I’d be interested in bio char as a CCS technology as I understand it charcoal sequesters carbon for geological timescales. I assume char does the same. Given the scale required is it viable or even helpful? For example if we converted all our combustible food and agricultural waste to char, would that remove enough Carbon from the carbon cycle to make a dent in atmospheric CO2
Bio char added to the list! Thanks so much for coming back here to comment (again), it's so appreciated! I also like that you ask about scale: "if we converted all our combustible waste, would that remove enough?"
Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) which uses the char resulting from biomass pyrolysis as an agricultural amendment (preferably with the right treatment to make it an effective soil builder) is one way to make an actually carbon NEGATIVE fuel. The fuels made from pyrolysis- for instance using GTI/Shell's IH2 process- can be used to replace those "hard to decarbonize" transport applications like jet aircraft and long distance/remote/rural trucking which are not suited to either electrification OR hydrogen- the latter because of hydrogen's terrible logistics problems and its cost. But of course you have a choice- you can either burn the char to make energy to run the pyrolyzer, increasing yield, or you can make the FUEL more expensive by burying the biochar as a way to get carbon credits. Which one you'll do as a business, depends on what incentives you're given, i.e. what the carbon price is. Of course with NO carbon price, youl'll just burn fossils and use the atmosphere like a free public sewer...
@@latemnetlom yeah I was wondering about the economic issue of only partially burning fuel in order to leave char behind. I’d be interested in what percent of the available energy has to left behind. I guess it’s a function of the degree of saturation of the organic compounds.
@@phillipsmith4979 it's about 1/3 of the energy in woody biomass, that ends up as char, which happens to be approximately the amount of energy needed to drive the pyrolysis itself which is endothermic- so usually the char is burned to produce that heat. And if you need to deoxygenate the resulting liquid molecules, you lose quite a bit there too, because you need to do hydrogenolysis, i.e. you "burn" the oxygen molecules out of the liquids using hydrogen. That's where the IH^2 process is very clever- they use the heat from the hydrogenolyis (hydrotreating) reactions to drive the pyrolysis- hence "integrated hydropyrolysis and hydrotreating" (IH^2).
Sorry to everyone who saw this video twice in their feed. I had a problem with my audio export that several viewers were kind enough to point out very quickly, so I took down the original video and replaced it with this one with the audio fixed. I hope this doesn't piss off the TH-cam algorithm too badly!
So….. what happens to the co2? How do they make sure it does not get into the atmospheric over time? If it’s in a salt cavern what happens if say an explosion compromise the cavern and it all escapes. What is the environmental impact of a sudden release of massive amounts of co2?
OH DEAR What a picky lot of spoiled brats. The reason most of us are here is to learn from your expertise and enterprise. Not critique the sound quality.
@@phillargus2757 thanks Phil! That was my first thought too, but then my brother texted me and told me it was practically unlistenable with headphones on. So I made the call to take it down. My sound quality may never be professional, but it should at least not be so distracting that the content isn't accessible.
@@RCdiy That is a concern, hence why other processes are being used. Injection into the right kind of rock formations results in carbon remineralisation in roughly a month. The resulting solids don't result in a sudden release of CO2 if a valve or pipe bursts at the surface (though the right kinds of chemical exposure would turn it to gas again). This is the system being used at the Orca installation in Iceland, which has the capacity to sequester 4,000 metric tonnes of CO2/year using low carbon heat and electricity from their abundant geothermal resources. This is still paid for on a voluntary market basis (companies pay for capture and sequestration of x amount at the price the facility owners charge for it based on companies self-set GHG emissions targets), though that may change if more rules around emissions are set and companies have legal limits to their emissions if they want to do business in a given country/with a given customer/etc... IIRC they use a dry capture system, not the amine process described in this video. They're seeing a ~10% cost reduction per doubling so far with that method.
There's a good video on amine systems on Smarter Every Day in his series on nuclear submarines, that's the primary system they use to scrub carbon dioxide from the air on the boat. Regrettably they just vent the CO2 overboard, but it is just from the crew's breath and not fossil sources so it's not strictly pollution.
@@EngineeringwithRosie Also extremely interesting is "carbon cycle" on the space station. See on Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISS_ECLSS Basically they introduce (transport to orbit) carbon and hydrogen in food (carbohydrates, fats, etc), and vent them as CO₂, H₂ and CH₄. Water and oxygen are totally recycled.
@@EngineeringwithRosie You know, the sole reason for the Slow Mo Guy (Gavin) to start a TH-cam channel was to get an USA visa and move to Texas! He needed to demonstrate extraordinary achievement, and after filming video with a giant balloon he got the visa (see video "10 things you may not have known about The Slow Mo Guys" 3 - The Reason)
I wish a little more time was spent on how the thermodynamics set the limit on how much energy you need to extract and concentrate CO2 that is mixed into an exhaust stream or the atmosphere. The entropy difference between the mixture and the separated gas streams (one enriched in CO2 the other depleted) sets a minimum energy requirement for separation. Sorting into streams that are 10%/90% of the original CO2 composition is easier than 1%/99% which is easier than 0.1%/99.9%. How much capture/enrichment is enough? Is that level of sorting viable?
That's a great point. It is probably beyond my extremely basic chemistry knowledge to explain that (first learn and then explain). But maybe I can do another interview on the topic.
@@chalichaligha3234 if you define your initial conditions for the input and final conditions for the outputs (say gas mixtures at standard temperature ,0 C, and pressure, 1 atm. Or another relevant T,P benchmark) then you can make an apples to apples comparison between processes. In the ideal case you can calculate the change in entropy due to composition (entropy of mixing en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_of_mixing) and the work done changing the partial pressure of the component gasses. This ideal case is a thermodynamic limit on the entropy and energy changes required of any purification technique. By setting the input and output temperature and pressure to be the same before and after the process the energy required should be a well defined function of the composition of the input mixture and the output mixtures. This is akin to the argument used to construct an ideal Carnot heat engine and the associated limit on efficiency. I suspect there is are more subtle ways of structuring the problem (that I hope our host can find a good expert to elucidate) that show other ways that the efficiency is limited in real world processes just like the Carnot cycle sweeps things under the rug as an idealization of a heat engine.
You're right that thermodynamics sets a (lower) limit on how much energy you need to extract and concentrate CO2 from other gases in an exhaust stream. And the lower the initial concentration of CO2, the higher that thermodynamic lower limit will be. I agree that it would have been nice to have the thermodynamic limits explained. But that's somewhat academic. What a comparison to thermodynamic limits would have shown is that energy consumption for leading processes currently is at least an order of magnitude higher than the thermodynamic minimum. IOW, there's a great deal of room for improvement.
@@rogerarnold5627 Many mature energy conversion processes achieve high efficiencies as compared to their respective ideals (e.g. Electrical motors/generators are typically >80% efficient, combined gas-turbine/steam-turbine power plants operate at near the thermodynamic efficiency limit). The thermodynamic limit is relevant when planning processes at the industrial scale. Your claim of "at least an order of magnitude" difference between real world and ideal energy conversion efficiencies is inaccurate. Finding the relevant thermodynamic limit is more than just an "academic" exercise.
You guys sound like you have some technical knowledge. I do not. But I do know there are no free lunches in nature. This sounds like a free lunch to me. Meaning you're burning fuel to filter fuel. There must be point of diminishing returns. Even the filter thing, won't that make the system less efficient by slowing down exhaust? I mean the thing is a big air pump right just like the engine in a car right?
Loving your channel, Rosie. I've been watching, listening to and reading about CCS for quite some time now, but this is the first I've seen CCUS mentioned, although many have discussed uses for captured carbon rather than storage.
Thanks! CCUS isn't new, in fact before there was any talk of storage people were already using CO2. The vast majority of "utilised" CO2 is for enhanced oil recovery currently, which is not exactly green. So perhaps that is why you haven't heard so many people talking about it.
ooh! I made a pressure swing molecular sieve thing at home! Doesn't really do much since it's just using a coke bottle as a pressure vessel, but it was a fun project for understanding.
Well done, technically accurate, easy to understand, and correct that the electric power industry doesn't see the value in capturing carbon dioxide, otherwise we'd be doing it already. But a price on carbon, or a value on captured carbon dioxide, could make the difference.
Thanks for explaining the capture part of CCUS. Very interesting. I suspect that by the time the price on carbon gets high enough to justify CCUS then the economics of renewable power generation and storage will make it redundant. Already there is a solution for industrial high heat applications called electric arc furnaces. Thanks again.
Thanks Rosie. Good stuff. That's the Carbon Capture part. Looking forward to the Utilisation and Storage part of the puzzle.
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Thank you for sharing this insightful video! When discussing the IEA's net zero by 2050 roadmap at the beginning of the video, you mentioned that "technology doesn't normally develop like that." However, there are a few notable counterexamples, such as the internet, smartphones, gene editing, AI, machine learning, personal computers, digital photography, social media platforms, 3D printing, and particularly in this field, EVs, solar, and wind energy :)
Coal is carbon that was captured by plants millions of years ago, on a massive scale, at the right cost. The best example of good CCS. Prepared the atmosphere to be just right for us. That carbon should stay where it is. Once we burn the coal we'll never manage to capture all that carbon again.
It is absolutely feasible. The facility I work at makes hydrogen via steam-methane reforming process, then scrubs the entrained CO2 with amine. The end result is >99% pure hydrogen, which is routed to the hydroprocessing units. The pure CO2 is routed via pipeline to a vendor which adds it to carbonated beverages. The process is energy intense, which adds to the cost of gasoline. But consumers absorb the cost, as they always have. Great video BTW. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for adding your experience! How long has that facility been operating, and what volume is it processing? It seems like there may not be enough carbonated beverages in the world to put much of a dent in the amount of CO2 we need to capture, but I haven't actually done the calculations.
@@EngineeringwithRosie Our facility has been operating in the SF Bay Area since 1969. Our primary products are liquid fuels - gasoline, diesel, LPG. Total throughput averages around 135M BPD. As far as CO2 volume we capture, it's probably in the neighborhood of 100,000 scf per day. We only remove and capture the CO2 from the hydrogen we manufacture because it's a necessary step in refining. But the process could be expanded to capture CO2 from all of the flue gas we emit, which is much greater volume than the hydrogen stream. The vendor we send the CO2 to uses it for a variety of purposes, including dry ice production and welding gasses as well as beverage carbonation. The CO2 capture technology is mature and proven, but as you pointed out it's expensive. And ultimately the cost will be paid by consumers. It would be interesting to compare costs between alternative energy sources and fossil fuels with a carbon capture cost added.
I am a senior scientist working in the development of carbon capture and storage technology with top industries. For consultation in carbon-tech projects, carbon trading, carbon credits, carbon offsets, data-based tech reports, and research-based media content, please feel free to reach out.
I'm a chemist. 13:03 *The economic solution is to find large scale uses for the carbon as carbon dioxide.* Carbon dioxide, CO2, can be used with caustic, magnesium metal, and hydrogen. With caustic, NaOH, we get soda ash, Na2CO3, which has many uses. One use is for neutralizing water acidity safely. This process leaves CO2 as bicarbonate, HCO3-, in the ocean restoring its alkalinity. With burning magnesium metal for heat, CO2 is an oxidizer. This process leaves carbon as soot/carbon. The magnesium as MgO can be reused to regenerate Mg metal, an energy/fuel. With renewable hydrogen we can make methane, CH4, which is a synthetic fuel gas with many uses. The hydrogen is left as fresh/drinkable water which has many uses including agriculture.
I am a senior scientist working in the development of carbon capture and storage technology with top industries. For consultation in carbon-tech projects, carbon trading, carbon credits, carbon offsets, data-based tech reports, and research-based media content, please feel free to reach out.
I'm glad to find your fine Channel. I'm glad to see you take a critical look at some of these technologies that are so often presented as being largely faultless. I especially liked your mention that these capture plans have been around for almost 30 years but as yet they have yet to make even a small dent in our CO2 emissions. This is a factor rarely mentioned by most of the proponents. You could also mention some of the plants that no longer capture the CO2, or are about to end that process because it turned out to be not economically viable. When you do your video regarding the storage aspects of those commercial plants, that have succeeded in capturing a significant portion of their flu gas CO2, you should mention those where the CO2 has been pumped into played-out fossil fuel source reservoirs to extract more fossil fuels that are burned, releasing more CO2 back into the atmosphere. That was part of the original plan since that process would help pay for the extraction of the CO2 from the flu gas. Typically, the promoters of the CO2 extraction part fo the process never mention the end use of the extracted CO2.
