This is the best eco-tech channel out there. Only balanced and relevant information, all in 13 minutes, amazing stuff! Other channels give you lot of wanna-be tech but never question cost or usability. Rosie does extremely great job answering these basic questions, very well done!
Rosie, I think this might be one of your best videos ever. I think what I enjoyed most is that you gave voice to a whole team of very interesting people. Overall, I think it’s best when you bring out the best in the people you are talking to and let them tell us their story. So thank you very much for working so much and so hard to bring these people onto my screen.
I applaud you for stepping up the technical production and adding extra voices! The dialogue level was a little jumpy (professional audio engineer) but the source dialogue was pretty good for being recorded with prosumer gear in the field! I'm glad you used a camera op to more completely tell the story. When it comes to cost, society is paying for the global extraction of wealth and natural resources over the past 300 years. Governments should continue to step up both carrot and stick approaches to reverse the damage to the planet by colonization and industrialization. In the United States our political and current judicial system allows virtually unbridled and legal corruption of lawmakers by industry. Industry can spend a few million to get billions in cost reductions through the form of lax or rolled back regulations. As for the techno-optimism, because of the power of existing stake holders and the societal gains of industrialization, short of a great calamity such as the plot of Star Trek that remakes human society through massive destruction and loss of life (I believe the story goes that the Federation was formed post WW3) implementation of new technology on a massive scale is our best hope for saving our planet and as many lives as possible. Only the privileged few can move to the country and live off grid, and that privilege still relies on the exploitation of the majority, the majority of course being poor/middle class.
Rosie, you can't consider being a techno-optimist as an insult. It is only the techo-optimists who actually install stuff and make real progress. Without them, livery stables would still be an important business.
And so, notably, would be horseshit. Critics of techno-optimism tend to portray proposed solutions to modern ecological problems as claims of panacea. This is disingenuous or delusional. If there are problems or deficiencies introduced by new technology, they are typically a result of skewed economic incentives of unrestrained capitalism. When externalities are thoroughly accounted for by good governance, the best way forward involves technology. Simply, the problem isn't technology, it's governance.
Great -this helps concrete companies all of whom need this expertise and these new processes. And cuts a variety of pollutants at the source level. Excellent!
Another great video. How fantastic to see some really clever innovation being done by a little Aussie business. With time they should iron out any final kinks and be set to be a player in reducing CO2 emissions in this important sector. Rosie continues to do a terrific job with this channel. This sort of innovation is where funding through the federal government climate program should really be able to boost further tech innovations.
This is the first time I've heard the term "techno optimist" - I had to look it up. Surely any reasonable person would have to agree that our two choices are either to dramatically advance our technology so it is more environmentally friendly, OR eliminate nearly all technology and along with it the vast majority of the human race in order to heal nature. I like the first choice better. Your videos fit some portion of my need for edutainment. Thank you for making them!
Adjusting behavior and making better choices also helps. Wood as a building material that captures carbon , reusing metals and plastics. I'm also less concerned about the carbon and more about the actual toxic and poisonous side products.
@@aliendroneservices6621the problem is not the technology advance. It's the consumer behaviors that could derive from it Advances to reduce energy usage or emissions are always welcome, but we need people to understand that doesn't mean we get to use that advance to produce more Which, I have to admit, it's no easy task
@@drillerdev4624 I didn't say either was a problem. You don't get any technology-advance unless you *_first increase power-consumption._* The greatest threat to future generations is *_energy-conservation._*
Techno-optimist is someone arguing that all of our problems can be solved in time with purely technological solutions without any noticable change in their lives, even if such change will not have a significant impact on their actual quality of life. Or at least thats the understanding. What this term means in practice varies widely and is not always reasonable.
Great video, thanks Rosie! Super interesting topic and thanks for sharing your enthusiasm :) Side note: it's interesting to see that there are a lot of different pathways for cement: I recently read about Hoffman Green Cement who are creating a "green" cement by curcumventing the clinker and using slag and additives instead apparently. They have just poured a couple of wind turbines foundations in western France with the stuff.
Another great episode! If geek kind of means interested in how things works, count me in. If techno-optimist is used as an insult, that says more of those who think it's such a bad thing, especially if it's used as an Ad hominem "argument". Decarbonating cement production is a very interesting topic, even if it's unlikely to lead to reductions in emissions on a global relevant scale anytime soon. If the process can be powered by electric power, and if the process rate can be adjusted at least to some degree to the situation on the grid, maybe some of the extra cost can be offset, by utilizing more power when it's cheap. And that could potentially make the production have less negative, or straight out positive impact on the grid. I don't know how realistic that is, I guess it would be hard to get industry representatives to even seriously contemplate the idea of willingly reducing production rate, even if it's temporary. Back to techno-optimism, humanity have solved a lot of problems, and while it's true new problems has been created, we've solved, or are solving those too, or have learned our lessons. The history of energy is quite telling, starting with the use of fire, which eventually led to some areas running out of wood, which was part of the reason humans started to use coal in the first place. Then we added whale oil, petroleum oil, natural gas, on top of all that coal. We have realized that we need to stop burning fossil fuels, and we have developed alternatives, and started to displace fossil fuels. There were no time in history where we had a lifestyle that would be sustainable for billions of people, we can't keep relying on fossil fuels indefinitely, we can't go back to whale oil, and we can't go back to burning wood as the main energy source for humanity. Neither stagnation or regression can be sustainable, that leaves progress.
