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MIT engineers make converting CO2 into useful products more practical

(news.mit.edu)
173 points rbanffy | 3 comments | 13 Nov 24 15:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.875s | source
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mchannon ◴[13 Nov 24 16:27 UTC] No.42127456[source]▶
The writer appears to be under the impression that CO2 is not a valuable commodity.

In fact, it is, so long as it's under enough pressure, and in the right place. In Montezuma County, Colorado, sits the McElmo dome, an ancient underground CO2 well. They pump it out, down a 500 mile pipeline, to Denver City, Texas, where it gooses oil wells into pumping more crude out. Other than making more oil and making it cheaper, not really much in terms of greenhouse gas contributions- the CO2 starts underground and ends up underground.

Kinder Morgan won't just let you back up your truck and buy some (it's already spoken for), and even if they would, they'd expect you to pay a pretty penny for what we widely consider to be waste gas.

I think MIT is doing some good work. Just wanted everyone to be mindful of the massive scale under which CO2 is already getting bought and sold.

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1. vkou ◴[13 Nov 24 17:24 UTC] No.42128043[source]▶
So, capturing CO2 from the air can be used to put out even more CO2 into the air. Fantastic.
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2. marcosdumay ◴[13 Nov 24 17:32 UTC] No.42128111[source]▶
Well, netting ~95%¹ of the extracted carbon as new release on the atmosphere is technically better than 100%. They could be using nitrogen instead.

But yeah, it's quite underwhelming.

1 - Wild guess. But it's certainly less than 100%, and certainly not by a lot.

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3. vkou ◴[13 Nov 24 20:31 UTC] No.42129661[source]▶
It can be way worse than 100% if the reduced oil extraction costs (or greenwashed accounting from earning carbon credits for sequestration) results in more net oil being extracted, than there would have been without access to CO2.

Not to mention the energy costs of actually pulling carbon out of the air. Often, getting 1kg of CO2 out of the air ends up costing so much energy that you end up emitting more than 1kg of it.

If sequestration weren't a fairy tale that will keep us distracted for another few decades while we continue to ruin our environment, people would be doing it, not talk about doing it.