by
Kevin Kilty
An article in the January 2020 Issue of Physics Today (1) presents an interesting and very readable overview of methods to capture and store away CO2 emissions. The purpose of this guest blog is to summarize a few key points the paper makes, and add some commentary. WUWT has covered some of this same territory recently here and here.
Motivation
Of course, the motivation for negative emissions technologies (NETs), or CO2 capture, is to bring atmospheric CO2 back to safe levels. Although the article fails to mention what safe means in this context, and what levels are unsafe, it alludes to melting polar ice and methane escaping from melting permafrost as consequences of unsafe climate. Nothing unusual here. Despite relegating its case for an unsafe future to such enterprises as the IPCC, the article does provide some insight into the cause of what seems to be the current “crisis” mentality. It is 1.5°C temperature rise goal of the 2015 Paris agreement. As readers of WUWT already know, this is not a 1.5°C increase from now, but rather from an estimated pre-industrial level — meaning that two-thirds of that margin is already gone and we have but 0.5°C left to work with. I suspect most people do not understand this subtle point.
Eventually the article makes a brief excursion into more phenomena by which climate change would become unsafe — forest fires, droughts, and sea level rise. All of this is also familiar to WUWT readers.
Technologies Involved
The best part of the article is its summary of technologies, the NETs, that might be able to remove 10 to 20Gt of CO2 annually from the air above and beyond the approximately one-half of our 37Gt (Gt = 1012 kg)annual emissions which will eventually be captured by nature anyway.
Biological solutions (BECCS)
These include policies to prevent deforestation combined with technical efforts at reforestation, afforestation (establishing forests in regions not previously forested), and better agricultural practices. While estimates are that perhaps 3.5Gt of CO2 could be captured annually with these methods, Stanford’s Rob Jackson and Columbia University’s Julio Friedmann point out the lack of details about land and ecosystems disturbances, water usage, land-owner incentives and needed resources such as energy and nutrients. Once possible negative side effect of forestation the article fails to mention is the potential albedo feedback of darkening a billion hectares of Earth’s surface.
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)
Although not discussed specifically in the article, CCS is established in a few instances, and the captured CO2 used to enhance fossil fuels recovery. David Middleton has written here and here about the technology.
Direct Air Capture (DAC)
These are essentially chemical engineering systems which draw atmospheric air into some sort of solid resin or liquid solution which captures CO2 in controlled conditions (low temperature or low humidity) and then releases it under altered conditions. Anyone familiar with an ammonia absorption refrigerator would recognize the scheme. Once captured the system stores CO2 into porous geological reservoirs; or stores it in mineralization such as specialty concrete or in situ subsurface minerals such as olivine.
Jennifer Wilcox of Worcester Polytechnic Institute makes an interesting observation that most of the people promoting DAC are physicists. This reminds me of the energy crisis of the 1970s where physicists promoted, aggressively, a number of advanced energy conversion technologies like MHD, fusion, solar arrays in orbit; which not only couldn’t be made economical, but in some instances couldn’t be made to work.(2)
Incentivizing action
Putting aside the question of the very need for all these activities, the weakest part of the discussion is its failure to specify any realistic means to overcome the principle obstacles: sources of energy, cost, financing of R&D, and paying O&M costs.
The ubiquitous benchmark for all these technologies appears at present to be able to capture and store for about $100 per tonne of CO2 (1000 kg tonnes). Yet, even $300 per tonne might seem cheap the article suggests if the worst of climate change become reality. A cost of $100 per tonne of CO2 captured implies a “cost” of burning a gallon of gasoline as about $1.30.(3)
All of the proposed technologies require energy input. If this energy comes from fossil fuels, it simply leads to more CO2 to capture and costs climb commensurately — to estimates of $1000 per tonne in some instances. Financing the required R&D appear just a matter of enacting a few billion to a few tens of billions of dollars of Federal support, and the O&M costs might be covered by partnerships with industry who have need of the CO2, like the petroleum industry, or covered by the taxpayer in subsidies and production credits, or a carbon tax. The proponents are optimistic. As the article quotes one…
“We know the recipe; we’ve done it over and over again. We have sustained, long-lived R&D programs that drop the price enough that we start making policy. And then we expand policies to align with markets. That is exactly what we did for solar, wind, and nuclear, and batteries.”
