- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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So they take CO2 from the atmosphere and chemically transform it into solid materials that reduce greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere?
Congratulations you have invented plants.
I think microbes are probably a lot easier, faster, and more cost effective to produce compared to plants. It can survive in harsh conditions and create rock from the C02 at a fast rate according to the article.
Not only that, but they believe the active enzymes in the microbe can be optimized and engineered, then mixed into a liquid substrate. Becomes an enzyme-based CO2 filter with the byproduct of Calcium Carbonate, which can be used in concrete. The article talks about filling trucks with these and passing the emissions of coal-fired power plants through them.
That would be an incredible innovation. You don’t have to stop at coal either, it’s just the dirtiest. Nat gas, trash, oil, wood and anything else burned on a huge scale could be curbed.
Yep, you could even pepper the interstate highways of America with them and just let them passively eat the CO2 particles that cars are putting out.
What about all the farting that cows do?
The trouble with cow farts is the methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas that eventually turns back into CO2 in the atmosphere anyway. Concentrated methane sources tend to either be captured for use as fuel, or flared with a burning flame to reduce the greenhouse effect (at which point carbon sequestering might work). Less concentrated sources, like livestock farts, can’t really be dealr with in the same way.
That’s methane. And it’s mostly from their poop, not farting.
It’s a disaster. And that industru is also a major cause of deforestation.
We have to stop buying meat.
Well that would be a disaster
A bigger disaster than dumping it into the atmosphere?
A bigger disaster than shutting down all fossil fuel based power plants yesterday
Based on what
IPCC reports
Where
Weeks instead of years. Could be big for assisting in the fight against climate change.
I had figured space flight. Either way, I guess.
Being able to teraform is huge on earth and abroad. Cool stuff either way.
The downside of that kind of stuff is that you need a balance. Scrub too much CO2 and it’s trouble again.
Great, in 50 years we’ll be desperately switching back to fossil fuels to prevent an ice age.
If we can get atmospheric CO2 back down to where it was 100 years ago that would be an amazing problem to have.
Look up the Oxygen Catastropy, also called Oxygen Holocaust.
That’s what happens if too much carbon is removed from the atmosphere and thus there’s too much oxygen in it.
It sounds like you have no idea the magnitudes involved, or the timelines. You’re talking about something that took place over a period of 400 million years and whose effects (the presence of oxygen in our atmosphere and our oceans) remain. There’s no chance that geoengineering would change the oxygen levels to anything we can’t handle, and if it starts to head down that direction we can easily handle it (just stop the processes that would sequester carbon).
It’s like being worried that your air conditioning is going to freeze your pipes in the house, in the middle of summer.
I mean, we are currently doing geoengineering on a planetary scale that change CO2 levels to something we can’t handle.
Plants eventually decompose, releasing the CO2. Rock generally doesn’t have that problem
Plants eventually decompose
On the scale of hundreds of years, thousands for some trees, tens of thousands plus if you sink fast growing trees deep in a cold sea. It is a thoroughly proven technology. If deployed at scale likely good enough to get us over the the hump to a renewables based technology without frying the Earth.
The problem is it’s not actually profitable (pretty cheap though) like the tech in OP’s article with patents and income streams (but only for fossil fuel energy generation). You’d think survival would be adequate motivation, but no.
More power to the people making this tech, everything is welcome, but if they’re going to lock it behind patents for 20 years it’s unlikely to be what is needed now.
Read the article. They’re hoping to mass manufacture the enzymes involved, which have the following advantages over carbon capture through plant life:
- Can work in much harsher environments, with higher operating temperatures, pressures, and acidity.
- Captures the carbon in calcium carbonate, which is more stable in retaining the carbon compared to decomposing plant matter.
- Works much faster than plants do
Sounds like you want a peat bog
If they could create a plant that fits on a truck and can remove a ton of carbon a day then they’d have another crazy invention on their hands, this just does it and creates rock … damn.
The plants then die and release that CO2
Turning it into a mineral means it won’t just be released
It reminds me of Prototaxites.
“that essentially eat carbon dioxide gas (CO2) and turn it into rock at an incredibly fast rate.”
ETA to new construction method in 3-2-1…
“Twenty years from now…”
Bacteria grow on ants and fix atmospheric carbon to make a tough armor.
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.01.21.700952v1.full
That’s really cool
I agree, but does that really inform proper carbon sequestration to combat climate change? It feels a bit like a stretch to make such a connection so early in a discovery/analysis.
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I wonder if it could be feasible to take the CO2 emissions from incinerated landfill.
Empty the landfills, burn the waste, generate electricity and eat all the carbon emissions. No idea if it’s feasible in the future but it sure would be an incredible advancement.
So reading through they think it can be used to eventually make huge filters they can use for coal plants and stuff like that.
If true this could be like whatever it was they found in Project Hail Mary that ends up saving the human race.
I sure hope so. I work in electricity generation (not coal) and I see this being potentially massive for all fuel types. Depending on if/how it can be scaled. Combined cycle was huge for emissions reduction. But this could be a completely new level if we can reduce to zero/near zero and have a useful byproduct.
Uh, that would kill amost all life on earth, if it was an excuse to keep burning coal
The thing about the burning coal that’s actually threatening the life right now is mostly just the carbon
Nah, it’s all greenhouse gasses.
Not to mention extremely harmful practice of extracting it from the ground.
Fortunately we have plenty of renewable energy to replace it
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas
Yes. One of many
So how exactly do you figure implementing carbon capture tech would kill all life on earth?
So dense lol
