Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Remember all those assurances we’ve heard over the years, that carbon capture technology is ready for mainstream deployment? Turns out the technology is a little less ready to deploy than some people would like you to believe.
From Elon Musk;
So what are the chances of someone collecting the prize?
Bloomberg thinks this moonshot can’t miss;
Elon Musk’s Moonshot Prize Can’t Miss
By Kyle Stock
January 24, 2021, 7:00 AM ESTMr. Moonshot is at it again.
Space and sedan baron Elon Musk pledged to donate a $100 million prize to what he deems the best carbon capture technology. The Tesla CEO wants to save the world of course and get a cheaper, cleaner feedstock to cook up fuel for his rockets. He also wants to bask in the glow of a little green Twitter buzz, which is often what these kinds of contests are best for.
The so-called moonshot prize is a centuries-old tactic that falls somewhere on the spectrum between time-shrinking innovation catalyst and carnival barking. The difference is in the details.
…
Musk says he will flesh out the details of the prize this week. If he really wants to move the needle, the money should be spread out and spaced out. Breaking it up into small chunks for early milestones will encourage long-shots and leaving it open-ended long enough will further incite the serious players.
…
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-01-24/elon-musk-pledges-100-million-prize-to-crack-carbon-capture
Forbes reminds readers that there is no magic when it comes to the thermodynamics of sequestering CO2, though they suggest “billions of dollars from government” might overcome the economic obstacles;
$100 Million From Elon Musk Won’t Enable Carbon Capture
Brentan Alexander
Jan 24, 2021,08:10am ESTOn Thursday, Elon Musk announced in under 140 characters his intention to donate $100 million to the “best” carbon capture technology, chosen through a competition whose details and judging criteria are yet to be announced (he promised further details next week). Funding for research and development of carbon capture technologies is most welcome, and Musk’s donation will surely lead to technological advances in the space. The problems, however, holding back the mass deployment of carbon capture are primarily economic, and a Silicon Valley mindset that champions disruptive innovation as the solution to all problems will fail to advance this important industry.
…
Carbon capture today looks a lot like solar technology 20 years ago, which was on the brink of growing at a rate over 500 times over the next two decades. Research and development money did not unlock the solar market at the turn of the century, rather it was the emergence of a viable business model driven by mandated renewable energy targets that allowed solar to rapidly expand and run down the cost curve, driving further growth. So too is carbon capture ready to make such a jump. Musk’s prize will surely help some firms further their technology and reduce their costs, but Silicon Valley solutions won’t create the market that unlocks carbon capture technologies. Instead, carbon capture is ready for its Wall Street moment: it will take the deployment of today’s technologies within today’s regulatory regime, supported by billions from governments, banks, and corporations, to demonstrate the business case for carbon capture and truly enable the space to scale.
…
Read more: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brentanalexander/2021/01/24/100-million-from-elon-musk-wont-enable-carbon-capture/
Perhaps we should thank Elon Musk for letting the mask slip, for giving us a glimpse of the true state of over hyped carbon capture technology.
Nobody has a scalable, affordable solution, thermodynamics suggests there may never be a scalable, affordable solution – that carbon capture if deployed would be an ongoing massive burden on the global economy. Yet most advocates keep up the pretence that carbon capture is ready to roll.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I got two words for this silly competition….
WHY?
What’s the other word? I might be able to guess if you had said three words.
Scissor, uhhh, would the second word be the definite article “the” and the third word begin with the letter “f” and be one can act as both a noun and a verb?
It would if you’re thinking what I was thinking.
Best Carbon Capture Technology…
All true believers and Socialist Democrats should Hold Their Breath
Yeah, but then they decompose.
Only once though
bury them real deep
Dafok?
To assuage his guilt about putting 45,000 satellites in space.
I have three letters too, that sums up my thoughts on so called “carbon capture”
WFB
I’m sure it is because he sees some use for that kind of technology on Mars; probably for pulling carbon out of the thin atmosphere there.
His recent actions are costing him fans with certain feelings about climate change. Maybe he’s trying to win them back.