Yep you're totally right. I think that all (or at least 2) of the specific carbon capture projects I mentioned in this video used the CO2 for enhanced oil recovery.
Great video. I think some of these ideas will become viable in time but lower energy consumption along with energy storage of renewables and non CO2 sources of energy are the short to medium term solutions. We need to take action now as you say, we should not let perfect be the enemy of good. As the great Richard Feynman said " Reality must take precedence over public relations, as nature cannot be fooled".
I 100% agree with you. I have no idea why energy efficiency isn't a bigger part of our efforts. Well, actually I do have some ideas... I should make a video on that!
@@EngineeringwithRosie . That would be great. Here in the UK we are often paying wind turbine operators not to produce energy because the peak production does not coincide with peak consumption and for commercial reasons along with so much waste. If people used their spending power and polling cards to encourage better solutions, business and politicians would step up and these things would get done. Sadly we want cheap things and low taxes and that means we drag our heals when it comes to solving the issues. Keep up the great work!
Great video, Rosie! I'm looking forward to watching the Utilisation & Storage part, as the CO2 underground or sea bottom burial is the one that keeps me confused. Is CO2 absorbed in some rocks underground or solidified at sea bottom? Is it secure enough to guarantee that CO2 wouldn't escape back into the atmosphere? The climate gets unstable and for example the methane clatrates will get disrupted. Is there analogy with CO2? Are rising sea temperatures and change of oceanic streams a threat to carbon storage? Once again, thank you for the vid, you are doing a great job! =)
I can't respond with respect to sea floor storage, but there are multiple mechanisms for permanently storing CO2 underground in saline aquifers. Generally very deep underground say 1 mile. At these pressures the Brine can hold a certain percentage of the gas in solution. This depends on salinity, temperature and pressure the rock is generally highly permeable with a pore space of 20% or more like a hard sponge. The pore throats are much smaller. Essentially the space between packed sand grains near where they touch. When gas is injected some gas gets trapped in these spaces. 20-80% depending on the rock attributes. Then there are geologic reactions. Some reactions can happen quickly. Near immediately, others can take hundreds or millions of years depending on rock composition. Generally you don't inject into highly reactivate rock formations because it can result in formation damage where minerals are dissolved and then precipitated somewhere else. This can plug off a well so it can't be injected into anyone. Anyway. It's generally a lot safer and more permanent that people realize. Being so deep in the ground that CO2 would have to make it past an extremely large volume of reactive liquids and solids to get near surface fresh water aquifers or be released back into the atmosphere.
I just finished writing a technical report on the viability of CCS technology as a climate change mitigation strategy. I wish I had seen this video a few days ago! Great explanation!
Also, my conclusion and recommendation was that CCS should not be embraced over other options (e.g. renewable energy, efficiency improvements, and habitat conservation). I do think that, years down the line, CCS will play some role in decarbonizing some industries like cement production!
I am a senior scientist working in the development of carbon capture and storage technology with top industries. For consultation in carbon-tech projects, carbon trading, carbon credits, carbon offsets, data-based tech reports, and research-based media content, please feel free to reach out.
Thanks for the video Rosie. For the future carbon capture/storage videos, I would like to know how the carbon will be stored without escaping? If underground isn't that a more difficult process than storing nuclear waste underground? At least nuclear waster is a solid, carbon released from burning fossil fuels is a gas which is presumably more difficult to permanently sequester than solid nuclear waste.
Depends. They are starting some CO2 capture and sequester projects in North Dakota. CO2 is stored in porous rock formations deep underground. There are multiple different geologic reactions than can happen to permanently store CO2. Saline brine in the formation itself can store CO2 similar to a can of Coke. There is CO2 that can become permanently trapped in the pores of the rock(20-80%) depending on attributes of the rock. Geochemical reactions can occur either in time scales of minutes to hundreds of years depending on the rock composition. Generally they don't want to inject into extremely reactive formations because they can dissolve and precipitate minerals causing the formation damaging it and causing it to plug off permanently. There are studies where to have looked at sub surface CO2 injection for sequestration or Enhanced Oil Recovery and the CO2 has stayed in place well. They can use seismic surveys before, during and after injection to monitor where the CO2 plume goes. Very interesting technologies being developed for more "real time" monitoring in the field too.
I am a senior scientist working in the development of carbon capture and storage technology with top industries. For consultation in carbon-tech projects, carbon trading, carbon credits, carbon offsets, data-based tech reports, and research-based media content, please feel free to reach out.
A large coal mine, like _"Black Thunder Coal Mine"_ or _"North Antelope Rochelle Mine"_ produce over 100 million tons of coal a year -- which means each adds nearly 400 million tons of CO2 when this coal is burned. The price of coal is less than $70 / ton. As another comment has mentioned, Shell Quest project carbon capture project cost 2.3 billion dollars to capture 20 million tons of CO2 over 20 year period. That comes to $115 per ton of CO2, or $420 per ton of coal. So, we are talking half a trillion dollars initial investment per large coal mine to build carbon capture facilities, and increasing the price of coal by an order of magnitude. This seems like a tall order, and the best form of carbon capture in this case may be leaving it where it already is.
Yes you're right, it is an immense cost. We should be thinking hard about which applications have cheaper decarbonisation solutions and keep CCS for those where that is the cheapest option.
Turquoise H2 production is also pretty promising since most of the C comes out as a solid precipitate that is ultra pure and can be used in place of traditional carbon black sources that need extra steps to reach the same level of purity. Maybe this stored CO2 can be converted in a similar way over time using renewables, releasing O2 and selling the pure carbon black for structural components and eventually for space program habitats (light strong so less fuel to get out of the gravity well) or wind turbine blades. CO2 could also be used for enormous liquid "air" batteries. Just a few ideas on what to do with the CO2 once it's taken out of the air.
Great ideas, better than the normal examples you get when people talk about utilisation (CO2 in drinks, enhanced oil recovery). And I definitely plan to do a video on turquoise hydrogen some day.
This issue ultimately boils down to cost. My question is what is the cost of electricity produced by solar cells, wind etc plus appropriate storage compare to the cost of thermal power station produced electricity plus capture of the CO2 in the flue gasses and then permanent storage.
Yep, you hit the nail on the head. And the answer to your question? The cost of renewables + storage is less than the cost of fossil power stations + CCS. Unless there are large subsidies going to CCS for power, I don't think we will see it there much.
@@EngineeringwithRosie Well, yes and no. The cost of renewables + storage is less than the cost of fossil power stations + CCS if you're willing to put up with frequent extended blackouts when periods of adverse weather deplete all your stored energy. The cost of the "storage" part of renewables + storage increases exponentially as you raise the bar on the reliability of supply. It's not that the specific cost of storage capacity goes up, but that the amount of storage required explodes. There's a corresponding decrease in the utilization of storage. At the extreme for high reliability, battery banks with capacity of hundreds of terawatt-hours may sit idle 99.9% of the time. They may only go through one charge-discharge cycle in a decade, but they still have to be standing by to avoid blackouts from extended once-in-a-decade RE droughts. That's IF renewables + storage are all you have to go on. Fossil power stations + CCS allow you to get 90% of your energy from renewables + a modest amount of storage, while having a fallback for your energy supply during the times your modest amount of storage runs dry. Unfortunately, it's not 10% of the power that the backup resources will have to supply 100% of the time. That would be nice and economical. But it's closer to 100% of the power 10% of the time. Renewables + storage is a recipe for one power system for the price of two.
@@EngineeringwithRosie Correct me if I'm wrong but the role of CCS is likely to be limited to high value manufacturing processes where CO2 is an unavoidable waste product.
ETA: I just realized you address this at the very end. I look forward to your future video on transport and storage! This was helpful to learn about but I wish there had been some discussion of the storage piece. Once the CO2 is captured how are we certain that it's not going to be re-released? How are we certain we aren't building ticking time bombs of CO2 release some decades or centuries from now? The fossil energy industry loves to create externalities. Isn't stored CO2 another externality that isn't accounted for in the costs? These are much more interesting questions to me than the chemical engineering behind the capture process. We can easily measure how much was captured vs. emitted. But how do we measure how much was successfully stored and safe essentially forever?
I wonder if there is a way clinker production for cement can be done differently so that the CO2 is produced at a higher concentration (or ~100% concentration?) allowing CCS to be used more efficiently/for free? I'm picturing something like what was done with Allam-Cycle power plants and H2 production CO2 neutral/CO2 negative concrete needs to happen, concrete is just too important to 'switch to alternatives', and it looks like the price of traditional CCS for cement production is just too high, and raising the carbon price will only make concrete too expensive if we don't find a better process for it
That's a great question. One I've had too, and like the motivation for this video it made me realise that I don't know a whole lot about cement production. That's a whole video on its own I think!
Disclaimer i guess: I'm a bit of a nerd (NOT an expert, but some knowledge i guess) on CCS, so feel free to share knowlege/expertise and add any corrections! BUT if i remember correctly Limestone-> Cement is mainly done via heat, and modern systems can use a rotary filn which if i remember correctly, just needs heat, and produces CO2 (+ impurities). Some older "Lime Kilns" were similar to blast furnaces, and used/use Coke (from coal usually, although some have used Petroleum-Coke, or Petcoke, and also some use Refuse Derived Fuel/Tire Derived Fuel (Mainly granulated/shredded old tires). The more "modern" design is a Rotary Kiln and uses some sort of burner in the middle to heat it, can be pulverized solid fuel, or gas, or fuel oil etc. This could be adapted to Hydrogen/Bio/Synthetic Methane, i guess, but need to ask an expert on all that "Direct Reduced Iron (DRI)" is the (potentially) decarbonized (and easily adaptable to CCS, as you pointed out). It uses Fluidized Bed Reactors (essentially a "hot air popper", but for chemistry, not popcorn), and for DRI that is a reducing gas, so syngas (Carbon Monoxide + Hydrogen), or even hydrogen This can be adapted to Lime Kilns as well i would imagine, although i don't know if there are any plans for this as of now. (Also just looked up that "Allam power cycle" you mentioned, and yeah "Oxy-Fuel Combustion" /gasification etc does make a lot of the flue gas processing easier! ) It does need oxygen/air separation, and i don't know how that effects efficiency versus the methods discussed in this method, and just air combustion/gasification, but yeah Outside of if it uses a mixed in fuel for heating, smelting uses a reducing, and cement an inert atmosphere if i remember correctly, so that isn't entirely the same. Also by having all these plants/processes grouped together into larger industrial parks, you can share heat/industrial gasses more, so that can help with things like that (use waste flue gas/process heat for cement/metal gas heating etc) *Bit of a rant, but that's what i have read/know, and i a agree 100% that decarbonization of cement and metals is CRITICAL*
Thanks for the nice overview of current carbon capture processes. Please include „enhanced olivine weathering“ as promoted by project vesta in one of your next videos. Some Fermi-estimates of the inputs needed and the timescale for this to capture significant amounts of co2 would be super interesting.
My spontaneous thought on carbon capture is the most efficient place to do it is at an carbon emitting process. And the carbon can not be told to jump in a container so we need energy and/or materials to capture it. That new energy consumption may release more carbon witch need to be captured - that will reduce efficiency and increase cost per kg carbon and investment. This recourses (money, materials and energy) would be better used to install permanent carbon free energy / sustainable energy production. The maintenance cost is usually lower too. One of my point being ---> carbon that's never released -- don't need to be captured. Also compare how effective recourses is used for CCS vs if we used it for new sustainable energy.
So expensive and large use of energy CCS is not feasible. It would be interesting to learn more how we might augment natural processes that sequester carbon like for instance ocean biology that makes calcium carbonate. This is the one system that has the capacity to be THE answer.
@@EngineeringwithRosie I do not know if this is going to work as well as expected, but it seems scalable: _"Project Vesta plans to spread a green volcanic mineral known as olivine, ground down to the size of sand particles, across one of the beaches. The waves will further break down the highly reactive material, accelerating a series of chemical reactions that pull the greenhouse gas out of the air and lock it up in the shells and skeletons of mollusks and corals."_
In the United States, the EPA takes around 2 years to give you a permit to sequester CO2 into a reservoir PER well which maybe can only handle 1 - 2 MMtpy CO2.
