They Built a Rocket Engine to Save the Planet | Arbor Energy
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- čas přidán 5. 09. 2024
- What if you built a rocket engine fueled by biomass, to generate electricity, water, and remove CO2 from the atmosphere? Arbor Energy is doing just that in Episode 51 of S³
Startup: arbor.co/
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Alright, I've been writing replies trying to explain some confusion around Arbor's tech for the past hour but CZcams is deleting my comments when I post them? In short:
1. Gasification: Biomass → Syngas
2. Combustion: Syngas burned → CO2 + H2O
3. Power Generation: Turbines → Electricity
4. Sequestration: CO2 captured → Stored
Is solid carbon a byproduct of steps 2 or 4 in this process? Step 2 is carbon-neutral since CO2 in from atmosphere = CO2 out to atmosphere, but what is less clear is how/where this tech stores CO2 to be "carbon negative." -- I feel the process at Terraform Industries was more clearly explained.
Thanks for the clarification!
Did I miss something else or is this not actually an explanation?
How are they capturing the CO2? How is it stored? What does scaled storage look like?
Biomass to Syngas to Combustion makes total sense and is not new, more importantly doesn’t seem like their claim to fame. Seems like something in their system is supposedly stopping the CO2 from getting ejected out in that jet stream? Have rewatched and nothing is really explained??
Wait. So they produce co2 just like any other fossil fuel by burning the biomass, then all they do is store the co2 that comes out?! Im sorry, this is NOT deeptech. This is pre-existing old tech they think they can rebrand and re-release.
Just because something has a flame does not mean it is a "rocket". You should really consider not trying to call everything a rocket as it really cheapens your videos. If they are building a brayton cycle gas turbine that runs on gasified wood then just say that. If you don't know what that means then you should be learning more about technology and doing less nodding along as some of these tech founders just want people to mindlessly throw money at them.
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To anyone else confused: this is not carbon negative. They’re claiming that because the biomass is not going to decompose into methane and be released back into the atmosphere that this is somehow carbon negative. This device is not actively pulling atmospheric CO2 out and sequestering it. They are still relying on plants to do that.
I love S3 but this is not living up to the purpose of the show. If people have to go on the company’s website to figure out what the technology is, the video is not doing its job
Thanks! Get it now, and agree in second part about video not delivering
I think the carbon negative part is that they then want to take that CO2 + H2O stream, split out the CO2, and then sequester it, which could potentially make it carbon negative, but they don't go over that part of the process in the video, so it's not clear how this is an advantage over just using, eg, a solar farm or wind turbine to power a conventional carbon capture and sequestration process.
@@danielputhawala2008 I agree with your first statement about them sequestering the carbon coming out of the machine. They explicitly say that in the website. My issue is that they made it seem carbon negative which implies removing extra carbon from the atmosphere and sequestering that. This process could be best described as carbon neutral since the biomass is already not atmospheric carbon and they’re simply keeping it out of the atmosphere
It is carbon negative. The carbon is being permanently removed from the planet's carbon cycle and being sequestered underground. Instead of using an energetically expensive DAC machine to capture the carbon while it's still in air, they are outsourcing the capture to plants (free) and using an energy positive machine to covert the plants into pure CO2 which can then be put back underground.
@@aarons4616It's true that biomass is not atmospheric but most of it will degrade away due to scavengers and go in the atmosphere eventually. It's part of the natural carbon cycle.
If their tech works and is deployed on industrial scale, we'd be ending up basically meddling with another extremely critical environmental process to fix our current meddling. The consumption of this biomass by scavengers on the forest floor literally releases a ton of nutrients locked up in this biomass which are extremely necessary for the next generation of plants. If we remove this biomass from forests, we are essentially leaching away the nutrients they need and eventually condemning that forest.
Fix an environmental disaster by proposing to create a much bigger, more direct, one. It's a genius way to swindle angel investors, that's for sure.
I’m assuming the IP and pending patents is making a lot of this video very vauge, unfortunately this also makes it seem much more like an advertisement as opposed to an informational video.
The Supercritical CO2 turbine wasn't their invention but funny enough they blurred it 😂
I love your videos, but I have no idea what is going on here. I can understand using waist biomass as fuel for a rocket engine, but how does that generate electricity? This is never explained, unless I missed it? So much of this video felt like a bunch of buzz words, I wish it was way more technical.
oils in the plants. Algae grows the fastest oils for fuel. I already did this in like 2011 brother, heh. You capture methane, methane is way better for fuel and abundant, plus 15-30x (studies claim) than co2.