Hey! Man! Don’t mess with my CO2!
I like mine in tiny bubbles in my beer.
Beer…the BEST carbon capture technology
Dr. Pepper is pretty good capture technology, too.
I still say the Dr. Pepper manufacturer is reducing the amount of CO2 in their drink. It just doesn’t fizzle vigorously when you open a new bottle, like it used to do.
I wonder if that’s the case across the whole soft drink line?
Double IPA.
…for the best tax credit capture technology.
Musk should be investing in methods to clear debris out of low earth orbit.
Good idea.
That’s an easy answer. Melt all the glaciers, which will increase the surface area of the oceans, which will then absorb more CO2. I’ll take it in a lump sum. Thanks.
MARIJUANA PLANTS!
Yes, but if you burn them doesn’t that release the sequestered CO2 back into the air again?
Poplar Trees harvested every 10 years and stripped of leaves and branches AND the whole lot stacked in old Open Pit Coal Mines. Keep a couple feet of water over the top of the stack to stop decomposition. Once the pile reaches 30′ from the top of the pit, cover with soil. Perfect Carbon Sink. Eventually it will become a new coal seam
Great idea. They can put the trees in as they dig the coal out like the way they do replanting for reforestation. Could call it recoalinization 🤦♂️😉
Recoalinization … I like it…
Edibles?
Just goes to show the climate scam is all about the monetization of atmospheric gases.
Single/central/monopolistic solutions to consolidate capital and control. The select 20,000 NG in a democratic/dictatorial fashion aids and abets its progress. Kneel before the one you serve. h/t NIN
Then the Hollies will have to change their song lyrics to:
You won’t get any better than biomass which is 100% green and eventually recyclable into fossil fuels! Give me my $100M.
That was literally the first reply to hwis tweet. Makes sense, too.
Follow the asphalt road (made from biomass). Just follow the asphalt road.
Biomass still releases CO2 when converted to energy and takes over a century to produce the mass that was Burned in a year
Don’t the alarmists consider burning biomass to be ‘clean’? Isn’t this why they promote poor forest management in order to get all that ‘green’ combustion?
There’s nothing like overlooking the logical future energy generation technology ( SMR molten salt reactors) which are heap cheap cheap in order to spend untold billions on a stupid technology like carbon capture. Musk the Fool
Right on cue Col.
Must update my adblocker – this one got through!
And he’s back
Hmmmm … would that be iodized table salt or kosher salt?
Doesn’t iodine protect from radiation? Gotta be kosher.
And how many SMR molten salt reactors are producing MWs of Electricity today?
You’ll notice that he never responds.
Don’t be green, go green, plant. Don’t follow the rainbow to Green for greenbacks.
Save a bird, a bat, whack a wind turbine. Clear the Green blight, sequester the photovoltaic panels. Donate to World Walrus Foundation. Think of the cold unPlanned children!
Plant a tree, Elon.
I’m easy to find. You can mail me my check anytime.
The $100 million is not going to go too far with all of the people who think this is the obvious answer to a non-problem.
True, OzMan, but thought I’d give it a shot.
Too many people see this challenge as a technical capture problem. That is, a better, more thermodynamically efficient capture process from the exhaust plume. In reality the crux of the CCS problem is a logistical, dispersed sequestration problem.
And it is the sequestration for at least a millennia for many hundreds to thousands of millions of metric tonnes of CO2, year after year, decade after decade until we finally wise up and build enough nuclear fission power plants. Anything less would be meaningless for the assumed climate CO2 problem.
The Dispersed Logistical Problem:
We have thousands of fossil fuel powered generation stations connected to grid distribution system that is both local and regional. It is geographically dispersed to ensure power/electricity is where it is generally needed without enormous long distance transmission losses. Florida and the East Coast cannot run on Pacific Northwest hydropower electricity nor SW US solar PV power for example (despite the bad engineering claims from a certain Stanford professor).