Is that right? I actually have no concept whether that is fast or slow. I do know that many of the really large solar and wind farms are applying for environmental permits 5 or more years before they plan to start building, so perhaps 2 years to make sure that a site is suitable for CO2 storage is not that slow. But you have certainly raised a good point, that it is an extra complication for these types of projects. And I guess it will only get harder if a lot of the easier sites get filled and they need to move on to less suitable sites.
@@EngineeringwithRosie There are various permitting requirements in the US and it definitely adds a bit of uncertainty to any project. The Class VI injection well permit is something you'd have to get on top of the above ground permits. It can get especially hairy if you tack that onto a refinery or power plant permitting process.
Nice presentation on CCS. I think that in addition to dealing flue gas and like it seems like we're going to need to strip CO2 out of the atmosphere in general, even if we can lower our emissions to close to zero, it really seems like we're going to need to sequester gigatonnes of CO2 per year for quite a while, if we want to get ourselves back to something resembling preindustrial climate... except all of that heat stored in the oceans.
I agree, but it is a much much harder challenge than it might appear. Currently direct air capture is so energy intensive that unless it is run on 100% green energy it can actually emit more CO2 than it captures. So the technology is some way away (though I'm sure it will eventually be part of the solution), we'd better not bank on much direct air capture any time soon and concentrate on reducing our emissions to zero.
I think Prof Mark Z. Jacobson Stanford Uni, USA said to Robert Llewellyn ( the actor who plays the android Kryten in the classic tv sci-fi comedy series Red Dwarf which is still being made ) in the podcast Fully Charged show ep 100% renewable energy ? Can it REALLY ever be reality 1 Mar 2020 that at a coal plant in the USA, CCS was added but to power the CCS plant the firm installed a diesel generator which he said was a complete disaster and it resulted in more pollution. @@EngineeringwithRosie
Rosie, I definitely agree that we need to drive emissions to near zero and that banking on any one technology would be a bad idea, but it seems like at this point we’re going to have to pull it out of the atmosphere no matter what. The zero emissions seems a given at this point. More innovations required for sure. With wind and solar becoming quite cheap, it might be feasible to use them to power this sector.
Hey - FYI, check out a company called Opus 12, first I think you'll like the founders and also, they have a very good take on carbon capture and turning it into something useful. Storage isn't the best solution IMO, they take it a step further, with a batter catalyst, means better efficiency, means lower cost for the CO, which means lower cost for molecules in fuels and plastics.
Thoughtful coverage of a politically sensitive issue Rosie, as always an interesting insight. Another Australian insight into Carbon Capture on youtube, that is a little more explicit in its driving factors is: "Honest Government Ad | Carbon Capture & Storage"
I hope so (in the future and on a large scale). Nowadays, I see batteries much far away of aviation industry yet; captured Carbon may play a key role in synthetic fuel manufacturing, even for cargo maritime transport. Nice video.
Thank you Rosie, super interesting and I love your channel. Would you please give me your honest opinion on how effective this all might be? I know that it theoretically 'works' but I really struggle to have much optimism for the future of the planet (or more specifically, the ability for human civilisation to continue as it is). Is there really any source of hope?
I think that we'll need it, but it's not going to do any of the "heavy lifting". It's often promoted as a single solution to the energy transition, like we'll just stick CCS on all our coal power plants and carry on as normal. And you could do that, if you were prepared to pay a whole lot more than it would cost to just swap to renewables plus storage. I think it will be restricted to the really hard to abate applications like cement. Thanks for your comment, unfortunately I had to take this video down to repair an audio issue, so I will be reuploading here if you want to comment on the public video: th-cam.com/video/fC388uNJhUY/w-d-xo.html
@@EngineeringwithRosie Thank You for this opinion. CCS might be what works with cement production. I had skipped ahead to hear the 20 to 30 percent of generated energy needed to run CCS & knew it just will not work. Unless perhaps a technology breakthru on the order of a 10X increase in energy efficiency to CCS.
Great video! As a new technology, I would like to see you look at the pros and cons of Proton Technologies process of making blue hydrogen in the well prior to extraction and then extracting only the hydrogen, leaving the CO2 in the well deep under ground. They clam that it’s cheaper than trying to extract the methane since H2 is lighter than CH4 (or CO2).
(Very slightly) apropos of carbon capture are LPPFusion's claims about what they can do once they solve their engineering challenges (mostly just handwavium attached to their fundraising pitch, since pure engineering challenges aren't interesting to most investors). While a video on them would be fascinating, a tie-in with this is "given a small modular reactor, whatever results from a successful post-breakeven fusion pinch, or other very dense but not absurdly-sized energy "cell", how would that be able to leverage existing CC(U)S or other decarbonisation kit as a non-grid-based value add? Or more generally -- how could a heat engine engage with carbon capture without going through a lossy electricity-generation phase first?
I saw a video somewhere where plant gaz was move to a chimical reactor containing sea weeds and with the sun, the see weeds grows in the reactor after some times, the water is filtered out and processed to give another fuel that can be use inside the power plant. I know its very vague but it seemed promising
I'm very interested in the prospect of using algae for carbon capture. It doesn't require any chemical manufacturing and can create another source of revenue. Algae can be used for food or biofuels.
For new investments fossil fuel power generation already has trouble competing with renewable power, solar and or wind power. If you increase the cost of fossil fuel power generation by adding CCS, and, add energy costs, it will be cheaper to build a combination of solar and wind, and a decent amount of batteries, and or other storage. The cost of new solar and wind power, as well as batteries is still decreasing. In my opinion we should focus on replacing fossil fuels, not spend a lot of money in decreasing emissions from them. Even adding CCS systems to existing power plants represents huge investments, and doesn't solve the problems. If enough money is spent on a technology it will become better and cheaper. So, the question is, should we spend a lot of money on CCS, so it will become a bit better, and a bit cheaper, and the emissions/pollution from fossil power generation can be less bad, or should that money go to alternatives to fossil fuels so the fossil fuels gets replaced. Photosynthesis can capture CO2 direct from the atmosphere, cyanobacteria has done that for billions of years. While photosynthesis has low energy efficiency, it can still be a very cost effective way to capture CO2 out of the atmosphere. Biochar can be produced from biomass, and the biochar can be used for soil improvement, making the soil able to hold more water and nutrients. Also biochar keeps carbon "locked" for a very very long time.
Very nice video, thanks! But.. did I miss something? One of your sheets also listed ‘cryogenic capture’, meaning CCS as part of LNG liquifying process. I saw a video of Highview Enterprises which uses liquifying air and also storing the heat as part of a liquid air battery (using excess electricity to power the process, and generating electricity by turning the liquid air into high-pressure gas again tp power a gas turbine). Wouldn’t it possible to separate the liquid CO2 as part of this process? Or is the captured volume simply too small even for a very large battery to justify the extra cost?
After Matt Ferrell published the youtube video Undecided with Matt Ferrell ep Liquid Air Battery Explained - Rival to Lithium Ion Batteries ? Oct 6 2020, he was asked in comments about this, he answered yes in the podcast Still To Be Determined ep Full of Hot Air 12 October 2020, different gases don't liquify at the same temperatures so CO2 becomes a liquid at -196 °C and can be separated from the other gases.
Yes that's exactly how it works - you cool the gas mixture (to very low temps) and the CO2 comes out first. I did discuss this briefly with Marc, but to keep the video length manageable I only included technologies that are actually used in industry. Crogenic capture is extremely energy intensive relative to the other options, so it's rarely used.
When the air is liquified, the volume is reduced by a factor 400, so I’m told. But CO2 only takes 0.038% of the volume of the atmospheric air, so my guess is that ‘siphoning off’ the liquid CO2 may be too complicated. On the other hand, they will have to remove the water as well, which obviously is the first component that ‘liquifies’.
Sorry, made a mistake: the volume reduction is actually a factor 700. Matt Ferrell made a convincing argument for Liquid Air Batteries, and as Javier Canada (of Highview Enterprises) points out, their process is based on the production of liquid Nitrogen, Oxygen and other gasses out of thin air, so the technology is basically there and simply needs to be scaled up.
The steep curve for proposed utilization has never bothered me. The quantity as been basically zero, but that's because the price has also been basically zero. Whatever level is economically feasible to start immediately, the startup slope to that level could be nearly vertical if it just became politically feasible to put a price on it at all.
Yep, that's the question isn't it? I don't hold out hope for a price on carbon in Australia any time soon, but it is clear that is what is needed to make a rational choice between the different technology options.
- the existing carbon captures seem to work under special conditions, sometimes it seems in smaller sizes. - The carbon capture in the process of LPG for me is not representative - you simply cool the raw product and the CO2 falls out early. For me an open question is: Will those mentioned processes also work behind the ordinary power plant or behind a steel producing plant - there you have huge amounts of gas and that gas is pretty hot.
What I find exciting it algae plastics. If they can work with carbon capturing companies to recycle CO2 into organic plastic products, I think this could make carbon capture a more viable concept, maybe even create jobs for inhospitable areas like regional Australia or the Sahara Desert. The idea of creating a whole economy around CO2 and carbon recycling is a very tantalising concept.
Wow, that is a bold idea. I hadn't heard of that before but I will look into it! It seems the Australian desert is going to be full of clean energy project within a couple of decades, what with all the huge wind/solar/hydrogen/ammonia projects in planning. And now potentially this! I hope the developers working on these projects work out better ways to work with the traditional owners living on those lands better than some of the mining companies have up until now! (not that all the mining companies have been bad, many are working really constructively with traditional owners). By the way, thanks so much for coming back here to comment (again), it's so appreciated!
@@EngineeringwithRosie Yeah, business insider recently did an article on it, the company was trying to make fuel originally but after 10 years of trying to make it profitable they've resorted to making plastic foams for sandle production.
I saw a presentation from the Canadian government over 10 years ago with a similarly implausible graph showing CCS use skyrocketing starting "right now" to meet emissions obligations. It all feels rather cynical.
Yes if you don't also talk about the cost to do it, it sounds like a perfect solution that would allow us to solve climate change without changing anything much at all. So I really think we need to be careful how we talk about carbon capture so that people don't get the idea that it will solve all our problems.
@@EngineeringwithRosie I agree completely, I just fear that policymakers are misleading the public with plans that rely on wildly optimistic projections of the role that CCS will play in mitigating climate change, and have been doing so for some time.
Great video, thanks. The obvious answer to make this a viable option for more industrial processes is to tax carbon emissions. Heavily. Let's hope more countries get around to that.
I am a pessimist by nature, so I am not that hopeful! But the funny thing about carbon capture is that as soon as you install it somewhere you automatically have a carbon price. You know how much it cost to add CCS, you know how many tonnes of CO2 it will capture, so therefore you have a price per tonne CO2 abated. What you don't get without a carbon tax is a *value* for that CO2. I mean, not a value in a form that fossil fuel companies are paying any attention to.
@@EngineeringwithRosie To give an example, a carbon price set at the right level would enable a facility with CCS to compete with one without, whereas now it cannot because its operating costs are higher. It would also encourage innovation in the field, because reducing emissions through CCS or any other means will result in lower tax exposure. I am not a big fan of CCS for other reasons, but I am a huge fan of carbon taxation.
Thanks Rosie. Can you ask the next expert about geo-sequestration of captured carbon please? What technologies are used to ensure the carbon does not just come back out of the ground? Like many people, I think CC&S technology is completely bogus, but I'd be happy to be shown why I'm wrong.
I'm not one who thinks it's bogus, but I do think that the cost and complexity is severely downplayed. And I think that is a very dangerous thing to do, because if carbon capture sounds cheap and easy then governments are of course going to go with that option instead of the renewables + storage option. I only know a little bit about storage for now (before I interview an expert!), but I believe one of the biggest challenges is finding a suitable location. There isn't a salt cavern or other appropriate geological formation under every fossil power plant or other proposed CCS site. And where you have to use suboptimal storage locations, you get big problems and CO2 gets released that was promised not to be. See Gorgon in Western Australia for a recent example of problems getting the storage part working. I'm looking forward to finding out more about this topic, and it sounds like I'm not the only one keen to dive into all the complexity 😀
I appreciate the elaboration. As for the skepticism, the best summary not "it does not". Like it eats 30% of energy use of power plants, without considering where to store it and potential risks with that? It that _really_ going to viable? Furthermore, i much doubt that steel making CO2 producing is "hard" to avoid. Nor hydrogen.. And i add your "value" is an euphemism for money... That they've suggested hydrogen for "green" cars, and even as power source via iron dust(!) but it's suddenly "hard" when we just want to make hydrogen or steel? It's really about money which is not an issue when it's (dutch)propaganda-slash-student-research project. But i really don't want to be harsh, i really appreciate the elaboration, this channel goes into specifics sometimes that are really often missing in other sources. (that i've noticed at least)
Odd, few people talk about CCS in agriculture, including grazing. After all plants have been been capturing Carbon by breaking down CO2 and H2 to make sugars that ultimately lead to Carbon being store in the ground for at least 400 million years. That process drives plant growth but also feeds the underground biome that ultimately produces soil which in turn holds roughly three times more time carbon than the atmosphere. Almost all land dwelling life ultimately depends on soil. Plants in the seas and fresh water also drive all aquatic life. We should seriously encourage farmers and ranchers to seek to sequester carbon.