The recipe does seem familiar, but not necessarily successful. We have no economical grid scale batteries. Wind and solar have small market penetration so far except in special circumstances. And there is at least a suspicion that rather than align with markets, too much wind and solar undermines markets.
Despite its shortcomings the article is well assembled and informative.
Notes:
- (1) David Kramer, Negative Carbon Dioxide emissions, Physics Today, Vol. 73, No. 1, p.44-51 , January 2020.
- (2) Much of the current climate crisis resembles the energy crisis of the 1970s, especially in the variety of complex solutions being offered, and in a hurry up and do something mania. In the 1970s much of the hurry up policies made problems worse and eventually had to be undone.
- (3) Holman Jenkins in the January 21, 2020 issue of the WSJ wrote that “A carbon tax equivalent to 13 cents per gallon of gasoline would have let Republicans in 2017 realize their fondest tax-reform hopes….” But the costs being considered here show a disparity that green groups would decry. A 13 cents per gallon tax would only be an appetizer.
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10,000 ppm is 1%
The normal human exhaled CO2 concentration is around 5%.
If we breathe more deeply, we lower our CO2 levels in the blood, roughly in proportion to the amount of increase in in lung ventilation – the amount of air we breathe in and out in a minute.
An increase in ventilation of around 20% is sufficient to ensure absolutely normal blood chemistry in the face of an inspired 10,000ppm load.
There is no possible human safety issue at 1000 or even 2000ppm.
Good luck with that. Nature will put it back into the atmosphere as fast as it is removed.
https://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/what-is-really-behind-the-increase-in-atmospheric-co2/
https://edberry.com/blog/climate-physics/agw-hypothesis/human-co2-emissions-have-little-effect-on-atmospheric-co2-discussion/
Expensive Kumbaya. But then it’s only the public’s money.
Sequestering CO2 is roughly akin to applying leeches to a patient that is already bleeding to death.
An article in the January 2020 Issue of Physics Today (1) presents an interesting and very readable overview of methods to capture and store away CO2 emissions.
Full stop there. Useless. Why not harvest our food crops and then immediately bury them…..
Well, there are those who would; or at least they would propose growing crops, burning to a char, and burying that. Burying the crop itself would just leave open the possibility of methane rising to the surface again. You can imagine the variety of schemes being proposed. This is why I say this climate crisis looks so much like the energy crisis of the 1970s — its that seventies show once again.
“We have no economical grid scale batteries. “
Yes, we do. Several. The best known is the Tesla battery in Hornsdale, SA. And it is very profitable.
Revenue and profitability are two different things.
“grid scale” it said.
That battery could power SA for 3 minutes, if it was even possible to draw that much power that quickly, which it is not.
Perhaps it can power a local town for a few hours. That’s not ‘grid scale’.
Nick-
For a really intelligent guy, you seem to delight in throwing in remarks that you know are not exactly on topic. The batteries made money by being a frequency stabilizer, not by supplying sustained power to the grid. Here is the quote from the article you referenced:
“The overwhelming majority of revenue in September came from providing frequency control ancillary services (FCAS). Contingency services, which correct major frequency deviations in the grid, accounted for the highest share of revenue (55%).”
“not by supplying sustained power to the grid”
They make money from both. Wikipedia says they are expected to make $18M per year from acting as reserve (buying low and selling high). On that basis, they can supply 30MW for 3 hours. Not bad returns from a device that cost about $90M.
$90 M for 30 MW is $3 per watt. Yeah, that IS bad returns.
Stokes, I was a PE in a major electric utility. I know grids. There’s no such thing as a grid scale battery yet. Doubt there ever will be. Stick to what you know.
Nick Stokes January 24, 2020 at 11:58 am
“We have no economical grid scale batteries. “
Yes, we do. Several. The best known is the Tesla battery in Hornsdale, SA. And it is very profitable.
____________________________________
The best known is the Tesla battery in Hornsdale, SA. And it is very profitable. –> The best known is the Tesla battery in Hornsdale, SA. And it is the base of a heavily taxpayer subsidised ponzi-scheme.
It’s important to differentiate CCS from CCUS (carbon capture, utilization and storage).