From large coal and nat gas 500 Megawatt units (x 2, 3 or 4 units) on a station, all the way down to now ‘smaller’ peaking plants at single Megawatt CGT powered generators. Now theoretically all these plants could use a portion of their power to process the exhaust and extract CO2 into compressed gas or liquid form.
Then what? Where does all that now CO2 go? Do they use even more energy to make it solid dry ice (which sublimates)? There are only a limited places that that amount of CO2 can be pumped into he ground an expect it to stay there. How does all that compressed (liquid) CO2 get there?
For any CCS to make any sense for Climate (assuming the CO2 control knob theory is correct), hundreds to thousands of millions of megatons will have to be sequestered, not just once, but every year. Sequestered somewhere, year after year. Sequestration for many gigatonnes of CO2, since it was originally gigatonnes of fossil fuels extracted and burned with O2.
We currently use trains and pipelines to move the coal and natgas hundreds of miles all across North America, to hundreds of different generator plants, where it is burned to make electricity. LNG tanker ships move nat gas thousands of miles across oceans to be burned. To where and how would the captured CO2 be moved to secure its sequestration?
Use the same LNG ships to take it (the liquid CO2) back to wells whence it came and re-inject it, you say?
LNG density is between 430 kg/m³ and 470 kg/m³ (let’s assume 440 kg/m³) at its cryogenic temp of -160 ºC. Liquid CO2 is 1101 kg/m³ when the liquid is at full saturation at -37 °C. That’s 2.5 times as dense. So two LNG tanker loads (weight equivalent) of LNG produces 5 tanker loads (weight equivalent) of liquid CO2 to send back to the well head. (By weight equivalent, I mean the tanker ships are weight limited for both port keel depth and safe sailing at sea use). That math doesn’t work, unless you send the tankers out at only 40% full of LNG, a pretty wasteful use of bunker fuel. (but then everything about CCS is wasteful IMO)
Returning liquid CO2 via ships MIGHT be workable for Japan or Korea that are now getting lots of LNG from the Timor Sea via Darwin LNG port. Won’t work in North America.
Conclusion:
The entire CCS issue is just bad engineering with no workable way to sequester for a millennia the gigatonnes of CO2 produced every year from even the best capture technology. The answer is to let nature continue to deal with sequestration of our CO2 emissions and work vigorously on a National Energy Strategy of nuclear power build out.
If they want to capture for a specific purpose, no problems
But WASTING TIME and MONEY by capturing and pretending to hide it away somewhere , ..
…. is the UTMOST IDIOCY.
Carbon Dioxide in volume is a scarce valuable chemical commodity. It is used by the oil industry for Enhance Oil Recovery from depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs.
Now you know another reason Big Oil likes AGW, get the tax payer to fund the supply of this useful chemical feed stock and obtain more oil as a consequence.
A definite Win for Big Oil.
In just the Texas state waters, there’s enough geological storage capacity for about 100 years worth of current US CO2 emissions from electricity generation.
If we started drilling injection wells at the same rate we have been drilling oil & gas wells in the Gulf of Mexico, we could inject about 60 years worth of current US CO2 emissions from electricity generation by 2050.
It’s not a technology or engineering issue. It’s an economic issue… And there’s no exiting regulatory framework in the Gulf of Mexico.
https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/74909/GCCCPub2019-7.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y
Say Bill Gates proposed a project for 1000 or so Mt CO2 to be injected. What would that cost him roughly, assuming he is going to get taxpayers to pay for it?
It depends on a lot of variables… But it would probably cost more than the 45Q tax credit is worth.
As I stated, the real crux of the CCS problem is a logistical problem to sequester millions of tons of dispersed source CO2 every year for decades. Across North America there are many hundreds of generation sites that would have to capture CO2 emissions in a Net Zero (insane) world. There are actually thousands if all of the coal and nat gas electrical generation stations want to stay in-business in a Net Zero world.
CCS at continental-US economy scale makes nuclear power very attractive. The only alternative is intermittent, recurring electricity black-outs lasting days or weeks when wind and solar fail, as they always do. That alternative also will send manufacturing industry and its jobs overseas. CCS is just another scheme to bring smiles to every CCP commie.
