Can Turning CO2 to Stone Help Save the Planet? | Out of Our Elements
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- čas přidán 19. 06. 2024
- Can we turn atmospheric carbon dioxide into stone?
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Spoiler Alert: carbon dioxide emissions are causing the planet to get warmer. But we may be able to use chemistry to solve this problem.
Out of Our Elements hosts Caitlin Saks and Arlo Pérez Esquivel, joined by NOVA Producer Alex Clark, investigate how the planet naturally turns CO2 into stone over long periods of time, and how scientists and engineers are trying to speed up this process in hopes of capturing and storing atmospheric CO2.
They’re joined by Cornell University Environmental Engineer Greeshma Gadikota, who illustrates how you can test out a small-scale form of carbon sequestration in your own home, and Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory’s Angela Slagle, who explains which places on Earth and the kinds of oceanic rocks that could play a role in scaling up CO2-to-stone transformation.
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I’m actually working on researching and constructing a more efficient version of this same reactive process. In Iceland they have actually trapped co2 in basalt rock. With the right catalyst we can rapidly increase the speed of the reaction. The key to this process is capturing the co2 that’s already in water.
Why not build the tubes that they dump co2 out into the air with out of this rock with filters over the end or something to turn it into rock as it leaves the factory?
@@rdizzy1 Scale most likely. In the video they're talking about finding the exact right geological locations to do this. To do what you're talking about you have to essentially create a basalt filter somewhere, transport that to CO2 emitting factories, install them capture the CO2, then transport them somewhere else to be stored. Remember they need two types of basalt to lock the CO2 in, so you would have to manufacture those to be filters. What you're describing sounds rather expensive and its only capturing the CO2 emitted from one location. What they want to do is capture it out of the atmosphere and pump it down into naturally formed locations that can act as a reserve.
@@JNArnold Yes, but then you force all the costs directly onto the companies at the source, rather than onto society to clean it up afterwards.
@@rdizzy1 First you transport the fuel to where it is burned, but now each 12 pounds of carbon is converted to 38 pounds of CO2 when it is burned and then you have to transport (I don't know how many) pounds of rock/reagent that is going to react with the CO2 to form a carbonate.....and you have to transport the newly formed carbonate somewhere to store or dump it.
@@pauleohl I'm not the one that would have to figure it out, fuck them, let them figure it out. Why do I care if they have to haul off millions of pounds of solidified co2 laden rock? I don't, not one bit. Let them find a solution on burying it as well so it doesn't turn back into a gas. Sink it to the bottom of the ocean.
I'm not a scientist (far from it, in fact) so my question may be a stupid one, but I find myself wondering if changing the composition of large swaths of the ocean floor could have unplanned or unforeseen consequences. Seemingly benign alterations can sometimes have profound effects.
I was wondering about the same thing. I'm in medicine, so also not an earth scientist, but almost every treatment has it's side effects. The difference here is that we don't have the luxury of large scale randomized controlled trials. We only have one earth, and its going into multi-organ failure :/
Definitely. We could probably engineer ourselves out of that problem too. However, the biggest issue that comes up over and over again is that maybe 1% of the population is concerned about these problems and is doing something about it while 99% continues to muck everything up by simply trying to survive and growing the population. This planet will eventually be uninhabitable or terribly painful to live on ; at least for humans.
i have a suspicion that injecting a lot of co2 into the ocean near cascadia, where a major quake has a good chance of occurring in the next few decades, might not be such a good idea...
There are no stupid questions and I also considered the possible consequences of this process. It may have unforeseen consequences in the future but it may be a 'required evil' that we create to avoid the current evil that we are going to endure. Just because we aren't 'scientists' doesn't mean that we can't introspective and relevant questions involving hypotheses. :)
@@thersten This planet is becoming painful to live on for other species faster than us. So painful that many have already succumbed to it and many are on their death bed. :-[
It would be wonderful if CO2 storage could become a reality, but I suspect it will always be more efficient to put resources into cutting emissions, at least for several decades. In other words, a dollar spent on cutting emissions will reduce CO2 levels several times more than the same dollar spent on CO2 storage.
it seems like theyd be willing to spend more money finding a way to keep carbon based energy than replacing it with green energy
Really, we need to do both (and the video briefly touches on this at around 10:00). Even if we stopped CO2 emissions today, warming will continue because of the warming effect is a feedback loop.
The immediate (and actually available) action to take is decrease use of fossil fuels in favour of renewable energy (I'd like to say nuclear as well, but these days fission reactors are hugely expensive and take years to build), but we will soon need to start capturing carbon both directly from the remaining emission sources as well as the atmosphere to return to pre-industrialisation (or even turn of the millennium) levels.
If you want to fight co2, just boycott China.