Methane is a worse "greenhouse gas" anyone talking co2 is years and decades behind... heh
thanks for the headsup, i dont have to watch the remainder 10 mintues. the first three were painful, those buzzwords hurt my brain not giving any interesting information about the process itself how it works :(
They touched on it in passing. They generate electricity in a similar way that airplanes do, i.e, Using the some of the thrust generated by the rocket to spin a turbine which is connected to a shaft. Said shaft spins some magnets past a metal core, and generates electricity.
I agree, would love more specifics on the technical side the idea.
Cheers
I think what they might be doing here is using a pyrolysis reactor to create numerous products, one of which is syn-gas, others being bio char and oil. Some products can be used to produce electrical energy through a combustion cycle, while others like bio char and oil can used for carbon sequestration and to produce other products and materials that do not involve combustion.
Alright, I had to read the website but I think I'm starting to get it. Biomass like trees store a lot of carbon that gets released again as they decompose or if they burn in a forest fire. Their tech processes this biomass and some of the end products are heat and C02. They can fully capture this C02 and store it underground where it will turn to limestone. The heat they use for energy that gets sold to the grid.
I just honestly don't know how big of a problem biomass related C02 is. It seems like just burying the trees would have the same effect from a C02 sequestration perspective so I imagine they are planning on producing a fair bit of energy with their machinery.
The key is that they’re using biomass. Since the generator doesn’t release co2 (or atleast isnt supposed to) the co2 captured by that biomass remains captured while still producing energy. This incentivizes the growth and production of more and more biomass (trees,algae, whatever), sequestering even more co2, to be then sold to people with these generators to make energy. It also incentivizes people who already grow lots of biomass to buy their generators to generate power for profit or their own use, carbon negatively. If this were just using plain old gas, it would be carbon nuclear at best, but since the act of making this biomass fuel is carbon negative, the production of energy with that fuel is also carbon negative.
I don’t think they convert heat to energy (thermal power plant). They seem to be driving a turbine with the combusting gases, so it’s more like a high pressure gas power plant?
I’m guessing the gas that comes out is highly concentrated CO2 so maybe that’s why they figure it’ll be economic to store that carbon after they’ve burned the biomatter. I suppose the exhaust from coal and gas power plants have a lot of nitrogen in it that would have to be separated out first. But I’m not sure..
@@auspiciouslywild Makes sense
So they are creating a demand for deforestation, while taking away plans food (CO²)
Marketing this to big corporations who we already know care about profit over people, they admitted they are focusing on making it profitable to make it alluring to big companies.
I'm not sure I understand fully; so they're taking biomass, which already has captured CO2, and they spend a lot of energy to get CO2 and Water from it, where do they create energy? How is this carbon capture, if they are 'capturing' the carbon not from air, but from biomass that already has it 'captured'?
Exactly. The only exciting claim they make here is that it's carbon negative, and that's the one thing they don't talk about...
Yeah its complete BS, they just fooled the investors.
is sus, but the idea is that plants are grown for fuel, so growing the plants is the carbon capture. i really have no idea, but it seems like it would take an insane number of plants to make any appreciable amount of energy
@@PankajDoharey My first thought! I didn't want to say it, but look at the architecture and all the fancy decorations - there's a lot of money spent on making it look nice.
@@Gersbermshaha I love that there’s an assumption that if your deep tech company doesn’t look scrappy it’s less trustworthy. 😂
My original comment was deleted, but ill write something again because why not. The elephant in the room is how are they going to transport the billions of tons of Biomass to the facility with net negative co2? I struggle to understand how this could ever scale to be impactful in any meaningful way to the atmosphere.
@S3 Without showing us a clear end to end solution its difficult to give Arbor any crediblity except that they know how to make cool rocket engines to excite green investment funds.
Good question that we'll ask in a follow up episode
Why it was deleted?
@@Apollost yeah I thought it was my mistake at first but looks like a bunch of others had the same.. sounded like a YT thing. Kinda weird though
This was my first thought as well
This doesn’t make any sense. Where is the chemical equation that captures CO2?
Excess carbon in our air came from hydrocarbons turned into CO2. Plants ate the CO2 to build themselves. This process takes plants, turns them into energy, water, and CO2, and the CO2 is sequestered in depleted oil wells (back where it came from).
CH4 + 2O2 > CO2 + 2H2O
The video was mostly jargon. All because they’re afraid their investors would realise its just another biomass-to-electricity generator.
1 mile of atmosphere to space? Wot? 5280ft up is space?