When those plants that captured CO2 die, microbes and biota get to work immediately decomposing the plant returning the CO2 to the atmosphere in days months a few years, not 400 M years. Multi million year uptake of CO2 requires the chemical reaction with rock, not scattering in a farmers field .
Rosie, I think you will find that just capturing, as you allude to is the easy part. Firstly get into perpective the volumes we are talking about, in the giga tonnes and to store all that volume means very high pressures to be able to store it. That, as I'm sure you are aware requires a lot of power. There is also the safety aspect of storing a high pressure gas underground. How can we ensure that seismic activity doesn't allow a concentrated release of CO2 to inhabited areas where the results could be devastating, as we cannot detect even very high levels of CO2 by our natural senses. Personally my view is that it is pie in the sky thinking, and impossible to do effectively., much less economically. Another perspective is that, and you may like to research this, that when Tyndal 150 years or so ago discovered the property of some gases to trap and re radiate heat energy, he said then that as CO2 concentration in the atmosphere increases it's re radiation effect decreases. Current scientific research has determined that at our present level of 420 or so parts per million, and contrary to the IPCC's assertations, any increase in CO2 concentration will have no measurable effect on climate. The reason being that CO2 traps only a small spectrum of the radiation band that occurs and all of that radiation is already captured, scientists say that CO2 is saturated and reducing the very small amount of CO2 emitted by man is irrelevant. Obviously the many bodies and commercial concerns that climate change mitigation provides large financial rewards are not going to broadcast this science?
What about carbon storages in forests/ecosystems? Maybe that isn't related to engineering as much, but I guess technically you could call it geoengineering :p As I understand it, a lot of misconceptions still exist about planting trees for carbon sequestration and there are a lot of issues regarding biodiversity. In that regard, planting trees (as monoculture and possibly as a production forest) = fast storage, but low residency time of carbon and low biodiversity value, on the other hand, restoring/maintaining intact ecosystems/forests = slower carbon uptake rates, but larger and more resilient carbon stocks and can help reach biodiversity targets as well as emission targets, while still being relatively low in costs (but potentially with very high footprint and possibly competing with agricultural lands). It would be interesting to compare ecosystems as a direct competitor to CCS. After all, photosynthesis is in a sense biological CCS.
That's a really interesting topic and as you have raised there is lots more to it than just "plant trees". I will mention it at least briefly in the upcoming video on alternative CCS techs, but perhaps it deserves its own video later on since it's such a big topic.
Here in the states, I would not let the folks that be say it is too expensive to try. We have spent countless dollars on wars & sending checks to people not to work.
All the commenters here seem like intellectuals. Meanwhile there's, me a C student lol. Very interesting topics though. I enjoy watching these videos even though I'm not particularly familiar with the material. Gave you a thumbs up!
Any ways of using nuclear power to drive carbon capture directly? With sufficient local water supply, nuclear can produce a LOT of steam with no CO2 emissions. Could this steam be used to capture carbon either mechanically or electrically? Possibly driving a compressor via a common axle for liquification?
I don't see why not, except that if you went to the trouble of building a nuclear plant maybe you should just use that for electricity and scrap the fossil fuel plant.
Yup, but not in the way you think. If all electricity was nuclear, solar and wind then the need to burn coal, oil and gas would be drastically reduced. You still have transportation fuels and other CO12producing processes but all nuke electric would go a long way.
Would it be true to say the carbon capture talked about in this video, is then used in other places we use CO2 (e.g. fizzy drinks) or just discharged to the atmosphere? The purposes of those doing it being not to reduce atmospheric carbon, but to meet other needs (prevent damage to processing equipment etc).
What about using an offshore wind turbine to drive a compressor? You could use a gearbox or common axle so the mechanical work is never converted into electricity. Compressed CO2 could be stored underwater at a depth where ambient pressure liquifies CO2, so no pressure vessel would be needed. I was literally thinking about this before watching.
It seems like membrane capture would be useful here based on the video. I'm wondering how additional compressing energy available could be used to improve membrane efficiency, or to provide suction force on the CO2 side of the membrane for compression and storage.
Another random by-product is that you'd have a decent amount of pressurized gas, CO2 or otherwise, which could be used to potentially pressurize the inside of wind turbine blades for additional rigidity/weight savings.
The economics of exclusive carbon capture is prohibitive. But, and you touched on it, in cryogenic processes co2 removing is a 'free' byproduct. It is not the total answer but things like liquid air energy storage would also remove a significant amount of co2.
In Iceland they’re pumping CO2 underground, into volcanic rock formations, literally turning it permanently into stone. This is the only acceptable way to sequester CO2. I don’t know the details of the chemistry, but there are lots of volcanic rock formations around the world, including in the western US. Oil companies should be researching this, given that it’s the only way they’ll be able to oxidize (burn) their product in the future.
Great video, I was wondering if the industrial gas suppliers get their CO2 gas from the atmosphere or if they produce it through some chemical process?
The oilsands companies in Alberta are banking on carbon capture and storage for net zero even though they're plans are vague. I wonder if by 2050 their deposits will be exhausted and will cease operation. Canada has a carbon tax which provides some incentive.
I think it will take some explicit government subsidy in addition to a carbon tax to keep all these projects financially viable and carbon neutral. But that is definitely a possibility as those industries are expert lobbiests.
Is it possible to extract carbon directly from the atmosphere? As I see it, this is a two part problem; we have to stop adding to the carbon in the atmosphere (beyond sustainable rates) and we need to remove carbon already in the atmosphere to reduce it to historic (safe) levels.
Yes it is possible, it's called direct air capture if you want to look it up. I want to make a video on it eventually, it is quite challenging and currently extremely expensive and it uses *a lot* of energy. It's never going to be cheap and widespread enough that we will be able to just keep burning fossil fuels and suck the emissions out of the air. But hopefully it will develop enough that we can use it to reverse at least a small amount of the damage we've already done to the atmosphere.
Hmmm. When they said "carbon capture", I thought they were capturing just carbon, not carbon dioxide. I thought carbon would be a lot easier to store than carbon dioxide. Seems like carbon fiber would make an excellent byproduct. Also, if carbon dioxide becoming a liquid before natural gas would be a good thing, if you are trying to capture it.
CO2 can also be used to make biochar, graphene, artificial diamonds and according to another comment carbon nanotubes, Florida firm Carbotura plans growing hemp in warehouse size hydroponic vertical farms and converting the hemp using two types of plasmas, microwave and pulsed into biochar, graphene and artificial diamonds, starting this year, and bioplastics in the future, there are far too many details for me to remember so please watch 14 mins video Just Have a Think ep Hemp conversion into graphene and diamonds. Smart carbon capture ? June 20 2021. th-cam.com/video/AWwQGb5KWXM/w-d-xo.html Aether Diamonds and Sky Diamonds are making artificial diamonds from atmospheric CO2, California firm NDB, Bristol Uni, UK and spin off firm Arkenlight are conducting R&D into NDB ( Nuclear Diamond Batteries ) with a 5750 year half life, which are artificial diamonds made from recycled radioactive Carbon-14 from retired nuclear power plants graphite blocks which could be used for low power devices e.g. pacemakers, fire alarms, sensors at the top of Volcanoes, space crafts electronics, however NDB firm claim that NDBs can power cars and iPhones is false as the discharge rate is too slow.
Yes, all those things are possible but in most cases incredibly expensive and/or energy intensive currently. Another issue is that in most cases we don't need nearly as much of those products as we have CO2 to get rid of. It is more complex than much of what I have seen reported (though there is some good reporting out there too), I should probably do a whole video just on these issues that you and Jason have raised. Thanks to both of you for raising some really interesting discussion points!
Jason thanks for this comment, lots of aspects that you have mentioned and even more in the JHAT hemp episode. If (when) I make a video on this topic I can see it is going to be a big research effort!
Ha ha, that's an interesting perspective! You are righ that there is a lot of greenwashing around which is good to be sceptical of. But then there are also a lot of things that work but are just really complicated. Like jet engines. And sewing machines (especially overlockers... I have been sewing recently). The process diagrams shown in this video are very complex, but that kind of equipment has been used for decades in the industries mentioned. So they can work, if the financial incentive is great enough. Which it isn't for carbon capture in most applications, and if it were high enough, there would be cheaper ways to avoid most of those emissions.
Hi Rosie thanks for the informative you tube channel. Have you looked at this project at 'Keytah' Moree NSW , on farm plant to produce 3800 tonnes of Urea and save 20,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. It would be good if you could do a video on it and the potential for agriculture.
As an earth scientist who does not want to lose fossil fuels, this method indeed does the job. Yes it has costs but then look at all the coslty wars we have spent money on.
As a chemical engineer with no direct experience with CCS, it never seemed to make sense to that it would be practical to oxidize carbon to CO2 and then capture it a stick it some place. The idea that it would be possible to remove dilute CO2 from the atmosphere via industrial processes never sounded practical, absent cost free energy from advanced nuclear fusion. It seems like this will only happen due massive economic distortions caused by carbon taxes.
hi, it would be great if You could interview the carbón capture company making baking soda. Im sure their system is profitable. Also would be good if You could talk with the icelandic company making methanol from co2
Thanks you for the video. Cryogenic separation of CO2 (making use of the difference in boiling points of different gases in the stream) was not discussed at all, right? Isn't that also prevalent?
So if the tech to make to capture the CO2 is there, then the question is can the CO2 become worth something. A dive into synthetic fuels may be a good follow up, or some other use of the captured CO2.
I’d be interested in bio char as a CCS technology as I understand it charcoal sequesters carbon for geological timescales. I assume char does the same. Given the scale required is it viable or even helpful? For example if we converted all our combustible food and agricultural waste to char, would that remove enough Carbon from the carbon cycle to make a dent in atmospheric CO2
Bio char added to the list! Thanks so much for coming back here to comment (again), it's so appreciated!
I also like that you ask about scale: "if we converted all our combustible waste, would that remove enough?"
@@EngineeringwithRosie scale is the most frightening yet also the most exciting part of the challenge.
Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) which uses the char resulting from biomass pyrolysis as an agricultural amendment (preferably with the right treatment to make it an effective soil builder) is one way to make an actually carbon NEGATIVE fuel. The fuels made from pyrolysis- for instance using GTI/Shell's IH2 process- can be used to replace those "hard to decarbonize" transport applications like jet aircraft and long distance/remote/rural trucking which are not suited to either electrification OR hydrogen- the latter because of hydrogen's terrible logistics problems and its cost. But of course you have a choice- you can either burn the char to make energy to run the pyrolyzer, increasing yield, or you can make the FUEL more expensive by burying the biochar as a way to get carbon credits. Which one you'll do as a business, depends on what incentives you're given, i.e. what the carbon price is. Of course with NO carbon price, youl'll just burn fossils and use the atmosphere like a free public sewer...
@@latemnetlom yeah I was wondering about the economic issue of only partially burning fuel in order to leave char behind. I’d be interested in what percent of the available energy has to left behind. I guess it’s a function of the degree of saturation of the organic compounds.
@@phillipsmith4979 it's about 1/3 of the energy in woody biomass, that ends up as char, which happens to be approximately the amount of energy needed to drive the pyrolysis itself which is endothermic- so usually the char is burned to produce that heat. And if you need to deoxygenate the resulting liquid molecules, you lose quite a bit there too, because you need to do hydrogenolysis, i.e. you "burn" the oxygen molecules out of the liquids using hydrogen. That's where the IH^2 process is very clever- they use the heat from the hydrogenolyis (hydrotreating) reactions to drive the pyrolysis- hence "integrated hydropyrolysis and hydrotreating" (IH^2).