Why not just use wood as carbon capture and storage?!
@@montithered4741 because wood is not long term carbon storage. While trees absorb CO2 their entire lives (though mostly while young) as soon as they die they begin to decay and all of that CO2 gets released back into the atmosphere. Grass actually traps carbon since it is soil building, new layers of grass cover up old layers before they can decay and without much oxygen different bacteria break down the plants forming soils instead of releasing gaseous CO2
This is the kind of thing that makes me happy for studying geology.
Hopefully we focus on efficiency too.
Once big tech learns we can get rid of CO2, they'll not give a shit about how much they make.
you cant get rid of co2, this is about money
Chemistry fact: The amount of energy required to bond Carbon Dioxide to any other molecule is EQUAL to the amount of energy released when a molecule such as a Hydrocarbon is Oxidized in burning. Energy is required for the process. To be a practical process of capturing Carbon Dioxide, an energy source other than the one we use must be used.
The best youtube channel I have found on this subject is from Gordon McDowell. It has videos on Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors. They're a type of nuclear reactor that won't melt down, doesn't produce long-lived nuclear waste, is useless for making nuclear bombs, and is cheaper and safer to build and run.
@@eitkoml - You are a crusader from the molten salt thorium reactor community who is doing a selfless pitch because you have been convinced that this technology will save the planet. Like all nuclear power advocates they continue to assume that we have 20-30 years left to scale up their favorite reactor technology to a point where it can replace our long-time addiction to fossil fuel based energy sources. Such people tend to be utterly clueless regarding the following critiques and statements.
There are a couple of U.S. engineers that have launched a major campaign, using a variety of media outlets, to engage others in promoting their molten salt thorium reactor concept. Their aim is to get the federal government, and other investors, to finance the development of their project. They present a slanted story that tends to appeal to large numbers of folks that often have only a marginal understanding of nuclear issues. Their pitching has lasted for almost two decades with almost no results. I suggest you read the following articles to get a different perspective.
Thorium, Not The Nuclear Savior Claimed
www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=3101
Thorium Fuel - No Panacea for Nuclear Power
ieer.org/resource/energy-issues/thorium-fuel-panacea-nuclear-power
Thorium Fuel: No Panacea for Nuclear Power (fact sheet)
ieer.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/thorium2009factsheet.pdf
UN chief: World has less than 2 years to avoid 'runaway climate change'
thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/406291-un-chief-the-world-has-less-than-2-years-to-avoid-runaway-climate
UN Chief warns countries that the 'point of no return' on climate change is fast approaching
www.msn.com/en-gb/news/environment/un-chief-warns-countries-that-the-point-of-no-return-on-climate-change-is-fast-approaching/ar-BBXCJHl
UN warns that world risks becoming 'uninhabitable hell' for millions unless leaders take climate action
www.cnn.com/2020/10/13/world/un-natural-disasters-climate-intl-hnk/index.html
The planet is on a 'catastrophic' global warming path, UN report shows
www.cnn.com/2021/09/17/us/catastrophic-climate-change-un-report/index.html
Sorry, your explanation reveals that you don't have a strong academic background in the energetics of chemical reactions. It is true that to react the carbon, in CO2, to generate a hydrocarbon requires an input of energy that is about equal to when that hydrocarbon is burned, releasing the CO2 waste product back into the atmosphere.
There are other carbon reactions, with other elements and compounds that require significantly less energy input, or even result in a small energy output.
Those, promoting turning captured CO2 into hydrocarbon fuels and organic compounds, are doing a masterful job of scamming the vast mass of the public who have no training in chemical reaction energetics.
@@vernonbrechin4207 It still takes energy. We should spend more time Not using hydrocarbons to get Energy to begin with.
@@stevehunter6849 - Agreed.
As a long time fan of NOVA I love this site. Great subjects, great presentation and almost spell binding. I just hope you get more subscribers and fare well on CZcams.
Of course the planet has a solution to the problem - I mean all the carbon we're putting into the atmosphere came from geologic storage in the first place. The trouble is the planet takes hundreds of millions of years to do the job, and humans are a bit too impatient to wait that long.
It would certainly be nice if we could find a way to speed up carbon capture the same way we've sped up carbon release (relative to what the planet would do without our help), but entropy isn't our friend. Its a lot easier to take a concentrated source of carbon and let the wind spread it throughout the atmosphere than it is to take atmospheric carbon and "unspread" it back into a concentrated form just from a physics perspective, never mind the economics of it.
Ever tried getting spilled milk back in the glass? Also, you spilled it in a full bathtub and you don't really want to get any water in the glass with your milk. Now try again with a bathtub the size of the ocean wind/weather stirring things up constantly. Not an easy job to say the least. The only realistic option is to not spill your milk in the first place.