That must not have been the SpaceX alum 😂
Wait, Biomass is carbon captured from the air. If you burn it you release that captured carbon back into the athmosphere. So how would this device capture any carbon? This makes no sense to me... Can someone explain?
I'm parking my comment here so I can also get the answer.
Think of biomass as solar stored energy.
@@Anonymousg64 That we get. The part we don't get is how is this different than just burning the biomass for energy.
@@asandax6 high-temperature, high-pressure gas is fully contained so it can convert the heat into electricity. hot gases are expanded through a gas turbine which then spins a generator to produce electrical power. The difference is efficiency and carbon capture advantage.
@@Anonymousg64this does not answer the question
1:25 1 mile between us and space? Anyone who’s flown on a budget airliner… is now officially an astronaut
Maybe he meant breathable air? That wouldn't be right either would it.
I think what they might be doing here is using a pyrolysis reactor to create numerous products, one of which is syn-gas, others being bio char and oil. Some products can be used to produce electrical energy through a combustion cycle, while others like bio char and oil can used for carbon sequestration and to produce other products and materials that do not involve combustion.
So they're taking a biomass gasifier and they're using it to run an Allam Cycle? Guess it makes sense that rocket engine tech applies here since it uses similar oxyfuel combustion. The only real challenge I can think of right now is supplying all the pure oxygen needed for combustion. Otherwise not a bad idea from what I can tell, I'm interested to see how this one goes.
Solar power as a source for hidrogen capture and oxygen as a by product
@@Apollost Isn't that inefficient
I'm always concerned when a company says something to the effect of, "If only we didn't have to comply with all of these regulations we could build these amazing world changing things." The regs are there for a reason, often because previously, someone else decided to build something big and they damaged a lot of things, and people, in the process.
garden trimmings are one good fuel source but a better one would be waste plastics. I know those are being worked on as well and some of these guys tech will cross over for sure so all this is exciting to see.
1 mile of air between us and space? Most commercial aircraft can fly above 40,000ft / 5280ft per mile = 7.5 miles
I suppose he thinks with density in mind.
Did I blink and not see the sequestration stage of the technology?
It's so fascinating how certain objects are able to build up & hold on to atmospheres. Separating the harshness of space & creating a thin layer that can allow unique things to take place. Gravity, density, pressure, static charges, friction, temperature differences, electromagnetic properties. All seem to play a role in this process of accumulating Atmospheres and other crucial processes throughout space. It's fascinating
Biomass? Pretty sure, biomass is the most inefficient way of transforming sunlight into energy.
But you forgot the carbon credit part, nuclear is great but the cost of approval, PR, regulation and waste is another factor
@@chriswilfridThe only reasonable thing in that list is cost. The rest are human-manufactured reasons. Waste is not much of an issue with the latest technology. Imagine letting the planet to to crap because of PR and regulation. Humans 🤦♂️
@@JM-st1le waste graveyard is an issue if nuclear want to be the major energy production. Laser down the waste are still a hype but practicality for scaling is another.
You would need great PR because anti-nuclear cult is still a thing. I believe it's safe but Nuclear aren't renewable.
I don't care about the co2 cc part so much but the energy side of this tech is impressive
If their tech works and is deployed on industrial scale, we'd be ending up basically meddling with another extremely critical environmental process to fix our current meddling. The consumption of this biomass by scavengers on the forest floor literally releases a ton of nutrients locked up in this biomass which are extremely necessary for the next generation of plants. If we remove this biomass from forests, we are essentially leaching away the nutrients they need and eventually condemning that forest.
Fix an environmental disaster by proposing to create a much bigger, more direct, one. It's a genius way to swindle angel investors, that's for sure.
Reminds me of a more end-to-end version of what Velocys has been trying to do for ages, with more focus on the efficiency of the generation tech and bringing CCS in-house. Hopefully it's less of a money pit.
There’s a few things I’m struggling with; number one gasification of biomass is the first step, but I don’t understand how you’re producing gas from a solid using only high-pressure and heat, at a specific velocity. Anybody can gasify something in a pressure cooker, but it takes time.
Number two if the objective is to produce a gas CO2 or whatever gas you’re trying to process why are you taking it from nature’s conversion of light photons and CO2? Perhaps just pull it directly from the atmosphere maybe that’s the goal? But then to recapture and store it…how. I’m not trying to be critical, but nature already does this almost perfectly. Take for instance, perennial grasses they absorb sunlight and CO2 at an extraordinary level and store it as a fibrous sucrose. That can be cut multiple times during a growing season. However, the loop on the other end of this process is that as the plant naturally decays it gives off almost all of the CO2 it absorbed, and this happens whether it’s burned or naturally decomposes.