Sorry to everyone who saw this video twice in their feed. I had a problem with my audio export that several viewers were kind enough to point out very quickly, so I took down the original video and replaced it with this one with the audio fixed. I hope this doesn't piss off the TH-cam algorithm too badly!
So….. what happens to the co2? How do they make sure it does not get into the atmospheric over time? If it’s in a salt cavern what happens if say an explosion compromise the cavern and it all escapes. What is the environmental impact of a sudden release of massive amounts of co2?
OH DEAR What a picky lot of spoiled brats. The reason most of us are here is to learn from your expertise and enterprise. Not critique the sound quality.
@@phillargus2757 thanks Phil! That was my first thought too, but then my brother texted me and told me it was practically unlistenable with headphones on. So I made the call to take it down. My sound quality may never be professional, but it should at least not be so distracting that the content isn't accessible.
@@RCdiy great questions and I will add them to the list for the video on storage!
@@RCdiy That is a concern, hence why other processes are being used. Injection into the right kind of rock formations results in carbon remineralisation in roughly a month. The resulting solids don't result in a sudden release of CO2 if a valve or pipe bursts at the surface (though the right kinds of chemical exposure would turn it to gas again). This is the system being used at the Orca installation in Iceland, which has the capacity to sequester 4,000 metric tonnes of CO2/year using low carbon heat and electricity from their abundant geothermal resources. This is still paid for on a voluntary market basis (companies pay for capture and sequestration of x amount at the price the facility owners charge for it based on companies self-set GHG emissions targets), though that may change if more rules around emissions are set and companies have legal limits to their emissions if they want to do business in a given country/with a given customer/etc...
IIRC they use a dry capture system, not the amine process described in this video. They're seeing a ~10% cost reduction per doubling so far with that method.
I'm grateful for serious, scientific, expert-driven content like this. Thank you.
One of the best youtube channels to date. I hope you reach 10m subs
Aww! Thank you so much, what a nice comment 😀
@@EngineeringwithRosie yt subs show how fake you are. so yeah you deserve billions.
Brilliant video. Most people gloss over this and now I can see why. Well done Rosie.
There's a good video on amine systems on Smarter Every Day in his series on nuclear submarines, that's the primary system they use to scrub carbon dioxide from the air on the boat. Regrettably they just vent the CO2 overboard, but it is just from the crew's breath and not fossil sources so it's not strictly pollution.
Thanks for the tip, I will check it out! Another example of where we manage to remove CO2 because we really need to.
@@EngineeringwithRosie Also extremely interesting is "carbon cycle" on the space station. See on Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISS_ECLSS
Basically they introduce (transport to orbit) carbon and hydrogen in food (carbohydrates, fats, etc), and vent them as CO₂, H₂ and CH₄. Water and oxygen are totally recycled.
@@DynamicFortitude Guess I'd better do a visit to the ISS so I can make a video about that 🚀 (that's my secret TH-cam goal, to make a video in space)
@@EngineeringwithRosie You know, the sole reason for the Slow Mo Guy (Gavin) to start a TH-cam channel was to get an USA visa and move to Texas! He needed to demonstrate extraordinary achievement, and after filming video with a giant balloon he got the visa (see video "10 things you may not have known about The Slow Mo Guys" 3 - The Reason)
@@DynamicFortitude ?!
I wish a little more time was spent on how the thermodynamics set the limit on how much energy you need to extract and concentrate CO2 that is mixed into an exhaust stream or the atmosphere. The entropy difference between the mixture and the separated gas streams (one enriched in CO2 the other depleted) sets a minimum energy requirement for separation. Sorting into streams that are 10%/90% of the original CO2 composition is easier than 1%/99% which is easier than 0.1%/99.9%. How much capture/enrichment is enough? Is that level of sorting viable?
That's a great point. It is probably beyond my extremely basic chemistry knowledge to explain that (first learn and then explain). But maybe I can do another interview on the topic.
@@chalichaligha3234 if you define your initial conditions for the input and final conditions for the outputs (say gas mixtures at standard temperature ,0 C, and pressure, 1 atm. Or another relevant T,P benchmark) then you can make an apples to apples comparison between processes. In the ideal case you can calculate the change in entropy due to composition (entropy of mixing en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_of_mixing) and the work done changing the partial pressure of the component gasses. This ideal case is a thermodynamic limit on the entropy and energy changes required of any purification technique. By setting the input and output temperature and pressure to be the same before and after the process the energy required should be a well defined function of the composition of the input mixture and the output mixtures. This is akin to the argument used to construct an ideal Carnot heat engine and the associated limit on efficiency. I suspect there is are more subtle ways of structuring the problem (that I hope our host can find a good expert to elucidate) that show other ways that the efficiency is limited in real world processes just like the Carnot cycle sweeps things under the rug as an idealization of a heat engine.
You're right that thermodynamics sets a (lower) limit on how much energy you need to extract and concentrate CO2 from other gases in an exhaust stream. And the lower the initial concentration of CO2, the higher that thermodynamic lower limit will be. I agree that it would have been nice to have the thermodynamic limits explained. But that's somewhat academic. What a comparison to thermodynamic limits would have shown is that energy consumption for leading processes currently is at least an order of magnitude higher than the thermodynamic minimum. IOW, there's a great deal of room for improvement.
@@rogerarnold5627 Many mature energy conversion processes achieve high efficiencies as compared to their respective ideals (e.g. Electrical motors/generators are typically >80% efficient, combined gas-turbine/steam-turbine power plants operate at near the thermodynamic efficiency limit). The thermodynamic limit is relevant when planning processes at the industrial scale. Your claim of "at least an order of magnitude" difference between real world and ideal energy conversion efficiencies is inaccurate. Finding the relevant thermodynamic limit is more than just an "academic" exercise.
You guys sound like you have some technical knowledge. I do not. But I do know there are no free lunches in nature. This sounds like a free lunch to me.
Meaning you're burning fuel to filter fuel. There must be point of diminishing returns. Even the filter thing, won't that make the system less efficient by slowing down exhaust? I mean the thing is a big air pump right just like the engine in a car right?
Loving your channel, Rosie. I've been watching, listening to and reading about CCS for quite some time now, but this is the first I've seen CCUS mentioned, although many have discussed uses for captured carbon rather than storage.
Thanks! CCUS isn't new, in fact before there was any talk of storage people were already using CO2. The vast majority of "utilised" CO2 is for enhanced oil recovery currently, which is not exactly green. So perhaps that is why you haven't heard so many people talking about it.
ooh! I made a pressure swing molecular sieve thing at home! Doesn't really do much since it's just using a coke bottle as a pressure vessel, but it was a fun project for understanding.
Wow, how cool! Did you take photos or videos? Please share or tag Engineering with Rosie on TH-cam, Facebook or Instagram, I'd love to see!
This is one of the best green energy channels on TH-cam, thank you
Wow, thank you! I really appreciate you saying that 😊
Well done, technically accurate, easy to understand, and correct that the electric power industry doesn't see the value in capturing carbon dioxide, otherwise we'd be doing it already. But a price on carbon, or a value on captured carbon dioxide, could make the difference.
Thanks Rosie... took my knowledge further up the curve. Looking forward to next addition.👍
Thanks for explaining the capture part of CCUS. Very interesting. I suspect that by the time the price on carbon gets high enough to justify CCUS then the economics of renewable power generation and storage will make it redundant. Already there is a solution for industrial high heat applications called electric arc furnaces. Thanks again.
Thanks Rosie. Good stuff.
That's the Carbon Capture part.
Looking forward to the Utilisation and Storage part of the puzzle.
Thank you for sharing this insightful video!
When discussing the IEA's net zero by 2050 roadmap at the beginning of the video, you mentioned that "technology doesn't normally develop like that." However, there are a few notable counterexamples, such as the internet, smartphones, gene editing, AI, machine learning, personal computers, digital photography, social media platforms, 3D printing, and particularly in this field, EVs, solar, and wind energy :)
Coal is carbon that was captured by plants millions of years ago, on a massive scale, at the right cost. The best example of good CCS. Prepared the atmosphere to be just right for us. That carbon should stay where it is. Once we burn the coal we'll never manage to capture all that carbon again.
It is absolutely feasible. The facility I work at makes hydrogen via steam-methane reforming process, then scrubs the entrained CO2 with amine. The end result is >99% pure hydrogen, which is routed to the hydroprocessing units. The pure CO2 is routed via pipeline to a vendor which adds it to carbonated beverages. The process is energy intense, which adds to the cost of gasoline. But consumers absorb the cost, as they always have.
Great video BTW. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for adding your experience! How long has that facility been operating, and what volume is it processing? It seems like there may not be enough carbonated beverages in the world to put much of a dent in the amount of CO2 we need to capture, but I haven't actually done the calculations.
@@EngineeringwithRosie Our facility has been operating in the SF Bay Area since 1969. Our primary products are liquid fuels - gasoline, diesel, LPG. Total throughput averages around 135M BPD. As far as CO2 volume we capture, it's probably in the neighborhood of 100,000 scf per day. We only remove and capture the CO2 from the hydrogen we manufacture because it's a necessary step in refining. But the process could be expanded to capture CO2 from all of the flue gas we emit, which is much greater volume than the hydrogen stream. The vendor we send the CO2 to uses it for a variety of purposes, including dry ice production and welding gasses as well as beverage carbonation. The CO2 capture technology is mature and proven, but as you pointed out it's expensive. And ultimately the cost will be paid by consumers. It would be interesting to compare costs between alternative energy sources and fossil fuels with a carbon capture cost added.
I am a senior scientist working in the development of carbon capture and storage technology with top industries. For consultation in carbon-tech projects, carbon trading, carbon credits, carbon offsets, data-based tech reports, and research-based media content, please feel free to reach out.
I'm a chemist. 13:03 *The economic solution is to find large scale uses for the carbon as carbon dioxide.* Carbon dioxide, CO2, can be used with caustic, magnesium metal, and hydrogen.
With caustic, NaOH, we get soda ash, Na2CO3, which has many uses. One use is for neutralizing water acidity safely. This process leaves CO2 as bicarbonate, HCO3-, in the ocean restoring its alkalinity. With burning magnesium metal for heat, CO2 is an oxidizer. This process leaves carbon as soot/carbon. The magnesium as MgO can be reused to regenerate Mg metal, an energy/fuel.
With renewable hydrogen we can make methane, CH4, which is a synthetic fuel gas with many uses. The hydrogen is left as fresh/drinkable water which has many uses including agriculture.
I am a senior scientist working in the development of carbon capture and storage technology with top industries. For consultation in carbon-tech projects, carbon trading, carbon credits, carbon offsets, data-based tech reports, and research-based media content, please feel free to reach out.
I'm glad to find your fine Channel. I'm glad to see you take a critical look at some of these technologies that are so often presented as being largely faultless. I especially liked your mention that these capture plans have been around for almost 30 years but as yet they have yet to make even a small dent in our CO2 emissions. This is a factor rarely mentioned by most of the proponents. You could also mention some of the plants that no longer capture the CO2, or are about to end that process because it turned out to be not economically viable.
When you do your video regarding the storage aspects of those commercial plants, that have succeeded in capturing a significant portion of their flu gas CO2, you should mention those where the CO2 has been pumped into played-out fossil fuel source reservoirs to extract more fossil fuels that are burned, releasing more CO2 back into the atmosphere. That was part of the original plan since that process would help pay for the extraction of the CO2 from the flu gas. Typically, the promoters of the CO2 extraction part fo the process never mention the end use of the extracted CO2.
Yep you're totally right. I think that all (or at least 2) of the specific carbon capture projects I mentioned in this video used the CO2 for enhanced oil recovery.
Great video.
I think some of these ideas will become viable in time but lower energy consumption along with energy storage of renewables and non CO2 sources of energy are the short to medium term solutions.
We need to take action now as you say, we should not let perfect be the enemy of good.
As the great Richard Feynman said " Reality must take precedence over public relations, as nature cannot be fooled".
I 100% agree with you. I have no idea why energy efficiency isn't a bigger part of our efforts. Well, actually I do have some ideas... I should make a video on that!
@@EngineeringwithRosie . That would be great. Here in the UK we are often paying wind turbine operators not to produce energy because the peak production does not coincide with peak consumption and for commercial reasons along with so much waste.