I have been waiting for a 3D printer to pull carbon out of the air and use them for free material for a decade now.
We need a carbon tax that directly affects producers and does not include loopholes and soft offsets. Until the true cost is tied to the source there won't be significant buy-in to remediation technologies.
Then no companies will set up in your country/state. Keep going.....
@@yureituesday if we continue ignoring the problem many states and countries will be devoured by the ocean.
@@yureituesday dont care, didn't ask plus the health of the planet is more important than the imaginary economy
@@yureituesday Sweden already has a very high CO2 price of 125€ but they also have lots of green energy for the companies to use instead because of the availability of lots of hydro power.
Germany on the other hand with lots of industrie and little room for renewables only has a CO2 price of 25€. So seems you thinking is right. But it also shows if there is lots of renewables available switching becomes possible.
+
Great video! Could we turn CO2 into stone on land, and then use that stone for construction as well ? It'd be awesome to build your house and know that it's carbon negative (or at least that the emissions were offset). It could be a great alternative to bricks, for instance, and you'd make sure the CO2 would be trapped definitely.
Like say marble?
@@UberAlphaSirus ooooh that would be so nice! I was thinking more in terms of bricks, or stone panels, but if you can make them look _that_ good...
@@ambergris5705 Thats the point, the planet already makes stuff with co2. Humans are not to blame. Blame nature. The only reason we have fossil fuels is because fungi couldn't figure out a way to eat it.
@@UberAlphaSirus China burns more coal than all countries combined. Humans are to blame.
CO2-3D printer? Think of the possibilities!
At the end of the day trees are still the best carbon trap.
How much rainforest can you save for the cost of carbon capture. How many trees can you plant in places that are warming up for the same money.
@@CHMichael Plantings trees is way cheaper than building an industrial complex to capture and pump carbon under the sea. Not to mention the cost and energy to maintain such a complex that produces nothing of use.
@@houayangthe3rd i would hope so. Im not a big fan of this thing they built in Iceland.
I think algae actually is and in some cases certain grasslands
No, at the end of the day that is a finite potential pool of sink and that sink rots and re-releases co2. You have to perpetually maintain a forest to keep a finite amount of co2 in a 'trap'. It is not a panacea.
Very nice video and very well explained... although Im a bit biased because my company works on this research.
CCS into basalt could really help with the negative emissions which are required to reach net zero. Locking the CO2 into basalt is a great permanent solution. We do still need to work-out how to do the CCS to scale and cheaply though
Net Zero will kill millions.
Creating a man-made sequestration of carbon would end all life on earth because all photosynthesis would end with the death of the plants. Darth Vader, eat your heart out.
10:05 is one of the most chilling question-and-answer exchanges I've heard in my life, given what's at stake.
Eventually you always get to human greed being the problem
Hey, thats capitalism for you!
Co2 in that case could be used as a building material. Stone countertops are all the rage. If we could learn how to grow rock then we have a bingo Yahtzee moment. Calcite can form quite easily. Crystal spire might even become a thing. It could stop excisive extraction of rock. Might even help clean away volcanic disaster zones. If basalt is the main component. I could even seen bone replacements becoming a thing.
A really novel concept has recently been proposed. It’s called planting more trees.
unfortunately we could never plant enough, and they have a bad habit of catching fire anyway especially in these times we live in.
It's been pointed out that trees are a long term solution not a short one. It takes well over 20-30 years before the trees(and a big forest) starts to reduce the co2. Let's be honest for a second, we cut down far more trees than we plant. We need space for farms and new housing to meet up with the huge population increase. Wouldn't it be easier to just fix the *real* problem instead of these band aid solutions? This planet can't handle the human population growth. It's literally out of control. Measures need to be taken before it's too late.
@@huldu mother nature will soon be taking care of the whole overpopulation thing,
the issue with co2 capture is the o2 part, this was the failure biosphere where co2 was trapped in the concrete depleting o2 levels over time. if we want to do this is reduce the o2 to elemental carbon and release o2 back into the atm. any other way where o2 is trapped will be tragic.
Is there a way to make that CO2 into concrete type of material ? The fastest way to get rid of it , it’s to make a profit ?
Wood for construction.
@@montithered4741 ... read question pls
CO2 can be injected into concrete without significant loss in performance or increase in cost.
Yes it is being done, they are waiting to go public. New tech just in this decade. It works.
This is such an informative well put together awesome video I just can't get enough of it. Great work guys 💯💯🧠💪
Driving life on Earth to extinction is great work?
I know this is going to sound dumb - but how efficient are processes like this vs just growing trees, chopping them down, and sequestering them underground where we would put the manually captured co2?
just go all nuclear you want to chop down trees and bury them? WTF? what a waste of wood!
