million will be granted in the Virgin Earth Challenge to the most viable candidate. So far, there are eleven finalists. While all of these candidates should be praised for their efforts, assessing the eleven requires looking to the future beyond a company's prospectus.
So let's look at who on that list of eleven should be rejected, and why.
First, let's look at the techno-narcissists in the bunch, the companies and people who feel a technical problem requires a profitable technical solution. There's Carbon Engineering, which is developing "industrial-scale capture of CO2 from ambient air". Here's a little picture simplifying their process.
Without dwelling overmuch on the folks at Carbon Engineering, let's move on to Coaway.
COAWAY's process involves a complete cycle of CO2 capture, isolation, and regeneration of the CO2 aborbent leveraging existing low-quality heat sources such as cooling towers. The process can be cost-effectively deployed at any suitable existing manufacturing or processing facility, and can provide a very rapid return on investment through carbon credits and the sale of the extracted CO2.
All well and good. Moving on to Killimanjaro Energy, who "is developing technologies to capture carbon dioxide from the air for beneficial commercial use in a variety of existing and new industries." Next, Global Thermostat "offers low-cost solutions to capture CO2 promoting sustainable and harmonious use of the earth's resources. It utilizes low-cost process heat left over in a range of industrial activities to capture carbon from air."
To recap and review, can anyone tell me what these companies have in common? I gave it away right in the emboldened introduction: they share an outlook of technological narcissism. What is that? Simply, it is an outlook that looks at existing problems and attempts to solve them with complex solutions (and this final part is the kicker) that do not challenge economic conditions. Carbon Engineering would capture atmospheric CO2 by burning natural gas, a process that releases CO2. Coaway is a bit better in that it uses waste heat to fuel the process of capture, as does Global Thermostat, thus relying less on external energy inputs (which inherently release CO2 themselves). Killimanjaro Energy, from what I can glean, relies on chemical capture and might be less energy intensive, but still mentions that the captured CO2 will become "a vast resource" that can lead to "transformation into useful products."
Here's a question; what if there are no "useful products" needed by the market? What then will any of these companies do with the gas they capture? Sequestration is more than simple capture. Putting the tiger in something other than a flimsy cage is the only thing that will ensure it will not eat the villagers later.
To be fair, I have heard about some strategies for the captured gas. Oil companies use it to re-pressurize dwindling fields of crude. I have to admit, putting the has into a geologic formation that kept the unburned point source of that gas safe for millions of years does have a fair amount of appeal to it. Others are mentioning that basalt weathers when exposed to CO2, changing the gaseous molecules into a rocky crust. Pressurize basalt seams with CO2 and that weathering accelerates.
Ah, but all of these sequestration techniques share one common element. Like the company processes I've dismissed above, they all rely on using energy to get the job done. Need to run the machinery these above finalists want you to run? Add energy, or at least use some waste heat to run it. Want to shove gas in a hole? You must overcome the pressure to do so. Same with injecting gas into a rock fissure. Each and every solution here treats problematic atmospheric carbon as yet another reason to consume energy and produce more problematic atmospheric carbon.
They're like drunks trying to drink themselves sober.
No, for sequestration to be more permanent than not, the CO2 must be locked like nuclear waste. It must not rely on extra energy inputs to achieve, nor on the existing industrial infrastructure continuing to churn and do its business as usual.
It must be simple.
Back to the candidates. I think Alan Savory is on to something.
Click to viewIn case LJ STILL cannot embed new video
here's a link.
Reversing desertification is a great way to not only sequester carbon gasses, but also to improve food security not just for people, but for all the animals relying on the grasslands so restored. This is the guy (I believe) that inspired Joel Salatin, whom I've mentioned before. He and his process of using an increase in animals to restore their food supply well deserves to be a finalist, but some are concerned that gains made might not last. True; if the people tending the herds do not tend the herds for whatever reason, the desertification could spread again.
Which brings us to a common theme running through many of the eleven finalists: Biochar.
Biochar is charcoal, but also not so simply charcoal. It is produced through pyrolysis, thermal decomposition of organic matter without oxygen. Essentially, one heats organics until the volatile gasses are released; these gasses can then be burned to continue the process. If the temperature is high enough, the charcoal produced crystalizes into a more stable and less re-active product that proves stable for thousands of years.
And here's the kicker; the transformation from fuel to biochar produces power, not consumes it.
Which might just be why the first three listed finalists in the Virgin Challenge-Biochar Solutions, Bioecro, and Black Carbon-all focus on producing the stuff. Even if they miss out on the Virgin prize money, the technology they produce can still be useful in getting rid of biomass and producing heat and/or electricity.
It gets better. Even though the finalists here are focusing on industrial scale equipment, small stoves are being built.
My favorite; "Bee-oh-char dee rosa."
There is a great advantage to these stoves, in that they produce little to no soot. Soot is, after all, unburned fuel escaping with the hot exhaust. Since the fuel never burns directly, what would become soot is converted into biochar. The respiratory illnesses created by open cooking fires, currently killing men and (mostly) women all over the world, could be stopped with very simple, low-tech pyrolyzing stoves, the ashes of which can sequester carbon for thousands of years.
It still gets better.
You might be asking what one can do with all this crystallized charcoal produced in biochar furnaces and stoves large and small. Well, you can mix it with compost and dump it. Isn't that toxic waste? you might ask.
No. No it is not.
In fact, as an anonymous commenter posted to my first LJ entry on this topic years ago, some researchers have added biochar to soil and thus increased crop yields as high as 800%. As author Albert Bates put it, the biochar's fractal structure has some amazing properties that, once introduced to the soil, becomes not unlike an ocean's coral reef; it offers beneficial micro-organisms (especially fungi) a place to anchor, and the porous structure also retains water far better than the simple granular rock particles that form most soils. The result, like the reef in the ocean, is an explosion of life.
So, to recap, instead of letting biological waste rot and release methane (another greenhouse gas, after all), we can transform it in biochar furnaces large and small and produce useful heat and energy in the process and create a by-product that can increase crop yields and sequester carbon for thousands of years.
So please ignore the engineers who maintain that it will cost millions, if not billions to remove the excess atmospheric CO2 our industrialization dumped through smokestacks and exhaust pipes over the last 200 years. We just need to teach ranchers better animal grazing techniques and start cooking wood chips, grasses, seed hulls, and even animal manure in simple pyrolyzing stoves and furnaces.
A bit of hope for everyone. You're welcome.
X-Posted to talk_politics.