CCS only has economic value if government imposes penalties for emissions and/or incentives for sequestration. Its value is entirely dependent on whether or not there are benefits to reducing CO2 emissions. This is entirely opinion-driven.
CCUS has economic value irrespective of whether or not there are benefits to reducing CO2 emissions.
David, agree — you previously convinced me that CC utilization can be useful in appropriate situations. I suppose once underground, it’s stored, but in that case storage would be incidental to the original purpose.
It’s essential to the original purpose.
“CCS only has economic value if government imposes penalties for emissions and/or incentives for sequestration.”
Which isn’t reasonable economic thinking, or acting but brute political motivated force.
Disappointed articles and papers discussing ‘carbon capture’ are being presented on this platform as worthy of serious discussion, in light of everything we know, and don’t know about Earth’s climate, as has been pointed out already by many of the commentors here. Why would we want to capture atmospheric C02 when it is at a historic low, not much above plant death, in the recent past. Is it because some ‘skeptics’ believe we, as in humanity, must be doing something bad by putting some C02 back in the atmosphere where it has depleted almost to nothing relative to levels throughout plant evolution? According to estimates, roughly 97% of the CO2 released into the atmosphere is natural, and about 3% is from burning fossil fuels. What is the error in that estimate? +/- 3%? When we can measure that more accurately, our own addition from fossil fuels will be immeasurable and insignificant, relative to the Planet’s oceans contribution.
Carbon (dioxide) Capture and Sequestration is a very expensive way of removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
The main problem is that the critical temperature of CO2 is about 31 C, or 88 F, meaning that it cannot be liquefied above this temperature. If the goal is to store it underground, the place where it is stored cannot exceed this temperature, at the risk of a violent expansion, explosion, or man-made earthquake if this temperature is exceeded.
To avoid this problem, CO2 must be compressed to above its critical pressure, or 73.82 bar = 1,070 psi. Carbon dioxide emissions from power plants (normally mixed with nitrogen and water vapor) are normally at low pressure (slightly above atmospheric), so that even if the CO2 is separated from the nitrogen and water vapor, compression to above 1,070 psi (a compression ratio of over 70) requires several stages of compression and an energy input of 25 to 30% of the electric power output of the power plant.
If this is done, the power plant puts out only 70 to 75% of the energy it could produce per tonne fuel consumed, meaning that such a plant would consume 33% to 43% more fuel per MWh net power generated (not consumed by the compressors), basically consuming valuable fuel resources much faster than necessary.
Since the benefit of removing CO2 from the atmosphere is difficult to quantify, most power plants that have considered Carbon Capture and Sequestration have abandoned these efforts as prohibitively expensive for little (if any) return.
And now add all the other significant irreversibilities involved in capturing something that is only 0.04% of atmosphere per volume, and doing all of this, plus, as Nick Stokes mention, mining and crushing olivine to react it with CO2.
It is all interesting to contemplate, but does not sound promising to me.
The olivine process does not require capture.
“The olivine process does not require capture.”
I’m really curious about this possibility. Can you expand on it?
I’ve often thought that the amine towers used for stripping natural gas of CO2 were something worth considering, but I’m not familiar with the olivine process. (I did download the Arrhenius paper you linked, but haven’t read it yet).
Olivine is just crushed and spread as powder over large barren areas.
But then it would require an enormous surface area to have it run at a reasonable rate, because what this becomes is simply what geologists would call “weathering”. The article spoke mainly of bringing the “CO2 bearing liquid” (don’t know if they mean supercritical or a saturated aqueous solution, into contact with olivine rock at depth (i.e. under pressure to perhaps keep the CO2 super critical or keep the aqueous solution saturated. The article also mentioned quartz as a “carbonate” so has some chemical/geological misstatements.
Articles like this acquiesce to the absurd and simply false notion that CO2 is harmful. Why does WUWT just retweet this corrosive blather, endlessly, article after article?
Be careful what you swallow, it can harm you.
CO2 is with O2 the foundation of life on earth. Adding it to the air is good. All the palaeo evidence shows that.
The pseudoscience komissars pushing the CO2 lie down society’s throat, rely on the fact that, although palaeo data of atmosphere and climate over deep time refutes the CAGW notion with ridiculous totality, they can rely on the fact that, deep down in an instinctive level, they can rely on the fact that a high enough percentage of people are utterly indifferent about science and unwilling to think seriously about the vast age of the earth, preferring – perhaps unconsciously, to believe in an earth created recently, just a few thousand years ago. Even when such people have never been in a church or synagogue all their lives, they are psychologically unable to embrace deep time.