@@blakespower I agree with the nuclear point.. I didnt say it was a good idea to do the tree thing - was just wondering about wanted to know about the efficiency of doing it through trees to use as a benchmark while watching the video.. hence why I started my comment with a disclaimer
Pumping co2 into sea floor underground sounds like the co2 will escape and just make the ocean more acidic
It is pumped into the porous basalt layer and is trapped there by the denser basalt layer above while it chemically binds to the basalt, locking it in place for good.
Only IF the CO2 does not chemically interact at all until it gets to the ocean water. But that is what is happening already.
2:10 "Chemistry can actually work in our favour."
You don't say! Who gave you the idea it doesn't in the first place?
Whoa. Maybe the Cascadia subduction zone isn't the best location to experiment due to the dangers of fault rupture earthquake. Something like a 8.0 earthquake waiting to happen there with tsunami included
Just came from pbs eons explaining that carbon cycle from their snowball earth episode. This is lit
I feel like filtering the émissions from heavy sources like thermal power plants would already go a long way to reducing our current output. I imagine that it would be expensive to source that much calcium hydroxide but it could be subsidized by a carbon tax.
I keep thinking why would they have carbon extraction plants in rural areas. Shouldn't they be near cities to limit the rate of pollution?
I probably am missing a lot of key information but this is hopeful thinking.
carbon tax? so give rich people more money to do nothing?
It's funny how you didn't provide any figures.
How much CO2 can this tech reasonably capture and at what cost? I'm betting it's an insignificant amount at a huge cost (when scaled up).
Reforestation projects are probably just as useless at capturing CO2, but at least they're cheap and have other highly desirable benefits.
Perhaps this tech has potential for some specific applications, but the emission problem will only be tackled by switching to renewables + new nuclear tech.
8:31 Hundreds to thousands of years of CO2 emissions. They just need to figure out how to make it cheaper.
This is a great idea but we have to ensure the entire process of removing co2 from the atmosphere does not procuce co2 being put into the atmosphere from the energy sources used to run the blowers that pump co2 into the ocean floor.
Case in point: The current problem with nuclear fusion is that it currently takes more energy to fuse hydrogen atoms together than the energy released by the fusion.
can the basalt rock react with carbonic acid as well? (re: ocean acidification from increased CO2 in the atmosphere)
When Earth was at its most productive in creating life, millions of years ago, the CO2 content of the atmosphere was over 4,000 ppm. Waiting for a yahtzee moment....
As an example, lime is good, but I would like to remind people:
To make lime, you need to fire limestone to drive off the CO2, the process produces an increase in CO2 production.
Also, sea creatures, don't make they skeletons from lime water, lime loves to react with other acids to produce water and calcium salts. In fact a common source of calcium for sea creatures is calcium bicarbonate, by driving off a bicarbonate group they produce calcium carbonate, water and carbon dioxide.
As for using basalt beds to absorb carbon dioxide, I would have to see the numbers before considering it. Not to mention if the carbon dioxide was to leak out of the basalt beds or rapidly reaction with compounds in the water, you'll likely cause an event similar to Lake Nyos where millions of animals suffocated to death due to a mass eruption of CO2 from a deep lake bed.
It all feels like long shots here, nothing concrete, I am still going to be betting on algae based polymers as the best solution.
Check out the mantle rocks in Oman. There was a big areas about it in the July issue of Scientific American. Same idea as the basalt but potentially higher scale, and on land.
lime water is actually called lemonade. It's a thing. I had a lime tree back in texas. And yeah lime is good. It was the good kind, not the one that gives giant limes and no juice.
This and other forms of carbon sequestration are very unlikely to scale even close to what is needed to make a meaningful contribution. The tone of this presentation is very hopeful, which I understand is attractive, but it is also fairly misleading.
The first statement of this video should have been something like: "The method described here is a tiny part of the puzzle to combat human CO2 emissions, it will not by itself make an appreciable impact on the effects of global warming, and can also not be maintained for anything above a short-to-medium timeframe."
Yes, and we need all the hope. We need every method we can, but it shouldn't be an excuse not to reduce/eliminate co2 emissions from everything we do daily. We need all of the options for our grandkids to be able to habitat this earth.
They basically say all that at the end of the video
I never understood this argument. The scale of fossil fuel production today is unbelievable. Humans are absolutely capable of doing carbon removal on a industrial planetary scale if they wanted to. And a livable planet seems like a pretty good incentive.
I think there is a very real possibility of some places requiring some form of carbon capture in individual buildings as it starts to effect cognition/productivity, but I agree it would only be a very small part of what is needed. The only way it becomes significant is if one of the methods discovered could be utilized itself in some industrial process with capturing CO2 as a byproduct.