The oil & gas industry could actually drill and operate enough injection wells to sequester pretty well all of the CO2 emissions from point sources in the US.
It’s not even a logistics issue. It’s a $$$ issue. If government makes carbon expensive enough through taxes and subsidies, it will happen.
Regional, recurring blackouts will happen before California, New York NIMBY bedwetters allows injection wells to be drilled on site or near all of their generating stations. The generating stations will just shut down first. Then there’s nothing to capture or sequester.
Most of the injection wells won’t be near sites in New York or California. The greater obstacle there will be opposition to CO2 pipelines. However, there are two commercial CCS sites under development in southern California and a couple of pilot projects in the New York area.
Most, if not all, of the CCS/CCUS will be in the Permian Basin, Williston Basin, Gulf Coast and Gulf of Mexico regions. In the Gulf of Mexico, there is no NIMBY’ism.
“Net Zero (insane) world”
That’s another way to put it. A more accurate way.
I’m more concerned with what might happen if the containment fails. Large quantities of CO2 gas escaping into a population centre would be lethal.
The geological containment being used for CO2 EOR and envisioned for CCS contained oil & gas for 100′ of thousands to 10’s of millions of years.
The only significant risk would be blowouts of injection wells, which are extremely rare. The advantage to the Gulf of Mexico is that there aren’t many population centers in the Gulf of Mexico… Minimizing NIMBY’ism.
There would be a perverse incentive to over pressurise the well. There would need to be significant CO2 storage and handling facilities, to accommodate any temporary interruptions to service (e.g. large storms in the gulf). And CO2 leaks have a nasty habit of accumulating into supersaturated solutions on the bottom bodies of water, then suddenly fizzing up, if Lake Nyos is any guide.
Put in geological formations (porous sandstones under salt domes) at those pressures the injected CO2 forms mineral carbonates pretty quick. At least from experiments done as I’ve read them.
Lake Nyos isn’t a guide for anything other than lakes like Lake Nyos.
Cheapest approach is to decree every politician double face mask in perpetuity. Those carbon based gas bags will still be spouting malarkey, but they’ll retain more CO2.
Fauci literally just pulled his “double mask” advice out of his ass not his brain. No science required apparently now. Just virtue signaling.
If one is good, two is better malarkey (as Dementia Joe might say>
One is required. Two is better. Logically then, I can wear two for 5 days a week and then I don’t have to wear any on the weekend … and I am just as safe & socially responsible as anyone else.
I notice a news report today which specifies Herr Fauci is the highest paid government employee, whose last known salary of 2019 was US$417,608. As a character American comedian Mel Brooks played in one of his movies said – “It’s good to be The King!”
>90% of people wearing masks in public are wearing the wrong kinds of masks, and wearing them mostly incorrectly. Ergo, masks have been a joke this entire time.
And wearing two of the wrong kinds of masks the wrong way is doubleplusstupid.
The worst thing about masks is that I feel like I’m trying to order form the drive thru… It sounds like everyone is saying, “Do you want fries with that?”
I never realized that reading lips was such a significant part of understanding what people are saying. One of my coworkers insists on wearing two masks and he sounds like the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoon.
You can buy masks that have a clear plastic face that allows you to see the lips and facial expressions. They are not N95 quality masks, they are KN95, which is slightly less protective, but it appears most people are wearing inferior masks anyway.
I thought I heard a news blurb yesterday about some area moving to require that all people wear N95 masks. That would definitely be a plus as far as mask wearing goes. Some of the masks people wear are pretty ridiculous.
You can’t hardly buy an N95 mask right now. They are reserved for healthcare workers. I lucked out and bought a box of N95 masks a couple of years ago for another purpose, and I still have some to wear.
Someone could make themselves a lot of money by going into the N95 mask manufacturing business right about now.
I saw two different women wearing lace masks…
If 2 masks are better than 1, why not 3? Why not 100? It would surely stop the spread.
decree every politician double face mask in perpetuity
Only if the inner mask is made of duct tape.