If people used their spending power and polling cards to encourage better solutions, business and politicians would step up and these things would get done. Sadly we want cheap things and low taxes and that means we drag our heals when it comes to solving the issues.
Keep up the great work!
Great video, Rosie! I'm looking forward to watching the Utilisation & Storage part, as the CO2 underground or sea bottom burial is the one that keeps me confused.
Is CO2 absorbed in some rocks underground or solidified at sea bottom? Is it secure enough to guarantee that CO2 wouldn't escape back into the atmosphere?
The climate gets unstable and for example the methane clatrates will get disrupted. Is there analogy with CO2? Are rising sea temperatures and change of oceanic streams a threat to carbon storage?
Once again, thank you for the vid, you are doing a great job! =)
I can't respond with respect to sea floor storage, but there are multiple mechanisms for permanently storing CO2 underground in saline aquifers. Generally very deep underground say 1 mile.
At these pressures the Brine can hold a certain percentage of the gas in solution. This depends on salinity, temperature and pressure the rock is generally highly permeable with a pore space of 20% or more like a hard sponge. The pore throats are much smaller. Essentially the space between packed sand grains near where they touch. When gas is injected some gas gets trapped in these spaces. 20-80% depending on the rock attributes.
Then there are geologic reactions. Some reactions can happen quickly. Near immediately, others can take hundreds or millions of years depending on rock composition. Generally you don't inject into highly reactivate rock formations because it can result in formation damage where minerals are dissolved and then precipitated somewhere else. This can plug off a well so it can't be injected into anyone.
Anyway. It's generally a lot safer and more permanent that people realize.
Being so deep in the ground that CO2 would have to make it past an extremely large volume of reactive liquids and solids to get near surface fresh water aquifers or be released back into the atmosphere.
I just finished writing a technical report on the viability of CCS technology as a climate change mitigation strategy. I wish I had seen this video a few days ago! Great explanation!
Also, my conclusion and recommendation was that CCS should not be embraced over other options (e.g. renewable energy, efficiency improvements, and habitat conservation). I do think that, years down the line, CCS will play some role in decarbonizing some industries like cement production!
I am a senior scientist working in the development of carbon capture and storage technology with top industries. For consultation in carbon-tech projects, carbon trading, carbon credits, carbon offsets, data-based tech reports, and research-based media content, please feel free to reach out.
Thanks for the video Rosie. For the future carbon capture/storage videos, I would like to know how the carbon will be stored without escaping? If underground isn't that a more difficult process than storing nuclear waste underground? At least nuclear waster is a solid, carbon released from burning fossil fuels is a gas which is presumably more difficult to permanently sequester than solid nuclear waste.
Depends. They are starting some CO2 capture and sequester projects in North Dakota. CO2 is stored in porous rock formations deep underground.
There are multiple different geologic reactions than can happen to permanently store CO2.
Saline brine in the formation itself can store CO2 similar to a can of Coke. There is CO2 that can become permanently trapped in the pores of the rock(20-80%) depending on attributes of the rock. Geochemical reactions can occur either in time scales of minutes to hundreds of years depending on the rock composition. Generally they don't want to inject into extremely reactive formations because they can dissolve and precipitate minerals causing the formation damaging it and causing it to plug off permanently.
There are studies where to have looked at sub surface CO2 injection for sequestration or Enhanced Oil Recovery and the CO2 has stayed in place well.
They can use seismic surveys before, during and after injection to monitor where the CO2 plume goes. Very interesting technologies being developed for more "real time" monitoring in the field too.
@@christopherbeddoe406 carbon capture is complete BS
I am a senior scientist working in the development of carbon capture and storage technology with top industries. For consultation in carbon-tech projects, carbon trading, carbon credits, carbon offsets, data-based tech reports, and research-based media content, please feel free to reach out.
A large coal mine, like _"Black Thunder Coal Mine"_ or _"North Antelope Rochelle Mine"_ produce over 100 million tons of coal a year -- which means each adds nearly 400 million tons of CO2 when this coal is burned. The price of coal is less than $70 / ton.
As another comment has mentioned, Shell Quest project carbon capture project cost 2.3 billion dollars to capture 20 million tons of CO2 over 20 year period. That comes to $115 per ton of CO2, or $420 per ton of coal.
So, we are talking half a trillion dollars initial investment per large coal mine to build carbon capture facilities, and increasing the price of coal by an order of magnitude. This seems like a tall order, and the best form of carbon capture in this case may be leaving it where it already is.
Yes you're right, it is an immense cost. We should be thinking hard about which applications have cheaper decarbonisation solutions and keep CCS for those where that is the cheapest option.
Turquoise H2 production is also pretty promising since most of the C comes out as a solid precipitate that is ultra pure and can be used in place of traditional carbon black sources that need extra steps to reach the same level of purity. Maybe this stored CO2 can be converted in a similar way over time using renewables, releasing O2 and selling the pure carbon black for structural components and eventually for space program habitats (light strong so less fuel to get out of the gravity well) or wind turbine blades. CO2 could also be used for enormous liquid "air" batteries. Just a few ideas on what to do with the CO2 once it's taken out of the air.
Great ideas, better than the normal examples you get when people talk about utilisation (CO2 in drinks, enhanced oil recovery). And I definitely plan to do a video on turquoise hydrogen some day.
This issue ultimately boils down to cost. My question is what is the cost of electricity produced by solar cells, wind etc plus appropriate storage compare to the cost of thermal power station produced electricity plus capture of the CO2 in the flue gasses and then permanent storage.
Yep, you hit the nail on the head. And the answer to your question? The cost of renewables + storage is less than the cost of fossil power stations + CCS. Unless there are large subsidies going to CCS for power, I don't think we will see it there much.
@@EngineeringwithRosie Well, yes and no. The cost of renewables + storage is less than the cost of fossil power stations + CCS if you're willing to put up with frequent extended blackouts when periods of adverse weather deplete all your stored energy. The cost of the "storage" part of renewables + storage increases exponentially as you raise the bar on the reliability of supply. It's not that the specific cost of storage capacity goes up, but that the amount of storage required explodes. There's a corresponding decrease in the utilization of storage. At the extreme for high reliability, battery banks with capacity of hundreds of terawatt-hours may sit idle 99.9% of the time. They may only go through one charge-discharge cycle in a decade, but they still have to be standing by to avoid blackouts from extended once-in-a-decade RE droughts.
That's IF renewables + storage are all you have to go on. Fossil power stations + CCS allow you to get 90% of your energy from renewables + a modest amount of storage, while having a fallback for your energy supply during the times your modest amount of storage runs dry. Unfortunately, it's not 10% of the power that the backup resources will have to supply 100% of the time. That would be nice and economical. But it's closer to 100% of the power 10% of the time. Renewables + storage is a recipe for one power system for the price of two.
@@EngineeringwithRosie Correct me if I'm wrong but the role of CCS is likely to be limited to high value manufacturing processes where CO2 is an unavoidable waste product.
ETA: I just realized you address this at the very end. I look forward to your future video on transport and storage!
This was helpful to learn about but I wish there had been some discussion of the storage piece. Once the CO2 is captured how are we certain that it's not going to be re-released? How are we certain we aren't building ticking time bombs of CO2 release some decades or centuries from now?
The fossil energy industry loves to create externalities. Isn't stored CO2 another externality that isn't accounted for in the costs?
These are much more interesting questions to me than the chemical engineering behind the capture process. We can easily measure how much was captured vs. emitted. But how do we measure how much was successfully stored and safe essentially forever?
I wonder if there is a way clinker production for cement can be done differently so that the CO2 is produced at a higher concentration (or ~100% concentration?) allowing CCS to be used more efficiently/for free? I'm picturing something like what was done with Allam-Cycle power plants and H2 production
CO2 neutral/CO2 negative concrete needs to happen, concrete is just too important to 'switch to alternatives', and it looks like the price of traditional CCS for cement production is just too high, and raising the carbon price will only make concrete too expensive if we don't find a better process for it
That's a great question. One I've had too, and like the motivation for this video it made me realise that I don't know a whole lot about cement production. That's a whole video on its own I think!
Disclaimer i guess: I'm a bit of a nerd (NOT an expert, but some knowledge i guess) on CCS, so feel free to share knowlege/expertise and add any corrections!
BUT if i remember correctly Limestone-> Cement is mainly done via heat, and modern systems can use a rotary filn which if i remember correctly, just needs heat, and produces CO2 (+ impurities). Some older "Lime Kilns" were similar to blast furnaces, and used/use Coke (from coal usually, although some have used Petroleum-Coke, or Petcoke, and also some use Refuse Derived Fuel/Tire Derived Fuel (Mainly granulated/shredded old tires). The more "modern" design is a Rotary Kiln and uses some sort of burner in the middle to heat it, can be pulverized solid fuel, or gas, or fuel oil etc. This could be adapted to Hydrogen/Bio/Synthetic Methane, i guess, but need to ask an expert on all that
"Direct Reduced Iron (DRI)" is the (potentially) decarbonized (and easily adaptable to CCS, as you pointed out). It uses Fluidized Bed Reactors (essentially a "hot air popper", but for chemistry, not popcorn), and for DRI that is a reducing gas, so syngas (Carbon Monoxide + Hydrogen), or even hydrogen
This can be adapted to Lime Kilns as well i would imagine, although i don't know if there are any plans for this as of now.
(Also just looked up that "Allam power cycle" you mentioned, and yeah "Oxy-Fuel Combustion" /gasification etc does make a lot of the flue gas processing easier! )
It does need oxygen/air separation, and i don't know how that effects efficiency versus the methods discussed in this method, and just air combustion/gasification, but yeah
Outside of if it uses a mixed in fuel for heating, smelting uses a reducing, and cement an inert atmosphere if i remember correctly, so that isn't entirely the same.
Also by having all these plants/processes grouped together into larger industrial parks, you can share heat/industrial gasses more, so that can help with things like that (use waste flue gas/process heat for cement/metal gas heating etc)
*Bit of a rant, but that's what i have read/know, and i a agree 100% that decarbonization of cement and metals is CRITICAL*
Thanks for the nice overview of current carbon capture processes. Please include „enhanced olivine weathering“ as promoted by project vesta in one of your next videos.
Some Fermi-estimates of the inputs needed and the timescale for this to capture significant amounts of co2 would be super interesting.
Great suggestion! It is on my list.
Looking forward to the next in the series!
Interesting video. Great point about CCS for steel vs. CCS for power by the gentleman.
My spontaneous thought on carbon capture is the most efficient place to do it is at an carbon emitting process.
And the carbon can not be told to jump in a container so we need energy and/or materials to capture it.
That new energy consumption may release more carbon witch need to be captured - that will reduce efficiency and increase cost per kg carbon and investment.
This recourses (money, materials and energy) would be better used to install permanent carbon free energy / sustainable energy production. The maintenance cost is usually lower too.
One of my point being ---> carbon that's never released -- don't need to be captured.
Also compare how effective recourses is used for CCS vs if we used it for new sustainable energy.
Thks Rosie for bringing this that educate us all. I like your program. Pls continue.
This is the best video on carbon capture technologies. Please do more! :)
Thanks for video. Very enlightening. Always wondered why there was no emphasis on carbon capture. It's $.😒
Thank you, I'm a chemical engineer, that planning to use CLC to capture CO2, thanks for this this
So what is the right amont of CO2 for the atmosphere? What happens if we capture too much?
Great answer -- sad answer ... th-cam.com/video/RLnQo8l-BHc/w-d-xo.html
Excellent video, very informative. Very much looking forward to the next in the series.
So expensive and large use of energy CCS is not feasible. It would be interesting to learn more how we might augment natural processes that sequester carbon like for instance ocean biology that makes calcium carbonate. This is the one system that has the capacity to be THE answer.
Great suggestion, thanks. I'll add it to my list for the future CCS video!
@@EngineeringwithRosie I do not know if this is going to work as well as expected, but it seems scalable: _"Project Vesta plans to spread a green volcanic mineral known as olivine, ground down to the size of sand particles, across one of the beaches. The waves will further break down the highly reactive material, accelerating a series of chemical reactions that pull the greenhouse gas out of the air and lock it up in the shells and skeletons of mollusks and corals."_
@@cogoid I did hear of this a while back only briefly. thanks for the reminder - it will be one to mention in the emerging CCS tech video .
In the United States, the EPA takes around 2 years to give you a permit to sequester CO2 into a reservoir PER well which maybe can only handle 1 - 2 MMtpy CO2.