Ooh, thanks for the reminder! You can find it here www.pardaloteconsulting.com/blog/engineering-with-rosie-sponsorship-policy And I'll just add it to the description now.
I think you touch a key point at the end: this tech may be cheaper than amine or oxyfuel CCS for cement, but will *still* add costs... carbon tax (with CBAM) can force the issue but the public need to come to a "new normal" and accept that the low cost of emissions-intensive products (and energy) we are accustomed to is an illusion - the cost was actually high, but being paid for by the planet, not the customer. People need to realise we have to pay for sustainability. Our job as engineers will be to make that extra cost as low as possible 😊
Selfplug-in V2G EVs or BVs and PV rooftops will easily clean up most of your pie chart. 😊😊😊😊😊😊 Hahaha Hahaha I do enjoy your videos. Once you see the $ on each break through you can see the vested interests 'roadblocks'. Your videos are easy to understand and reinforce the hopeful non technical people. It is a comfort to see answers.
It would be interesting to see something like Liebriech's Clean Hydrogen Ladder applied to concrete. Any analyst could clearly show an audience what alternatives to OPC are available, how hard to abate each application of OPC might be, what candidates are best suited to each use..
Another great video. Greenland, by the way, has minerals in abundance that should enable every cement manufactor to utilize surplus heat from the production, add co2 and the minerals. And run the process in reverse! Capturing co2 and making a material that can be used in a concrete mixer!
great and super interesting video; a simple concept and quite smart idea, well developed to tackle a hard to abate process. These type of initiatives are the ones to be implemented the sooner the possible, you can see that there is no hype behind and fully compies with basi physic laws.
Great technology! Of course, in addition to electrical heating (converting high-grade electricity into low-grade heat), we can also use nuclear reactor process heat directly, avoiding any conversion losses and making it even more efficient.
Great video. good to see engineers doing what they do best. Rosie are they aware of Agora Tech from Canada. Dave from Just Have a Think did a video about them with their CO2 flow battery. Which works both closed loop and open loop, where open loop produces carbonates by sequestering the co2 in the process.
There is so much bad climate related news. Stories like this inject a little bit of hope into what feels like a hopeless situation. Thanks Rosie. Let's all hope this new method is taken up by industry and becomes another brick in the wall of the fight against climate change.
If you are in a sunny region, you could also use CSP to generate (and store) the heat. While CSP isn't the cheapest for electricity, for heat it doesn't have the losses of energy conversion and is thus much better. It can also easily reach the required temperatures.
That’s amazing progress. There is one missing opportunity in this chain. Instead of unreliable and costly sequestration of useful pure CO2 it can be converted to e fuels (by adding green hydrogen) by the time we don’t need it anymore. E fuel can be used in aviation for upcoming decades and or even better or later in petrochemical industry. Potentially It can make this practice more economical than conventional way. Considering we are talking 60% of cement emissions it can produce significant amount of e fuel, at least way more than the need of global aviation.
The fastest way to that end is to use fresh compost rather than fossilized compost as the raw material, Crude Oil is after all just well-rotted compost.
This is an essential step to moving this industry forward. It will make this work if they shift over to hydrogen or pure carbon batteries as the heat source.
This was so interesting! I also think you should embrace your techno-optimism 😊 it’s only an insult if your optimism is placed in pie-in-the-sky solutions which aren’t feasible.
I agree that the term "techno-optimist" needs to move from a slur to a generally pragmatic position. Most studies put the social cost of carbon in the hundreds of dollars per ton, so preventing a ton of CO2 for 33 euros is an obvious public good. Of course, we need good policy to make that happen, but we should be optimistic that the technology already exists.
Techno-optimists generally believe that future technology will always be invented to solve all our problems, so we don't need to make societal or economic changes. If pragmatists with some faith in existing technology are going to try to take that term... What are we going to call that large group of climate change obstructionists?
Great video! Thanks for making. I was thinking that they can pump the CaCO3 with CO2 in stead of air then this will preheating the stone directy the CO2 will be cooler. The real question is what to do with CO2.
Thanks for putting this out, while it may sound like techno-optimism it is really a vital need in industry to reign in some carbon emissions. While this exact tech may never come to true tuition it's important that people know the issue exists.