So which part of this process takes CO2 away from the loop instead of simply changing the CO2 from one form to another and if states of matter, matter, then a gas to a solid is a condensed form that can be stored so gasify a solid does not sound like Storage or the condensing of a particular gas into a solid. Now, if we were using a byproduct CO2/carbon and turning it into carbon materials for manufacturing, then I could see the concentration of carbon into a solid form that is useful that does not decompose at the same rate as it’s sucrose counterpart.
I think they’re using the biomass for energy, then sequestering the CO2. The carbon in the plant is not released back into the atmosphere as CO2.
Oh youve done some "size reduction" to those wood chips. Very technical.
Not a fan of this video. Too many buzz words makes it feel so scammy. Like why are you calling it a rocket when it's just a burner. rockets propel things, this is just a fancy lighter.
This is probably the worst S3 video I've seen so far. Most of us watch these because we're interested in the new ideas. If the core idea isn't explained clearly, there is no point showing engineering footage or talking about the creators' experiences. Please make sure to fully answer the question of "what does this company do" in the future, rather than leaving it to be answered in the comments.
I didn't get how the CO2 will be sequestered ...
Basically, it's wood-gas which is cool, but requires a lot of energy and difficult byproducts. One common byproduct is tar, which is quite difficult to deal with. I wonder how they solved that problem.
sounds like bullshit
Love these videos!
Very good ❤
Solar powered robots could gather the feedstock for this process and clean forests making fires less likely and less destructive. The energy source here is extremely abundant and potentially a huge carbon capture source.
lol I’m so confused
They are making gas from biomass instead of waiting for it to happen naturally, and then designing their own jet turbine to burn that gas. The only way this is different than what we currently have is that it doesn't require an oil company...
Love the stuff guys keep up the amazing hard work
GL!
It’s like burning coal, but not as good. Like, probably quite a bit worse.
Amazing Arbor! This is very interesting in theory & seems to make sense. If the protcol works & in real life conditions & is effective with good efficiencies than Arbor has a winner here! I must thank & commend Arbor in its Research. Greetings from Madang, Papua New Guinea!
to my guess if I am correct they are trying to capture the gas emitted by the biomass in the atmosphere by channelling it via the chambers and pipes as they showed and pressurize to extract the water and CO2 whch was supposed to be released in atmosphere by extracting as much as possible.
But again, I am not sure that they must need to add energy in order to change the state from biomass to gas+water.So where are they getting from?
is this what they are trying to achieve? All I heard were fancy, complicated, jargon-laden words with no meaning whatsoever. Pretty much like how politicians speak.
So do they separate H20 and carbon by products and then sequester the CO2? How is the CO2 stored? Is there something about their high pressure process that makes the sequestration much easier than other carbon capture processes?
As always, love your work, keep it going. I apologize on behalf of all inquisitive engineers with our incessant questions.
I still have absolutely zero idea how this device "separates the CO2" from everything else, the core claim that makes it in any way different from simply any other biomass powered thing.
That Critical Drinker clip comes to mind - "I think I can smell shite" ".....yes, I can definitely smell shite".
1- hyper marketing jargon
2- ???
3- profit
Hook it to natural gas and get rid of the carbon capture part.
Looking good. hope it would come to fruitful outcome .
Heat Conversion to Energy - we want to Reduce the Heat at cycle End.
maybe it could be converted to KW.
Good Journey
What makes it vegan? I mean it’s just a renewable powered rocket engines.
Also, herb makes rocket fuel... iykyk, also Algae.
We have made fuel with hemp and algae for 10 years, my guy.. maybe only in Florida, 2 steps ahead as usual
How they are removing CO2 from atmosphere?
They are just capsuring the CO2 from exhust
It's not carbon negative, carbon nuetral instead
Impressive!
This technology can go so horribly wrong
How much co2 can be burned by carbon-negative systems before it has a negative impact upon humanity as a whole? What factors do you consider to influence the most?
Why?
Its not much different to a catalytic converter, the main difference I guess is that it requires an extremely powerful rocket?
badabing badaboom and we take co2 out of the atmosphere. ...viola.
The Supercritical CO2 turbine wasn't their invention, no need to blurred it. 😂
it seems that everyone who has prevoisuly worked at spacex or tesla is starting their own startups now, whats with that? i mean they all seem brillant i can see why space x and tesla manged to pull it off that well.