In a young world just a few thousand years old, a catastrophe story is plausible – not much has really happened yet. But once you appreciate the vast age of the earth, and have the courage and honesty to get your head around deep time, then the remarkable stability, durability and staying power of the environment and biosphere become obvious to you. And it becomes obvious that the catastrophe stories are nonsensical and impossible.
I have generally found it worthwhile to listen to people on the other side, in fact every side, of this debate. I certainly don’t think these schemes are necessary, and the proposals are not very convincing. Certainly the thread didn’t suggest anyone here is “swallowing” anything, did it?
All very puzzling to me. I thought the goal was to keep the planet from warming.
The planet seems to be managing that on its own and will almost certainly start to cool eventually.
I see no evidence that reducing atmospheric CO2 will lower temperatures and only dubious evidence that it might significantly contribute to warming. The only observable evidence would be in correlations between CO2 levels and temperatures. That seems to be only incidental.
As well, there is really no evidence of a downside to warming. The science of attribution seems to be alchemy in action without believable results. On the other hand, the downside to cooling is obvious and can be severe.
Tell me again why we should be concerned with CO2. Should we not be observing the climate for another century or two before taking action that could have serious unintended consequences.
Adaptation to a warmer planet would seem to be relatively easy while cooling is much more difficult to deal with.
Perhaps no one has noticed that all the hottest areas of the planet are heavily populated as long as water is adequate. The coldest areas are practically barren of all living things whether plant, animal, or human.
Some of this might be explained by the fact that only a very small proportion of the planets population has any experience with the more extreme cold portions of our wold
I live where it is relatively cool and I know a few degrees of warming would make life a whole lot more comfortable.
I know this is preaching to the converted by posting it here but I just had to say it again.
It is impossible to overstate the numbing ignorance of capturing and storing CO2. It is plant food and has nothing to do with climate change. The planet came perilously close to the end of life on land because of the low level at the end of the last glaciation. https://watervaporandwarming.blogspot.com
If, and that’s a big if, CO2 has such a climate impact, I would worry about all these efforts to reduce emissions and lower CO2. What happens if it gets down to 150 ppm?
There are molecular sieve materials which are very effective at capturing CO2. The industrial gas companies have been using them for decades on the front end of large cryogenic air separation units to take out CO2 – and water vapour – which would otherwise freeze in the process. It is not retained, just returned to the atmosphere when the mol sieve is regenerated.
Scale would be an issue. A big ASU produces about 5,000 tons per day of oxygen which means it processes roughly 25,000 tons of air per day. So there would only be about 10 tons per day of CO2 available for capture.
However the technology could be applied to any large air handling system, if someone wanted to waste money that way.
“This reminds me of the energy crisis of the 1970s where physicists promoted, aggressively, a number of advanced energy conversion technologies like MHD, fusion, solar arrays in orbit; which not only couldn’t be made economical, but in some instances couldn’t be made to work.(2)”.
Seams the greatest danger to a reasonable go-ahead are selfishness, vanity and showmanship / grandstanding of:
the small guild of the physicists.
Tell them to get grown.
“This reminds me of the energy crisis of the 1970s where physicists promoted, aggressively, a number of advanced energy conversion technologies like MHD, fusion, solar arrays in orbit; which not only couldn’t be made economical, but in some instances couldn’t be made to work.(2)”.
Seams the greatest danger to a reasonable go-ahead are selfishness, vanity and showmanship / grandstanding of:
the small guild of the physicists.
Tell them to get grown.
https://www.google.com/search?q=professor+unrat+film&oq=professor+unrat+&aqs=chrome.
Amos, “Meanwhile in Scotland we’ve chopped down over 13 million of them to make way for wind turbines.”
Enhancing by greening them wind turbines poles, e.g. with ivy. The new ivy leagues.
Double green. Green as can green.
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Forgot to mention – one day without expensive maintainance – scrubbing, brushing and new saltwater resistant painting and that damned scrap greens by itself.
Rusty iron, overgrown with algae and dripping moss.
A danger to the christian seafaring.