Is that right? I actually have no concept whether that is fast or slow. I do know that many of the really large solar and wind farms are applying for environmental permits 5 or more years before they plan to start building, so perhaps 2 years to make sure that a site is suitable for CO2 storage is not that slow. But you have certainly raised a good point, that it is an extra complication for these types of projects. And I guess it will only get harder if a lot of the easier sites get filled and they need to move on to less suitable sites.
@@EngineeringwithRosie There are various permitting requirements in the US and it definitely adds a bit of uncertainty to any project. The Class VI injection well permit is something you'd have to get on top of the above ground permits. It can get especially hairy if you tack that onto a refinery or power plant permitting process.
Nice presentation on CCS. I think that in addition to dealing flue gas and like it seems like we're going to need to strip CO2 out of the atmosphere in general, even if we can lower our emissions to close to zero, it really seems like we're going to need to sequester gigatonnes of CO2 per year for quite a while, if we want to get ourselves back to something resembling preindustrial climate... except all of that heat stored in the oceans.
I agree, but it is a much much harder challenge than it might appear. Currently direct air capture is so energy intensive that unless it is run on 100% green energy it can actually emit more CO2 than it captures. So the technology is some way away (though I'm sure it will eventually be part of the solution), we'd better not bank on much direct air capture any time soon and concentrate on reducing our emissions to zero.
I think Prof Mark Z. Jacobson Stanford Uni, USA said to Robert Llewellyn ( the actor who plays the android Kryten in the classic tv sci-fi comedy series Red Dwarf which is still being made ) in the podcast Fully Charged show ep 100% renewable energy ? Can it REALLY ever be reality 1 Mar 2020 that at a coal plant in the USA, CCS was added but to power the CCS plant the firm installed a diesel generator which he said was a complete disaster and it resulted in more pollution. @@EngineeringwithRosie
Rosie, I definitely agree that we need to drive emissions to near zero and that banking on any one technology would be a bad idea, but it seems like at this point we’re going to have to pull it out of the atmosphere no matter what. The zero emissions seems a given at this point. More innovations required for sure. With wind and solar becoming quite cheap, it might be feasible to use them to power this sector.
Thanks Rosie, very appropriate questions answered...... can you come up with video on H2 refueling stations...
Thanks Rosie. Have a look at Lanzatech, they are finally getting some traction.
I will, thanks!
Hey - FYI, check out a company called Opus 12, first I think you'll like the founders and also, they have a very good take on carbon capture and turning it into something useful. Storage isn't the best solution IMO, they take it a step further, with a batter catalyst, means better efficiency, means lower cost for the CO, which means lower cost for molecules in fuels and plastics.
Fabulous! Thank you for this explainer video :)
Glad you enjoyed it!
Could you look at direct air capture technologies such as of Carbyon as well?
Will do! Thanks for the suggestion.
Thoughtful coverage of a politically sensitive issue Rosie, as always an interesting insight. Another Australian insight into Carbon Capture on youtube, that is a little more explicit in its driving factors is: "Honest Government Ad | Carbon Capture & Storage"
I hope so (in the future and on a large scale). Nowadays, I see batteries much far away of aviation industry yet; captured Carbon may play a key role in synthetic fuel manufacturing, even for cargo maritime transport.
Nice video.
I've got a video coming up soon on carbon utilisation, including synthetic fuels. Thanks for the comment!
Was there a follow up on carbon storage? Most videos on TH-cam focus on the capture bit. Great video btw
Thank you Rosie, super interesting and I love your channel. Would you please give me your honest opinion on how effective this all might be? I know that it theoretically 'works' but I really struggle to have much optimism for the future of the planet (or more specifically, the ability for human civilisation to continue as it is). Is there really any source of hope?
I think that we'll need it, but it's not going to do any of the "heavy lifting". It's often promoted as a single solution to the energy transition, like we'll just stick CCS on all our coal power plants and carry on as normal. And you could do that, if you were prepared to pay a whole lot more than it would cost to just swap to renewables plus storage. I think it will be restricted to the really hard to abate applications like cement.
Thanks for your comment, unfortunately I had to take this video down to repair an audio issue, so I will be reuploading here if you want to comment on the public video:
th-cam.com/video/fC388uNJhUY/w-d-xo.html
@@EngineeringwithRosie Thank You for this opinion. CCS might be what works with cement production. I had skipped ahead to hear the 20 to 30 percent of generated energy needed to run CCS & knew it just will not work. Unless perhaps a technology breakthru on the order of a 10X increase in energy efficiency to CCS.
Great video! As a new technology, I would like to see you look at the pros and cons of Proton Technologies process of making blue hydrogen in the well prior to extraction and then extracting only the hydrogen, leaving the CO2 in the well deep under ground. They clam that it’s cheaper than trying to extract the methane since H2 is lighter than CH4 (or CO2).
(Very slightly) apropos of carbon capture are LPPFusion's claims about what they can do once they solve their engineering challenges (mostly just handwavium attached to their fundraising pitch, since pure engineering challenges aren't interesting to most investors). While a video on them would be fascinating, a tie-in with this is "given a small modular reactor, whatever results from a successful post-breakeven fusion pinch, or other very dense but not absurdly-sized energy "cell", how would that be able to leverage existing CC(U)S or other decarbonisation kit as a non-grid-based value add? Or more generally -- how could a heat engine engage with carbon capture without going through a lossy electricity-generation phase first?
is a wet electrostatic precipitator used in the process for treating the exhaust emission?
I saw a video somewhere where plant gaz was move to a chimical reactor containing sea weeds and with the sun, the see weeds grows in the reactor after some times, the water is filtered out and processed to give another fuel that can be use inside the power plant. I know its very vague but it seemed promising
I'm very interested in the prospect of using algae for carbon capture.
It doesn't require any chemical manufacturing and can create another source of revenue. Algae can be used for food or biofuels.
For new investments fossil fuel power generation already has trouble competing with renewable power, solar and or wind power. If you increase the cost of fossil fuel power generation by adding CCS, and, add energy costs, it will be cheaper to build a combination of solar and wind, and a decent amount of batteries, and or other storage. The cost of new solar and wind power, as well as batteries is still decreasing. In my opinion we should focus on replacing fossil fuels, not spend a lot of money in decreasing emissions from them. Even adding CCS systems to existing power plants represents huge investments, and doesn't solve the problems.
If enough money is spent on a technology it will become better and cheaper. So, the question is, should we spend a lot of money on CCS, so it will become a bit better, and a bit cheaper, and the emissions/pollution from fossil power generation can be less bad, or should that money go to alternatives to fossil fuels so the fossil fuels gets replaced.
Photosynthesis can capture CO2 direct from the atmosphere, cyanobacteria has done that for billions of years. While photosynthesis has low energy efficiency, it can still be a very cost effective way to capture CO2 out of the atmosphere. Biochar can be produced from biomass, and the biochar can be used for soil improvement, making the soil able to hold more water and nutrients. Also biochar keeps carbon "locked" for a very very long time.
I 100% agree with you.
Very nice video, thanks! But.. did I miss something? One of your sheets also listed ‘cryogenic capture’, meaning CCS as part of LNG liquifying process. I saw a video of Highview Enterprises which uses liquifying air and also storing the heat as part of a liquid air battery (using excess electricity to power the process, and generating electricity by turning the liquid air into high-pressure gas again tp power a gas turbine). Wouldn’t it possible to separate the liquid CO2 as part of this process? Or is the captured volume simply too small even for a very large battery to justify the extra cost?
After Matt Ferrell published the youtube video Undecided with Matt Ferrell ep Liquid Air Battery Explained - Rival to Lithium Ion Batteries ? Oct 6 2020, he was asked in comments about this, he answered yes in the podcast Still To Be Determined ep Full of Hot Air 12 October 2020, different gases don't liquify at the same temperatures so CO2 becomes a liquid at -196 °C and can be separated from the other gases.
Yes that's exactly how it works - you cool the gas mixture (to very low temps) and the CO2 comes out first. I did discuss this briefly with Marc, but to keep the video length manageable I only included technologies that are actually used in industry. Crogenic capture is extremely energy intensive relative to the other options, so it's rarely used.
When the air is liquified, the volume is reduced by a factor 400, so I’m told. But CO2 only takes 0.038% of the volume of the atmospheric air, so my guess is that ‘siphoning off’ the liquid CO2 may be too complicated. On the other hand, they will have to remove the water as well, which obviously is the first component that ‘liquifies’.
Sorry, made a mistake: the volume reduction is actually a factor 700. Matt Ferrell made a convincing argument for Liquid Air Batteries, and as Javier Canada (of Highview Enterprises) points out, their process is based on the production of liquid Nitrogen, Oxygen and other gasses out of thin air, so the technology is basically there and simply needs to be scaled up.
The steep curve for proposed utilization has never bothered me. The quantity as been basically zero, but that's because the price has also been basically zero. Whatever level is economically feasible to start immediately, the startup slope to that level could be nearly vertical if it just became politically feasible to put a price on it at all.
Yep, that's the question isn't it? I don't hold out hope for a price on carbon in Australia any time soon, but it is clear that is what is needed to make a rational choice between the different technology options.
- the existing carbon captures seem to work under special conditions, sometimes it seems in smaller sizes.
- The carbon capture in the process of LPG for me is not representative - you simply cool the raw product and the CO2 falls out early.
For me an open question is: Will those mentioned processes also work behind the ordinary power plant or behind a steel producing plant - there you have huge amounts of gas and that gas is pretty hot.
There is an effective, cheap and secure CCS solution right there in front of us now. Leave it in the ground.
agree!
What I find exciting it algae plastics. If they can work with carbon capturing companies to recycle CO2 into organic plastic products, I think this could make carbon capture a more viable concept, maybe even create jobs for inhospitable areas like regional Australia or the Sahara Desert.
The idea of creating a whole economy around CO2 and carbon recycling is a very tantalising concept.
Wow, that is a bold idea. I hadn't heard of that before but I will look into it! It seems the Australian desert is going to be full of clean energy project within a couple of decades, what with all the huge wind/solar/hydrogen/ammonia projects in planning. And now potentially this! I hope the developers working on these projects work out better ways to work with the traditional owners living on those lands better than some of the mining companies have up until now! (not that all the mining companies have been bad, many are working really constructively with traditional owners).
By the way, thanks so much for coming back here to comment (again), it's so appreciated!
@@EngineeringwithRosie
Yeah, business insider recently did an article on it, the company was trying to make fuel originally but after 10 years of trying to make it profitable they've resorted to making plastic foams for sandle production.
@@Zappyguy111 Interesting pivot!
I saw a presentation from the Canadian government over 10 years ago with a similarly implausible graph showing CCS use skyrocketing starting "right now" to meet emissions obligations. It all feels rather cynical.
Yes if you don't also talk about the cost to do it, it sounds like a perfect solution that would allow us to solve climate change without changing anything much at all. So I really think we need to be careful how we talk about carbon capture so that people don't get the idea that it will solve all our problems.
@@EngineeringwithRosie I agree completely, I just fear that policymakers are misleading the public with plans that rely on wildly optimistic projections of the role that CCS will play in mitigating climate change, and have been doing so for some time.
this is incredible! thank you!
Great video, thanks. The obvious answer to make this a viable option for more industrial processes is to tax carbon emissions. Heavily. Let's hope more countries get around to that.
I am a pessimist by nature, so I am not that hopeful! But the funny thing about carbon capture is that as soon as you install it somewhere you automatically have a carbon price. You know how much it cost to add CCS, you know how many tonnes of CO2 it will capture, so therefore you have a price per tonne CO2 abated. What you don't get without a carbon tax is a *value* for that CO2. I mean, not a value in a form that fossil fuel companies are paying any attention to.
@@EngineeringwithRosie To give an example, a carbon price set at the right level would enable a facility with CCS to compete with one without, whereas now it cannot because its operating costs are higher. It would also encourage innovation in the field, because reducing emissions through CCS or any other means will result in lower tax exposure. I am not a big fan of CCS for other reasons, but I am a huge fan of carbon taxation.
Thought you might enjoy this th-cam.com/video/MSZgoFyuHC8/w-d-xo.html
Thanks Rosie. Can you ask the next expert about geo-sequestration of captured carbon please? What technologies are used to ensure the carbon does not just come back out of the ground? Like many people, I think CC&S technology is completely bogus, but I'd be happy to be shown why I'm wrong.