C02 is not a pollutant. It is necessary for plants to live and create oxygen for us. As C02 levels increase, the amount plants intake increases and the amount of O2 they output increases. The planet in not “warming” but rather has been fairly stable over the past century. As someone who lives in a coastal city, the sea levels are not rising without falling. There is this thing called tides just like the climate there are large systems that self balance and govern those natural cycle.
I think the key is doing something useful with sequestered CO2. A better approach may be making construction materials out of this mineralization. Could we make these rocks in forms that could be used and recycled?
Limestone and marble have been used for millennia. Most of the construction in our cities and highways, bridges, sidewalks is concrete.
LOL @ her pretending she doesn't know what the mid-atlantic rift is ;)
The idea of emitting CO2 in one place, letting it spread into the atmosphere, then trying to filter it from the air somewhere else is silly. It is many times more efficient (maybe hundreds of times more) to capture carbon at the source (eg the factory chimney). Read a book, PBS.
I thought the same thing. Why dont they build carbon extraction plants that exist near cities.
My Dumb analogy. but wouldnt it be like a putting napkin on a spill to keep it from spreading
Well they do that as much as possible already, thats what carbon filters in the chimney's do. 50 years ago the CO2 output of 1 coal power plant was worse than we now get from 10 power plants. They cant increase that filtration unless they start adding methods that are still being researched, like the limewater setup. It could definetly help, but it wouldn't capture 100%. Also there are things like cars and forest fires and mammals breathing that increase CO2 levels, so we would still need to capture it at the current rates.
And you can't just capture it anywhere either. The people that are actually doing the work on this are looking at basalt formations. There aren't any of those within a 1000 kilometers of my nearest coal power plant. Read a book glenn.
Cruise ships are a significant source as well.
Greeshma is funny to me as we once called cell phones "grease machines" and when we wanted someone to text us we'd say "grease me"
I’m teaching my body to make a Co2 exoskeleton body armor. Just like the fishies. Just doing my part.
Have some faith in the topics you're covering, there's genuinely interesting information here that lots of people like learning about, you don't need to try and get people to watch with excessive editing and gimmicks
the fact that caitlin can be so bubbly and expressive while pregnant with a baby is insanely impressive, im the oldest of seven and every time my mom was pregnant it was all she could do just to stay out of bed, making those suckers takes a lot of work!
So basically if we can strip the hydrogen ions out of the ocean water to prevent it from acidifying while CO2 is being added, the calcium in the water will naturally react with the carbon and settle out... Pulling magnesium out of the ocean water would help too, because it tends to slow down this reaction. But there is a disproportionately huge amount of magnesium in the ocean so probably not... And there reality isn't any easy method of adding more OH- to bond to the H+ in significant enough quantities to matter.
Coral and foraminifera do it for free!
You can also use that stone mixed with the hempkrete compounds and build houses from fireproof material. Hemp is a remover of 5x the carbon as most plants and if you grow it down the freeways and around factories and airports then use it to replace the fuel with bio fuel for the vehicles then we will remove all the carbon. Especially if we swap out diesal for hemp bio diesal
Removing ppm of CO2 mechanically after it has already been released into the atmosphere is the worst possible option for reducing global warming, but if we don't act faster to reduce the amount of CO2 released in the first place, it may be necessary. Even removing concentrated CO2 at point sources such as power plants or cement and steel manufacturing is not a very good option. We need to develop new processes for these necessary industries that produce much less CO2.
plants need co2 and we arent even close to levels of the Dino age
The energy needed to remove it from the atmosphere is equal or greater to the energy it released, when burning it. Good luck, i hope fusion power is coming soon.
How would all of these conversion processes affect sea life in the long run? I know the oceans are in crisis already and something has to be done. Just wondering.
Where do we get all the lime water from and how much energy (and co2) do we release making it/finding it.
I think this is super interesting, but aren't these rocks also fundamental to the ecosystems they're a part of? I can imagine that tiny organisms use the holes in these rocks to rest, lay eggs, forage etc.
Those animals will become extinct if bonehead pseudoscience types successfully capture carbon.
There are some hilariously bad takes in the comments, mostly framed as "this video isn't about my favorite energy solution! This is why X thingy is more interesting/important that what's in the video!!11!!"
My dudes, why would you not take every approach available? Why do you feel the need to poop on something that doesn't effect your pet thing? Your thing is more threatened by political incompetence (mostly from the right, if we're being real) than anything else.
It seems to be an inherent human trait to think that answers need to be "this" or "that" rather than "some of this" and "some of that".
Yes. The video series I've seen on this eg _Real Engineering_ (ongoing) and very recently _physics girl_ both come to this conclusion: If anything is going to work it's likely to be a combination of approaches.
