Power plants that generate electrical power through the combustion of fossil fuels are a substantial contributing aspect to the boost in climatic co2.
Over the last couple of a century, the amount of co2 in our environment has escalated. Scientists predict that if we do not eliminate at least a few of it, there will be a lot more heat waves, wildfires, typhoons, and other environment catastrophes. In this episode of the American Chemical Societys video series Reactions, they break down how individuals are using chemistry to make that take place.
Video Transcript:
What if I told you that chemists are dealing with something today, that could be as big of an industry as the internet, and just as lucrative in 50 years?
Elon Musk is providing $100 million, the largest reward prize ever, to whoever can come up with a successful carbon removal technique. And a hundred million dollars is nothing compared to what this market is going to remain in 50 years.
XPRIZE Carbon Removal is intended at tackling the biggest danger facing mankind– combating environment modification and rebalancing Earths carbon cycle. Funded by Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation, this $100M competition is the largest incentive prize in history, an extraordinary turning point.?
Every environment projection relies on us pulling out some of the CO2 in our atmosphere to avoid …
So Elon, heres my plan. Lets just plant a lot of trees. Truthfully, why has no one idea of this before?
Okay, Lets math this. Say we desire to return to a time prior to the industrial transformation, in the mid 17 hundreds, when our atmospheres CO2 concentration was much, much lower.
[MATHEMATICS] Thats 1.2 trillion lots of CO2 to eliminate.
[MATHEMATICS] We would require 60 trillion trees just to get back to pre-industrial transformation carbon dioxide levels. And when they burn, they launch CO2.
Uh, we might require something more effective than trees.
What if I go right to the source, to places that are emitting a lot of CO2, like power plants?
Okay. People currently considered that. Its called carbon capture and storage or CCS. No, no, no, no, no, no. C S.
We do have CCS facilities throughout the world, consisting of in the U S. The most popular method for gathering CO2 from exhaust is amine scrubbing. You run exhaust through a column, filled with an alkaline amine option substances in that solution will bind to the CO2, pulling it out of the exhaust so that it cant leave into the environment.
Next, you need to launch the CO2 from the amine service so that you can save it, which implies heating up the option approximately break those bonds, and after that compressing the launched CO2.
This of course takes energy, which implies burning nonrenewable fuel sources and releasing CO2. Its not best, however its still avoiding as much CO2 from getting into our atmosphere.
Existing CCS facilities capture and store 10s of millions of loads of CO2 each year, but were still emitting around 40 billion lots of CO2 each year. We need a lot more of these CCS facilities to help lower our emissions, but we likewise need to pull out CO2 thats already in the environment.
No matter how excellent CCS gets, it will not help with the CO2 thats already up there. Thats where carbon dioxide removal comes in.
Co2 elimination or CDR means pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere. Its typically confused with carbon capture and storage or CCS, but theyre not the very same thing.
CCS has to do with preventing the release of co2 from a particular source like emissions coming out of a smokestack. CDR has to do with filtering the entire atmosphere of our planet. Its a lot harder, whichs why our pal Elon is offering $100 million to whoever can resolve that puzzle.
Why is it so hard? Well, CO2 is a really little percentage of the particles youll discover in our environment. Lets state you have an enormous fan that can draw in 10,000 tons of air per minute, of those 10,000 loads, just six are CO2.
You require to learn 10,000 lots of air simply to pull out six.
So if you wished to pull 1.2 trillion lots of CO2 out of the environment to get back to those pre-industrial transformation levels, you d have to learn around 2 quadrillion loads of atmosphere.
Thats almost half of our entire atmosphere. Whichs presuming that your carbon capture method is 100% efficient.
Likewise, Earth has a natural carbon cycle where oceans and land are releasing CO2 all the time. So if we in some way handled to eliminate 1.2 trillion lots of CO2 from the atmosphere overnight, that shift in climatic CO2 levels would actually pull a great deal of carbon dioxide out of the oceans and land to maintain stability.
What are people who are trying to win this hundred million dollar reward doing?
I called some people up to see. Im not going to steal it. Im just going to put it on YouTube.
Although I dont understand precisely what individuals are doing to win that cash prize, there are some innovations and proposed methods of pulling co2 from the environment that exist currently, like restoring and maintaining blue carbon, coastal marine ecosystems, like mangrove and tidal marshes and seagrasses that pull a great deal of CO2 from the atmosphere, or deploying a bunch of kelp out into our oceans that will absorb CO2 at the surface and then be up to the ocean flooring, taking the CO2 with them.
Theres a business I encountered thats using fans to draw air into a collector where the CO2 is gathered on a filter, made out of amines supported by cellulose fibers.
So there are a great deal of methods to collect carbon dioxide, but then what do you finish with it? Where do you keep it?
Capturing carbon isnt simple, however keeping it is much harder. Injecting carbon dioxide underground is a quite popular method, however thats often utilized to extract more oil and gas, which eventually suggests releasing CO2 into the environment.
There are likewise some public security concerns about leak and even seismic activity.
Another option is to go into rocky formations that are deep in the ocean and pump compressed CO2 down there, where itll liquify into the saltwater and get trapped in the minerals and rocks.
Effectively storing CO2 deep in the ocean or underground isnt just about where you put it, its about how you keep it there. You have to prevent the CO2 from simply leaking right back out, and you have to trap it there for centuries.
Theres really a new proposal to create a gadget that could transform the CO2 in seawater to carbonate minerals like calcite, and then filter them out and focus them into larger solids.
The truly amazing aspect of this proposition is that its actually doing both carbon dioxide removal and storage in a single procedure, and has a fairly low energy expense.
We might do an entire video about the chemistry behind this idea, however for now, if youre interested in discovering more, were putting a link to the paper in the description of this video.
And naturally, this is simply a proposal. No, ones in fact developed one of these gadgets. Possibly Ill get cracking on that for my shot at that sweet, sweet CDR cash.
No, no, no, no,
Stop it. Stop it.
Every climate forecast relies on us pulling out some of the CO2 in our atmosphere to avoid …
So Elon, heres my planStrategy And when they burn, they launch CO2.
You run exhaust through a column, filled with an alkaline amine solution substances in that service will bind to the CO2, pulling it out of the exhaust so that it cant leave into the environment.
Well, CO2 is a really little percentage of the molecules youll discover in our atmosphere. Lets state you have a massive fan that can suck in 10,000 lots of air per minute, of those 10,000 lots, only six are CO2.