I'm not one who thinks it's bogus, but I do think that the cost and complexity is severely downplayed. And I think that is a very dangerous thing to do, because if carbon capture sounds cheap and easy then governments are of course going to go with that option instead of the renewables + storage option.
I only know a little bit about storage for now (before I interview an expert!), but I believe one of the biggest challenges is finding a suitable location. There isn't a salt cavern or other appropriate geological formation under every fossil power plant or other proposed CCS site. And where you have to use suboptimal storage locations, you get big problems and CO2 gets released that was promised not to be. See Gorgon in Western Australia for a recent example of problems getting the storage part working.
I'm looking forward to finding out more about this topic, and it sounds like I'm not the only one keen to dive into all the complexity 😀
I appreciate the elaboration. As for the skepticism, the best summary not "it does not". Like it eats 30% of energy use of power plants, without considering where to store it and potential risks with that? It that _really_ going to viable?
Furthermore, i much doubt that steel making CO2 producing is "hard" to avoid. Nor hydrogen..
And i add your "value" is an euphemism for money... That they've suggested hydrogen for "green" cars, and even as power source via iron dust(!) but it's suddenly "hard" when we just want to make hydrogen or steel? It's really about money which is not an issue when it's (dutch)propaganda-slash-student-research project.
But i really don't want to be harsh, i really appreciate the elaboration, this channel goes into specifics sometimes that are really often missing in other sources. (that i've noticed at least)
Odd, few people talk about CCS in agriculture, including grazing. After all plants have been been capturing Carbon by breaking down CO2 and H2 to make sugars that ultimately lead to Carbon being store in the ground for at least 400 million years. That process drives plant growth but also feeds the underground biome that ultimately produces soil which in turn holds roughly three times more time carbon than the atmosphere. Almost all land dwelling life ultimately depends on soil. Plants in the seas and fresh water also drive all aquatic life.
We should seriously encourage farmers and ranchers to seek to sequester carbon.
When those plants that captured CO2 die, microbes and biota get to work immediately decomposing the plant returning the CO2 to the atmosphere in days months a few years, not 400 M years. Multi million year uptake of CO2 requires the chemical reaction with rock, not scattering in a farmers field .
Green fruit barring plants are my favorite carbon capture system
Rosie,
I think you will find that just capturing, as you allude to is the easy part.
Firstly get into perpective the volumes we are talking about, in the giga tonnes and to store all that volume means very high pressures to be able to store it. That, as I'm sure you are aware requires a lot of power. There is also the safety aspect of storing a high pressure gas underground. How can we ensure that seismic activity doesn't allow a concentrated release of CO2 to inhabited areas where the results could be devastating, as we cannot detect even very high levels of CO2 by our natural senses.
Personally my view is that it is pie in the sky thinking, and impossible to do effectively., much less economically.
Another perspective is that, and you may like to research this, that when Tyndal 150 years or so ago discovered the property of some gases to trap and re radiate heat energy, he said then that as CO2 concentration in the atmosphere increases it's re radiation effect decreases. Current scientific research has determined that at our present level of 420 or so parts per million, and contrary to the IPCC's assertations, any increase in CO2 concentration will have no measurable effect on climate. The reason being that CO2 traps only a small spectrum of the radiation band that occurs and all of that radiation is already captured, scientists say that CO2 is saturated and reducing the very small amount of CO2 emitted by man is irrelevant.
Obviously the many bodies and commercial concerns that climate change mitigation provides large financial rewards are not going to broadcast this science?
Hi,
Please, what are the researchable topics on CCS?
Irene.
brilliant video, thanks Rosie.
What about carbon storages in forests/ecosystems? Maybe that isn't related to engineering as much, but I guess technically you could call it geoengineering :p As I understand it, a lot of misconceptions still exist about planting trees for carbon sequestration and there are a lot of issues regarding biodiversity. In that regard, planting trees (as monoculture and possibly as a production forest) = fast storage, but low residency time of carbon and low biodiversity value, on the other hand, restoring/maintaining intact ecosystems/forests = slower carbon uptake rates, but larger and more resilient carbon stocks and can help reach biodiversity targets as well as emission targets, while still being relatively low in costs (but potentially with very high footprint and possibly competing with agricultural lands).
It would be interesting to compare ecosystems as a direct competitor to CCS. After all, photosynthesis is in a sense biological CCS.
That's a really interesting topic and as you have raised there is lots more to it than just "plant trees". I will mention it at least briefly in the upcoming video on alternative CCS techs, but perhaps it deserves its own video later on since it's such a big topic.
Here in the states, I would not let the folks that be say it is too expensive to try. We have spent countless dollars on wars & sending checks to people not to work.
4:43 “It’s the same drawing” 🤣
Yeah that made me laugh too!
Very informative Thank you!
All the commenters here seem like intellectuals. Meanwhile there's, me a C student lol. Very interesting topics though. I enjoy watching these videos even though I'm not particularly familiar with the material. Gave you a thumbs up!
Any ways of using nuclear power to drive carbon capture directly? With sufficient local water supply, nuclear can produce a LOT of steam with no CO2 emissions. Could this steam be used to capture carbon either mechanically or electrically? Possibly driving a compressor via a common axle for liquification?
I don't see why not, except that if you went to the trouble of building a nuclear plant maybe you should just use that for electricity and scrap the fossil fuel plant.
Yup, but not in the way you think. If all electricity was nuclear, solar and wind then the need to burn coal, oil and gas would be drastically reduced. You still have transportation fuels and other CO12producing processes but all nuke electric would go a long way.
Most engineers have never read something, but never experienced the deliverables towards the greater good
Would it be true to say the carbon capture talked about in this video, is then used in other places we use CO2 (e.g. fizzy drinks) or just discharged to the atmosphere?
The purposes of those doing it being not to reduce atmospheric carbon, but to meet other needs (prevent damage to processing equipment etc).
I’m trying to figure out why they are fixing to build a huge plant in Louisiana. It’s a huge project.
What about using an offshore wind turbine to drive a compressor? You could use a gearbox or common axle so the mechanical work is never converted into electricity.
Compressed CO2 could be stored underwater at a depth where ambient pressure liquifies CO2, so no pressure vessel would be needed.
I was literally thinking about this before watching.
It seems like membrane capture would be useful here based on the video. I'm wondering how additional compressing energy available could be used to improve membrane efficiency, or to provide suction force on the CO2 side of the membrane for compression and storage.
Another random by-product is that you'd have a decent amount of pressurized gas, CO2 or otherwise, which could be used to potentially pressurize the inside of wind turbine blades for additional rigidity/weight savings.
Interesting idea, it's always nice to remove energy transformations to claw back a bit of efficiency!
What about the storage? Did I miss that?
No you didn't miss it, this video was on capture and I will do a separate video on storage. Check back in a month or two for that one!
The economics of exclusive carbon capture is prohibitive. But, and you touched on it, in cryogenic processes co2 removing is a 'free' byproduct. It is not the total answer but things like liquid air energy storage would also remove a significant amount of co2.
In Iceland they’re pumping CO2 underground, into volcanic rock formations, literally turning it permanently into stone. This is the only acceptable way to sequester CO2. I don’t know the details of the chemistry, but there are lots of volcanic rock formations around the world, including in the western US. Oil companies should be researching this, given that it’s the only way they’ll be able to oxidize (burn) their product in the future.
Great video, I was wondering if the industrial gas suppliers get their CO2 gas from the atmosphere or if they produce it through some chemical process?
The oilsands companies in Alberta are banking on carbon capture and storage for net zero even though they're plans are vague. I wonder if by 2050 their deposits will be exhausted and will cease operation. Canada has a carbon tax which provides some incentive.
I think it will take some explicit government subsidy in addition to a carbon tax to keep all these projects financially viable and carbon neutral. But that is definitely a possibility as those industries are expert lobbiests.
Why wouldn't the nitrogen particles also be desirable to remove from the air? Aren't nitrogen oxides also a powerful greenhouse gas?
Is it possible to extract carbon directly from the atmosphere? As I see it, this is a two part problem; we have to stop adding to the carbon in the atmosphere (beyond sustainable rates) and we need to remove carbon already in the atmosphere to reduce it to historic (safe) levels.
Yes it is possible, it's called direct air capture if you want to look it up. I want to make a video on it eventually, it is quite challenging and currently extremely expensive and it uses *a lot* of energy. It's never going to be cheap and widespread enough that we will be able to just keep burning fossil fuels and suck the emissions out of the air. But hopefully it will develop enough that we can use it to reverse at least a small amount of the damage we've already done to the atmosphere.
No mention of enhanced weathering techniques. Those are likely to be the only things which can massively scale up.
Hmmm. When they said "carbon capture", I thought they were capturing just carbon, not carbon dioxide. I thought carbon would be a lot easier to store than carbon dioxide. Seems like carbon fiber would make an excellent byproduct. Also, if carbon dioxide becoming a liquid before natural gas would be a good thing, if you are trying to capture it.
CO2 can also be used to make biochar, graphene, artificial diamonds and according to another comment carbon nanotubes, Florida firm Carbotura plans growing hemp in warehouse size hydroponic vertical farms and converting the hemp using two types of plasmas, microwave and pulsed into biochar, graphene and artificial diamonds, starting this year, and bioplastics in the future, there are far too many details for me to remember so please watch 14 mins video Just Have a Think ep Hemp conversion into graphene and diamonds. Smart carbon capture ? June 20 2021.
th-cam.com/video/AWwQGb5KWXM/w-d-xo.html
Aether Diamonds and Sky Diamonds are making artificial diamonds from atmospheric CO2, California firm NDB, Bristol Uni, UK and spin off firm Arkenlight are conducting R&D into NDB ( Nuclear Diamond Batteries ) with a 5750 year half life, which are artificial diamonds made from recycled radioactive Carbon-14 from retired nuclear power plants graphite blocks which could be used for low power devices e.g. pacemakers, fire alarms, sensors at the top of Volcanoes, space crafts electronics, however NDB firm claim that NDBs can power cars and iPhones is false as the discharge rate is too slow.
Yes, all those things are possible but in most cases incredibly expensive and/or energy intensive currently. Another issue is that in most cases we don't need nearly as much of those products as we have CO2 to get rid of. It is more complex than much of what I have seen reported (though there is some good reporting out there too), I should probably do a whole video just on these issues that you and Jason have raised.
Thanks to both of you for raising some really interesting discussion points!
Jason thanks for this comment, lots of aspects that you have mentioned and even more in the JHAT hemp episode. If (when) I make a video on this topic I can see it is going to be a big research effort!
My perspective is if it seems confusing it probably doesn't work and they can and do manipulate the numbers...
Ha ha, that's an interesting perspective! You are righ that there is a lot of greenwashing around which is good to be sceptical of. But then there are also a lot of things that work but are just really complicated. Like jet engines. And sewing machines (especially overlockers... I have been sewing recently). The process diagrams shown in this video are very complex, but that kind of equipment has been used for decades in the industries mentioned. So they can work, if the financial incentive is great enough. Which it isn't for carbon capture in most applications, and if it were high enough, there would be cheaper ways to avoid most of those emissions.
has the economics map included carbon reuse as an alternative to permanent storage?
Hi Rosie thanks for the informative you tube channel. Have you looked at this project at 'Keytah' Moree NSW , on farm plant to produce 3800 tonnes of Urea and save 20,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year. It would be good if you could do a video on it and the potential for agriculture.
As an earth scientist who does not want to lose fossil fuels, this method indeed does the job. Yes it has costs but then look at all the coslty wars we have spent money on.
Great video!
Thanks!
As a chemical engineer with no direct experience with CCS, it never seemed to make sense to that it would be practical to oxidize carbon to CO2 and then capture it a stick it some place. The idea that it would be possible to remove dilute CO2 from the atmosphere via industrial processes never sounded practical, absent cost free energy from advanced nuclear fusion. It seems like this will only happen due massive economic distortions caused by carbon taxes.
hi, it would be great if You could interview the carbón capture company making baking soda. Im sure their system is profitable. Also would be good if You could talk with the icelandic company making methanol from co2
Please talk about Ecosia they are a search engine that plants tress
Thanks you for the video.
Cryogenic separation of CO2 (making use of the difference in boiling points of different gases in the stream) was not discussed at all, right? Isn't that also prevalent?
So if the tech to make to capture the CO2 is there, then the question is can the CO2 become worth something. A dive into synthetic fuels may be a good follow up, or some other use of the captured CO2.