Most importantly, this process use must not effect any wild or sea life
Rather than store this stone, why not build with it? Roads, bridges, skyscrapers, houses - anywhere cement is used? Wouldn't this negate the effects of cement? Even when cement/bricks are wrecked, it's not like they are completely pulverised, they usually crack into chunks with only a relatively little bit of dust. Just a thought and an honest question.
It absolutely would go into "new concrete". While we are not going to take down every building on the earth, anything new that might go up would be a decarbonated concrete.
This is SO cool. The things we can do with science are amazing.
It is a fun technology, (and I expect that the fossil fuel industries are going to be the most keen for it, as an excuse to continue to exist.)
@1:10 hate the way that was phrased. Every vote always matters
I really hope this can work out ! Brilliant
I’m hopeful, but still want to know about the possible effects this could have on the ocean, as others have mentioned.
I don't know how you can willingly bring a new child into all this when you KNOW the direction the world is going.
I don't think many even know. Or at least it's not real to them because no one can see what 100 years from now will be like. And even if they think they know, they're too busy trying to put food on the table and pay their mortgage.
@HunterBidensCrackPipe speaking of hysterical idiots....your username. 🤔
Doesn't it require water to do that? Why can't we just replant native plants in their areas, then increase other capture methods that don't use any water.
British water is quite hard in many areas and there is a problem with limescale in water pipes,. This substance builds up over the years. it is a white brittle substance. You can see every day in your electic kettle.
I'm very new to this subject. Would it be possible to somehow introduce carbon into cement - one of our worst polluters - to sequester carbon, or would that cause the cement to crumble?
Wouldn't it be nice if the petroleum industry was required to convert some of their off shore rigs to carbon sequestration to off set the carbon their products create?
What is cement? Major component of cement is carbonate!
"There's one chemical causing this planet problems..."
Didn't say Testosterone.
@HunterBidensCrackPipe you are so mad lol, you literally comment everywhere insulting
@HunterBidensCrackPipe NOPE
Theoretically possible, but highly impractical. End of story.
Right.. This seems like a recipe for unforseen side effects. If somehow the carbon leaks into the ocean it will probably increase the oceans acidity and cause even further problems. Why not just stick with the solution of pumping CO2 through lime water and filtering out the particles to make bricks with which we can actually build things? This would create a positive feedback loop and lower the cost of carbon sequestration.
Kalkwasser also used by reef aquarium keepers to supply usable calcium to reef corals
"If you lived on planet earth in the past few decides..." As an alien I only been to earth only once and it was to show you all how to building pyramids.
No one presents any hard numbers, much less an energy budget. This is just one more bubble-brained fantasy. :(
C'mon, PBS! How about some actual critical JOURNALISM for a change?
I mean a lot of the CO2 in the atmosphere literally WAS rock in the form of coal and oil shale. So putting it back in the ground just makes sense.
This is a cool idea, but I have three concerns:
1. How do you transport CO2 down to the ocean floor?
2. How do you keep the CO2 down there for 2+ years?
3. What sort of unintended consequences could arise from turning the ocean floor (especially active fault zones) into massive carbon sinks?
Why fix the problem when you can fight the symptoms? This is the same level of mindless activism as tree planting. I wish people would stop falling for those con artists and instead finally embrace the fact that there is no easy way out of this mess unless we start moving away from an economy model that is utterly unsustainable.
Except this makes it sustainable. Not to mention there are plenty of technologies on the way that will help fix it as well. It's all a product of the same science that caused the issue in the first place. Are we all supposed to just go back to living like they did pre-industrial age? "moving away" means telling people not to act like humans: not to reproduce, or invent, or explore. Get over yourself just a little bit.
Even if we stopped right now we are going to be seeing the effects of climate change for decades. It's not as simple as just stopping carbon emissions,it's a multi pronged approach.
@@selfhelpkb except it's not so dire and apocalyptic as they want you to believe (not yet anyway). are we contributing? sure. but there are plenty of knowledgeable scientists who disagree with the predictive models. most of the studies show possible ranges but all everyone talks about is the not necessarily likely doomsday scenarios
So you’re against trees? Genius
@@yureituesday I am against mindless activism after which people pad each others shoulders like they just saved the world. Activists planting a billion trees does nothing if 15 billion trees are cut down per year. The idea that doing something good once in a while cancels out all the negative impacts of your lifestyle is... amusing.
People need to change before those things start to matter otherwise it is just mindless activism done by obnoxious people.
Dilbert already did this. He made a device that takes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turns it into building materials.
Asok said he built a tree.