It’s not technological answer, unless growing trees is technological.
The political path, would be to green the Sahara Desert.
But if get more global warming, the Sahara desert could naturally, green.
Or back in a warmer period, it was grassland and forests.
Some people imagine it was human activity which caused the Sahara desert,
but most know it was due to global cooling.
Ice Ages have drier air. We in an Ice Age, and during warmer parts of interglacial
periods, the Sahara desert, greens, as was the case many thousands of years ago.
Is there technological way of making Sahara desert, into a a forest region?
Sure, and fairly primitive technology could work, but it would involve politics.
But one could wonder how much land would need and how much 100 million dollars
buys in terms of land and rights to do it. But I am roughly talking using money to alter political opinion. I think it could have to do with, Qattara Depression Project, wiki“The Qattara Depression Project, or Qattara Project for short, is a macro-engineering project concept in Egypt. Rivalling the Aswan High Dam in scope, the intention is to develop the hydroelectric potential of the Qattara Depression by creating an artificial lake.”
But basically bring in lots sea water, and use “solar energy” by which I mean use solar ponds type solar energy and mine sea water rather have salt waste problem, and get a lot freshwater from it. Or there is lot of water under Sahara desert, but that being used and ii is a finite resource, whereas sea water is not finite resource.
But a perhaps a more crazy idea and actually technological issue, is to make nuclear power tugs. And drag ice burgs to deserts, but would pick Saudi Arabia deserts or Australia deserts. And either could have less political problems. Though with Qattara Depression Project one could use boring technology.
It is also said the use of cattle can used to reduce desert area.
Again, not very technological.
ocean fertilization would be far more effective, both in costs and effect, than trying to green the Sahara.
Ocean fertilization over large swaths from iron, phosphate and ammonium, dispersed from loaded ore carriers, would create huge phytoplankton blooms, and much of the resulting biomass would sink into the deep oceans as carbonate snowfall.
Well, that could involve technology. It is often mentioned and seems to be some kind weak and stupid arguments against it, but how exactly does one unload such oceanic fertilizer into the ocean?
Google it:
“Self-unloading vessels can discharge dry-bulk cargo at an unimproved dock without assistance from any shore-side equipment or shore-side personnel. Because they do not require any land-based assistance, these vessels can literally arrive in the middle of the night, discharge their cargo, and depart before daybreak. They are capable of transporting and unloading almost any free-flowing, dry-bulk commodity, including iron ore, coal, limestone, sand, gypsum, and grain. ASC’s self-unloaders range in size from 635 feet to 1,000 feet, transport anywhere from 18,000 to 70,000 tons per trip, and can self-discharge cargo at rates up to 10,000 tons per hour.”
Oh, I guess that would work. So out several hundred mile, unload all in less than 24 hours {or 8 hours}, and go back for more. Or about 4-5 day turnaround time.
It seems 13 small scale attempts and seeing any conclusive results:
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000190674
Sites of the 13 iron fertilization experiments
Other:
“To date none of the major ocean fertilization experiments have verified that a significant amount of deep ocean carbon sequestration occurs. Some scientists have suggested that verification may require more massive and more permanent experiments. Together with commercial operators they plan to go ahead with large-scale and more permanent ocean fertilization experiments and note that potential negative environmental consequences must be balanced against the harm expected due to ignoring climate change.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071129132753.htm
Not sure what meant by small scale, I would call 18,000 to 70,000 tons as small scale.
And month spent with turnaround time of 4-5 days of filling and dumping of 18,000 to 70,000 tons as a significant experiment.
And if want to do something about fish stocks, do it continuously.
And if want do anything to reduce CO2 levels, then times that by at least 10.
But 70% of all volcanic activity is in the ocean and this putting kinds material in the Ocean, not mention all river and glacial discharge which has going on millions of years. And we have vast parts of Ocean which called sterile due to lack fertilization.
If it’s cheaper, than trees in Sahara Desert, one would need to know scale of the operation which makes any measurable difference. But it seems increasing fish stocks could much lower scale and one is “putting food on the table”.