Tbh I don't see the difference with classical Biomasse reactors...
These things are just excuses to farm carbon credits.
The Biomasse has to source the carbon somewhere, sure.
But do you think a tree sources even 50% of its carbon mass from the atmosphere ?
Or could it be from the ground, increasing désertification?
i dont get it. What really this company make? i asumme in the chamber is a gas combustion from biosmass wich is most of the part CH4 or CH3 or less eficient gases. OK the biomas come with them? i mean they take all that mass to make extraction of gas in the midle of the fly? that make no sens. IF NOT, why you try mix this if already have eficient method on the ground making biocomposite gas extraction and rafination of CH4. Is a rocket company is raffinaery gas company? a mix of both.
The bubble is much worse than I thought
but if you are using plants to trap CO2 and then produce fuel from that, then combust that fuel, your just producing CO2, I mean if you could separate the CO from the syngas and have only hydrogen that's when it would be carbon negative but if you are burning carbon monoxide, in other words your doing nothing that carbon dioxide is still going back into the atmosphere, it really doesn't make sense that it would be carbon negative, unless the funds you receive from the energy production goes into planting more trees and buying more land to trap the CO2 but it cant be called carbon negative .
So they are building a Bryton cycle combustion engine (using biomass gasification) coupled with a Supercritical CO2 loop instead of a water/steam loop.
Nothing new here, this stuff has been going on for decades and the whole issues to solve are in the supercritical CO2 stage, not in the gasification/burning stage that is "old" tech....
I’m not an engineer but there is no way something that size is crating a mega watt of power
How many burners do you consider?
could this work for homes ?
who made this video? 3 minutes in and I have no idea what they're doing. lol.
🤣🤣🤣
wait what now
vegan engine, cleaning co2 from atmosphere by adding it from biomass
Not the most informative, I guess IP concerns were big here. If they’re having feed consistency issues and contamination issues they could look at dried algae as source of biomass
CO2 capture is the hard part to do cost effectively. Until that problem is improved, then the rest is just to get money from gullible investors
I don't get it
Well, this is a scam.... Particularly if they believe there is only one mile of air between us and space.
(Somebody should tell this to people in Denver so they can move to a lower elevation.)
1) Everything about this feels like a solution in search of a problem. When all you have is a rocket engine, the whole world looks like a combustion problem.
2) 10:05 This guy doesn't see the irony of declaring how important it is to avoid introducing unnecessary & inapplicable requirements & technology from other industries... while trying to apply rocket engines to climate change?
3) Maybe I'm reading way too much into it, but the whole terminology of "SynGas" rubs me the wrong way. I don't know if it's deliberate or coincidental but it sounds like "SIN gas", which aligns perfectly with the quasi-religious way eco-radicals have framed all our environmental issues not as PRAGMATIC resource & technological problems to be solved but as MORAL failings for us to repent and atone for: humans bad evil sinful, nature good innocent victim. SynthGas would have been much better.
At least pay for good CGI if youre gonna try to release such a lie to bring funding for your company man
The audio is very weird in this video... does anyone else hear it?
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Sounds like a scam company
Nice way to get money from "green" investment funds. Still a waste of engineer time though.
That's all most startups are anymore. Just a way to get funding.
The irony of stuff like this is that in 60 years our grandkids will look back at this time and think “They were so dumb. Plants need CO2 to survive. Why were they trying to pull it out of the atmosphere?”
Oh, and that CO2 is a lagging indicator of warming, not the driver of it.
And what is the source?
@@Apollost The source is the entire history of global temperature until the end of the Pleistocene.
Most graphs you see start there because it's convenient to start when temperatures were the coldest and CO2 the lowest in the recent past.
Climate change is real. But it isn't due to our CO2 contributions. In fact, the planet is greening as CO2 level increases. With that said, we shouldn't pollute. We should be good stewards of our environment. But the moment politics got a hold of Global Warming back in the 90's it ceased to be about environmental concerns and morphed into an avenue of control.
@@Apollost The source is every warming period in the history of our planet.
There's a reason most of the graphs you see start at the end of the Pleistocene. It's easier to say 'Look! Warming!' when you start the graph at the end of an ice age.
lol
Do noy buy 😂 my dad made a better version in the early 80's without all the complicated rubbish.
It seems on a surface level this is just some fancy grift?
Nothing they are doing appears truly novel, and their headline grabbing claims require some mental gymnastics and/or creative accounting?
I’d love to see more companies in this space actioning climate change mitigation, but frankly these guys are embarrassing at least, and potentially damaging to the cause.