Keep in mind that the Juan del Fuca plate is subducting under the North American Plate which is moving SWrdly. This is a convergent zone which has given rise to that part of the Ring of Fire in the NW coast.
Around the Pacific!
Have reviewed this technology & it is effective. The application to the concrete industry would not penalize the populate or other industries. We can take it out right there.
Now, I wonder what would happen if you scaled up the lime water experiment...like if you pumped a car's exhaust pipe into a tank of lime water. The tank could have a decent sifter/filter to take the car's solid emissions from the water.
It seems we don't have a CO2 problem as much as we have a human problem.
Read up on ADM's Carbon Capture program that over 11 years has captured about 4 million lbs of CO2, and net of construction of the site, has captured about 1.5 million tonnes. In terms of the money spent on the system (~$300 million) it has cost ~$200 million per million tonnes of net CO2 stored (total stored - CO2 produced to make the plant). And this is one of the "success stories", whereas 80% of all of carbon capture projects close within 5 years without hitting their goals.
Just seems to me that taking a currently comparatively 'fluid' element like the current seafloor, applying a process that makes it more solid, it thus becomes more robust in resisting motion, thus creating a pressure backlog that will seek the nearest weak point. Which could make for radical alteration in weather patterns. So, er what were we trying to solve? Oh yes, radical changes in weather patterns. I echo the sentiments throughout this chat - why not simply produce less waste, consume less, build for efficiency, educate and enable smarter behaviours and technologies etc....
Cascadia Basin???? Thats my FAVORITE oceanic basin!!!!
Regarding the Cascadia Basin- isn't this area overdue for a mega-earthquake? If we start messing with that, couldn't we be provoking that?
9:54 I like the exhaust pipes on the ship
I think it's the biomimicry potential. Maybe there's a way to artificially select a marine biome that processes co2 into calcium or sand. Maybe even a lifeform that uses lots of the solid compost in their life cycle.
Unfortunately not how this works. corals and shellfish release CO2 into the atmosphere as they build their shells. It has to do with the change in alkalinity of the seawater.
Ca+ +2HCO3- --> CaCO3 + CO2 +H2O
Like coral for instance? Foraminifera?
Nice map of the ocean floor. Where the golds at?
A cool way of making a new building material.
Turn it into coccolithophore shells and make biodiesel at the same time.
Cleans for itself and pays for itself.
Biodiesel works. Try getting media attention that this is a workable fix to trucks & buses & not having to punish the rest of us.
Good luck with that conversion. It's a monumental task, the administrative & project costs are significantly high, and it is a time-consuming endeavor, however, with no or little efforts we face a world of trouble.
Let me point out a difference between 3 entities of people on issues like this. The media thinks that no bad ramiifications exist. The enviros just don't view them. Scientists have to consider both. You can't turn the seafloor into hard rock. However, there is a new concrete out that is decarbonated & has as 2ndry product synthetic limestone. Limestone, provides lime for soils & is still used as filler material for roads, buildings, etc.
Ideas presented in reports such as these discuss ways of removing CO2 and "storing it away" all the while ignoring the same technologies' economic potential: Here they are talking about how carbon dioxide can be swiftly converted into stone through a simple chemical process when one of the primary producers of the greenhouse gas is cement production. Obviously natural limestone will not replace concrete in all applications, but there would definitely be some uses.
That'll take care of the issue with hard water in many regions that use well water.
What about taking hugely-emitting industries like cement manufacturing, moving them closer to these basalt ridges, and injecting the carbon emissions taken from the smoke stacks. And using the excess heat to make steam that generates the power for the injection.
Can it be used in the colonization of Mars or in terraforming? What are the uses for it? We need to reduce it but where would you store it and what is the shelf life?
I needed this hopium.
Carbon capture works & can create new products. Storage a bit trickier. You would want to put it back into empty voids, but you would not want to situate it near fault lines.
Woody plants invented the first natural process to capture carbon. Coral, diatoms and arthropods invented a way to remove carbon by creating skeletons that used carbon to make chitin. The Great Barrier Reef and the White Cliffs of Dover were formed near fault lines.
but what is the effect on our oceans and soils when we solidify this carbon. obviously its urgent we remove it from the atmosphere but have the side effects been studied and weighed?
Where can we get the CO2 capture filter? The farmer may try to capture the CO2 and release it in their farm which may help to improve the green product.
In making things out of resin , or resin and wood, it's not unusual to use a vacuum or pressure to assist the curing process. What would happen if you put the breathed in lime water in either or both of those?
How do you talk about this topic without going into the energy cost of sequestration? Poor people could not starve if they ate wagyu beef. But with what money? But with what carbon free energy source?