(yellow/green, high; dark blue, low).
“thermodynamics suggests there may never be a scalable, affordable solution – that carbon capture if deployed would be an ongoing massive burden on the global economy”
Nothing in thermodynamics that I’m aware of that says CCS/U won’t be economic at scale compared with the CO2-e emissions charges that are being contemplated.
Send your idea to Elon Musk.
I think you’ll find the geothermal and petrochemical industries, that do this routinely, will have taken the prize.
One could do enhance oil recovery in a perpetual motion kind of way, leaving the CO2 in the field after economic amounts of oil were recovered.
But why would anyone want to do that? CO2 greening has proven to be a great benefit and notwithstanding over 100 years of non stop bickering about the warming effects of CO2, there’s really no evidence that the human contribution can be measured. It’s still just conjecture. Besides, I see no down side to a slightly warmer world.
That is exactly what we are doing here in AB
Pump CO2 into the “depleted” conventional oil field, once it is producing properly they extend the line to the next field, and on.
That is what the Carbon Trunk line is supposed to do.
Oil extraction is by ESP, any CO2 that comes up is separated and reinjected
Will it all work economically? I don’t know but carbon tax upends rational economics
As noted above it is done and this increases the yields. A bit of the old CO2-e pricing will no doubt encourage the behaviour.
Somewhat surprisingly this is what is sometimes done, but nothing to do with perpetual motion.
Isn’t the best carbon capture technology for Elon – “Buy More Tesla’s”?
Having just left blackout prone California, Musk understands that wind and solar can’t charge people’s Tesla’s at night.
Considering nature circulates something like 750 gigatons of CO2 annually and humans release something 27 gigatons annually then what is the point of CO2 capture or is it something like Covid Zero?
C12H22O11
Put in your coffee of tea. I win.
Sweet. Amazing number of isomers.
And if you remove the “C”, you have Water
Trees. trees, trees!
Was I first? Do I win $100 million.
Why should 10 Gt of carbon equivalent of CO2 released annually into the atmosphere and hydrosphere make a dent in their combined 38,000 Gt ? Can someone please explain.
The tweet says “carbon capture”, so maybe he doesn’t mean carbon dioxide? 😏
“Carbon capture” (CCS) refers to carbon-based greenhouse gases. ~99% of which are CO2.
C3 plants, Western Red Cedar, soybeans. Can I have the $100 million in gold bullion?
I wish to submit a handful of seeds.
Where do I collect the money?
My serious entry, obviously the clear winner meeting the definition of needing “technology”:
solar powered compressors on tens of thousands of free-drift ocean platforms that pump air down to about 300 ft depth (a pressure difference of about 150 psid) whereby the bubbling of said air as it rises back to the surface will insure the 0.04% carbon dioxide concentration is “scrubbed out” and dissolved into the ocean seawater resulting in said CO2 being rapidly sequestered as (i.e., irreversibly converted into) carbonate and bicarbonate ions in the alkaline-buffered seawater.
Elon, just contact me via WUWT to find out where to deposit my winning funds.
Remember, you saw it first right here on WUWT!
So sorry.
Mr. Musk clearly stated “carbon capture”…not carbon dioxide capture.
Because:
Taking away the first link in our food chain (CO²) would be suicidal.
Obviously, it would be really silly to remove essential ‘carbon dioxide’ from our air.
So, the real answer is:
*Collect all those bicycles made from high priced (evil) carbon fiber which can easily be found around any and all “Save The Planet” demonstrations and bury them deep in the ground.
Creative
Carbon
Capture
Cleverly
Completed
“Obviously, it would be really silly to remove essential ‘carbon dioxide’ from our air.”
Unfortunately, it’s not obvious to everyone.
But it *is* really silly to remove CO2 from the atmosphere for no good reason, which is the case here.
There is no evidence that CO2 needs to be removed from the Earth’s atmosphere. That’s the bottom line.
