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447 points Brajeshwar | 3 comments | 03 Sep 23 14:53 UTC | HN request time: 0.738s | source
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alexchamberlain ◴[03 Sep 23 17:11 UTC] No.37372056[source]▶
I'm starting to wonder whether the conventional wisdom of reducing carbon emissions in favour of more electricalisation is really solving the actual problem. As is often pointed out on HN, electrical cars are substantially heavier than their fossil fueled alternatives, and generate other pollution along the way. Furthermore, we're digging our lithium brines from the environment, without really understanding what all this lithium will do once it's leached out into the environment or what impact the mines themselves will have.

With the recent advances of turning CO2 into other substances, such as propane, should we be focusing more on closing the carbon cycle and simply be producing fossil fuels from the waste products of yesteryear?

Naively, it feels like we understand C, O and H, better than we understand some of the rare metals we're now introducing in the name of climate change.

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1. MattGaiser ◴[03 Sep 23 17:53 UTC] No.37372513[source]▶
> simply be producing fossil fuels from the waste products of yesteryear?

Capturing CO2 and converting CO2 to fuel requires putting the energy back into the molecules somehow. That requires a ton of energy. So either way don't we need to solve electrification?

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2. adrian_b ◴[03 Sep 23 18:49 UTC] No.37373144[source]▶
If capturing CO2 would be done at large scale, obviously it would be done using solar energy, like the plants, or wind energy.

So solar or wind energy is a prerequisite for CO2 capture, followed by the separation from air by physical or chemical means, followed by the reduction to hydrocarbons, either by direct electrolysis or by using hydrogen obtained by water electrolysis.

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3. alexchamberlain ◴[03 Sep 23 19:34 UTC] No.37373587[source]▶
If I'm reading the literature correctly, there are plenty of industrial processes producing streams of CO2, such as concrete manufacturer, that wouldn't even require separating the CO2 from "raw" air per se. At least the initial success of any electrolysis will probably be as a bolt on to these processes, to reduce their CO2 output IMHO.