I worked for a government utility for decades as a chemist and believe that an interim energy solution is Thorium fission reactors. I am aware that nuclear power has many problems like storage of nuclear waste but Thorium fission reactors are much safer then Uranium fission reactors that rely on high pressure cooling water. The problem with the energy business is making money with little concern for environmental consequences. The warming of the atmosphere is creating weather problems that can effect food production. I point out the extended Southwest US drought which effects plant growth and meat production as well as other areas of the world that have had historic flooding. I like idea of removing CO2 from the atmosphere but, no one wants to pay at this time.
The sequestration needs a profit motivation to happen. So, what do we exploit in this process?
Ultimately the market decides, at what cost, and can we use the co2rocks for construction, etc.,
what if we just grind up the basaltic rock we already have, suspend it in a mildly acidic solution of water and then pump carbon dioxide from the air into it? would that work similiar to how the lime water demonstration did?
It’s a matter of energy efficiency. It takes lots of energy to dig up and crush rock. Lots of extra resources.
It’s just cheaper to pump where rock already is.
ok so if calcium carbonite (CaCO3) is being used to capture and store isnt that more of a oxygen capture program like your getting 1 carbon for 3 oxygen captured and we kinda need oxygen?
Not a problem. Even storing all the carbon in the atmosphere as carbonate minerals isn't going to put much of a dent in the amount of oxygen that remains for us to breath.
The simple capture of turning it into useable limestone or biochar should get enough market play that it would not be necessary to put all the carbon back into rock reservoirs.
I've looked into idea CO2 ppm levels for plants and 400ppm seems to be the ideal amount. There are varying readings as to what we are currently at also. I've seen some reports saying as high as 430 and some around 380. The difference is most likely caused by where those readings were taken and at what time of day and year, active volcanoes, and a million other factors that simply cannot be fully accounted for. Either way we seem to have a CO2 level that is currently ideal for the growth of plants and saying that 410 is getting high is misleading and factually false. Basically as it stands right now if we reduce the CO2 levels in the atmosphere it will reduce the amount of photosynthesis that plants are capable of therefor reducing the amount of CO2 that is naturally absorbed globally.
Wrong. Plants can utilize up to 1500 ppm of CO2, because CO2 levels were once at this level during jungle earth, after many volcanic episodes. Cannabis growers routinely enrich indoor grow rooms to this level for optimal flower size and density. This video is a blatant lie. CO2 routinely sits at 420-500 ppm and has for decades. What a joke. Also, growers obviously work safely and have no ill effects in this environment. The co2 myth is about money and controlling people and all living things.
@@truthseeker8123 Yes the papers I read did say plants can handle and even do significantly better with CO2 being much higher than 400 ppm. They said possibly even up to 2000 ppm for some plants. However 400 ppm being the "ideal" as it's not too low for plants to grow well and not too high to cause various other issues. Many plants at 1500 ppm may grow but may not grow well, where some may grow fantastically. I look at it this way, the higher the CO2 goes the faster plants absorb it, and the lower it goes the slower they absorb it. So most likely 400 ppm is where it is currently balanced at with our current biomass levels.
@@Kevin-ol5gr that is still incorrect. Plants will grow to their highest limiting factor. Light, C02, nutrient availability, water. They all can utilize 1500ppm depending on the other limiting factors, depending on which is lowest. Optimum as you put it is 1500 ppm. No toxicity is achieved, but since plants don’t have a diaphragm to move air in their stomata, they depend on diffusion and wind. The higher the co2 ppm, the easier the gas exchange becomes for them. Getting the other limiting factors met is a much different issue. I’m telling you, co2 levels as promulgated by lefty environment people is total scientific garbage. It’s a way to tax and control all carbon based life. That’s it.
@@truthseeker8123 I'm getting the impression that we agree on we're trying to argue the same points here and are in full agreement but you keep on telling me I'm wrong and I can't figure out what you think I'm wrong about. Now I won't try to say I'm an expert on plants and atmosphere but I would say with what I've read I have a decent grasp on the way the two interact. But either way current CO2 levels are not high and certainly nowhere near dangerous.
@@Kevin-ol5gr agreed. I have considerable experience in co2 enrichment. There is no optimum for today’s biomass. There is only the limiting factors that all living plants evolved to handle in the past. The idea of co2 as a problem is a fallacy. Obviously I’m not advocating pollution or environmental destruction. I’m saying other factors are the deciding factors. The co2 issue isn’t even a discussion, it’s a blatant lie.
i hope it doesnt effect the plates and earthquakes like fracking does or needs clean water to run
We need every tool we can get our hands on. Carbon capture technology is one of those tools but, we have to realize that technology can only take us so far in a short amount of time. Instead of fully relying on technologies, we also have to realize that as a society we have to change too.
Some promising, but elusive technology.
Thanks for the report.