Ron, are you really asserting that capturing and sequestering molecules containing one of more carbon atoms—such as CO2— is not “carbon capture”?
BTW, it was never stated that submitters of concepts for Mr. Musk’s award (never to be seen, IMHO) have to state they actually believe in the need to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere.
The energy to pump water from 300 feet and return to 300 feet, amounts to friction loss,
do that and add air to water at low pressure where the cold water is returning the 300 feet depth.
Once the compressed air in the pipe extending to 300 ft depth below the surface has displaced that column of seawater (requiring only about 150 psi pressure at the air pump floating on the ocean surface), there is no longer any water “pumping” . . . only pumping of relatively low density air at relatively low velocity: if designed to occur at a Reynolds number slightly above the laminar-turbulent transition point, the air flow will have a relatively low frictional loss-coefficient.
The concept is analogous to the air-stone bubbler in an aquarium tank, which pumps only air.
The thin layer of surface waters cannot be used in this concept because any given bubble (smaller size is better) needs to transverse a long path length through the seawater to maximize the “scrubbing” out of CO2 at its very low concentration of ~410 ppmv.
Again, the energy to provide this air compression and design flow rate is supplied via solar cells on the platforms (perhaps supplemented by some storage batteries for load-leveling during periods of overhead-transiting clouds) . . . the overall number of hours of operation per day just affects to overall efficiency of the automated, non-manned platform system.
Earth’s atmospheric mass is 5.1 x 10^18 kg or 5.1 x 10^15 tons or
5100 trillion tons, and could assume you want move 1 trillion tons
per year, and compressing 1 trillion tons air at 150 psi seems costly
in terms energy cost, and assumed if didn’t have compress air as much
as 150 psi, it would use less energy.
I have given this idea much thought, but I have considered to need to make
hundred of tons air, as relates to idea of what call pipelauncher, which launches rockets and needs lot of air. And cause I am lazy, I simplify it, by assuming one buy liquid air which per ton and in bulk, could buy for about $100 per ton, as I am aware one buy liquid oxygen rocket fuel for about 10 cents per kg. And so as rough guess, the electrical cost of making 1 trillion tons of 150 psi could be somewhere around 100 trillion dollars, though maybe 50 trillion or less. And also interested is size of current global electrical market which somewhere around a few trillions of dollar per year.
And I don’t think it cost very much to move 1 ton of water at say 10 mph- if was ocean cargo transport would be quite expensive, and it’s cheapest shipping cost per mile. And looks yearly shipping is “total cargo ton–miles were estimated at 58,812 billion”
https://unctad.org/system/files/official-document/rmt2019_en.pdf
So doing 58 trillion ton per mile, which is lower than I imagined. And btw also imagine if want make them run off electrical engines it would require lot electric power {which might do if one got electrical power from space}.
Anyway, like said didn’t give much thought to this, but I was assuming large diameter water pipes, such as 10 meter in diameter, but didn’t consider how much air going into it, that could moving, and say 5 meter a second [10.23 mph}
Cross section of 10 meter diameter is 78.5 square meter times 5 meters
is 392.5 tons per second and in say hour, 1,413,000 tons and per year, times
8,760 which is 12,377,880,000 tons.
And some small portion of that would the air carried by the water.
And what have is big siphon, which needs energy to over come frictional
loss of water going pipe, and exiting at 10 mph. Oh, and turning the corner at the top. And make corner, assume it’s a 100 meter diameter arc or 50 meter radius, and you wanted depth 300 feet or 100 meter, say top of arc is 5 meters below the surface {or deeper to avoid surface waves having much effect]. How fast do air bubbles rise.
Let’s try 1 meter pipe of air at 10 psi and at top of 10 meter diameter pipe,
what happens water running and simply add air. In simple terms it would fill top of bend. If add air to bottom of intake of siphon for moment, and then allow to get the liquid again, I guess carries section of air. And put small hole
in bend of siphon, what happens. Never tried it. Anyhow this post is getting very long.
Elon uses money earned from poor tax payers subsidizing his car sales!
One word…Trees…I win.