I worked at a lime quarry/ processing plant. So much pollution. Not only co2 but particulate matter in the air, raised ph levels, car paint dissolving its’s one to work on
When no part of a clever idea proves patentable, the idea is later restricted in application. It is my hope that the Euro nation subsidies indirectly bearing this innovation presently, are a sign of things to come. Very nice super-imposed animations you had here too.
You need lime (calcium oxide) to make cement, so the first step is to 'cook' the carbon off from calcium carbonate (limestone, chalk, seashells, whatever) in the tower. Then it is roasted in a rotary kiln along with other ingredients like aluminum and iron oxides from a material like clay to create clinker, which is then ground into the powder we know as cement. At least this is my incredibly simplified understanding of the process being described here. Please correct me if I'm mistaken.
Is CO2 emission in cement production really a problem? Making concrete is a circular process. The CO2 that gets emitted during the the production gets reabsorbed when the cement binds. So in my mind, everything that needs to be "electrified away" is the heat needed to run the kiln, which is doable.
That's why the video is an understatement of the potential of cement production + CCS: it's actually emissions-negative in stead of potentially net zero.
LOL. "If you've watched this far then you are probably a bit of a geek yourself",...... Will add, on the economics site two things: 1)Plants can easily be monitored and 2)Simple legislation, a ban on traditional co2 and heat emitting cement plans, can do the trics. Cos 3)For the end costumer; the buyers of bridges and houses, the cost of cement is a small percentage of the total outlay.
Thanks for another awesome video. If we want to restore ecological systems, processes & services, biodiversity, awa our climate then we HAVE TO STOP burning fossil fuels - end of! Society also needs to tackle (besides electricity generation & transport) agriculture & waste (sewerage, garbage, food waste etc), mining, awa other industrial & manufacturing (eg paper) processes requiring heat including the production of ammonia (for fertilizer etc). One question on the whole "cement" process - is there an opportunity for thermal capture / recovery eg thermal storage that can be used elsewhere (eg a backery) or as part of a district heating system? Here high energy facilities can earn a small income by selling excess heat to other places where heat is required... waste not, want not. The whole construction industry is changing, or at least it should be... - building design that's less resource intensive (eg passive design, renewable energy tech, water wise usage, green roofs, edible landscaping, zero waste processes etc) - use of design processes such as biomimicry, cradle2cradle design, lifecycle analysis etc - the use of more sustainable materials eg wood / bamboo, hemp, algae / kelp, rattan, cork, mushroom mycellium etc - revamping rather than demolishing existing buildings eg via using building envelopes - deconstructing & recycling building materials rather than sending everything to landfill I saw a very interesting doccie by Freethink on modular re-usable buildings. It's a pre-made & pre-installed frames that look similar to shipping containers, and that can be similarly transported anywhere, anytime. They can be stacked into any configuration required. In this way "moving house" can be achieved literally. Fertility rates in many places are dropping so the need for new buildings should be stabilising. Most countries are experiencing a housing crisis, but there are many factors contributing to this (lack of affordability, abandoned homes, buildings in hazard zones etc). In countries where fertility rates are still high populations are generally poor so they tend to live in slums using recovered materials. The way we work is also changing - less need for large office spaces etc. I don't think many of us deny to contribution of technology in our lives and therefore the need for a transition to more sustainable practices (and kudo's to scientists & engineers that are facilitating this). Our current crisis ultimately stems from human attitudes towards nature and not valued as a emperative critical for ALL biological life not just to service human greed; nature has no rights, no voice & no vote!, yet all human activities depend on it completely - nature as a resource for human greed: biological organisms share nature's abundance to thrive; otoh humans view nature as a resource for their greed to the exclusion of other species etc - nature as a wasteland: ecological systems, processes & services work "invisibly" and silently eg a peat or wetland provides several critical ecological services yet are regarded as useless unless they are drained and used for agriculture or urban expansion etc - nature as a waste dump: we throw things "away", but there is no "away"; nature does not have an infinite capacity for human waste Preserving, conserving & enhancing ecological systems, processes, services & goods requires humans to - re-examine our relationship with nature, respect it, and learn to live more harmoniously with it, and only use our share of its abundance awa take care of our waste (non tech solutions) - make human activities more sustainable, efficient, less resource & energy intensive, no waste (science & tech solutions) - for extractive activities we also need to rehabilitate, restore & restock (mix of ecological, science & tech solutions)
Thank you Rosie. But, how did being an optimist, with respect to any subject, become a bad thing? Every self-improvement course focuses on optimism. Most measures of the quality of life we enjoy observe that this world keeps getting better for humans; or at least _most_ humans. However up until recently that was achieved with severe inequality, and at the cost of many other species; as well as an unstable ecology. We now have to work just as hard to make it a better place for *all* living things, and do so in a fully sustainable way. Please keep your optimism Rosie; I do not need any more pessimists in this world.
Thanks Rosie - be good if we can start working on permaculture-like industrial integration and have the purified CO2 as a feed stock for something else or part of an open cycle energy recovery system.
Unless it is zeo emission the technology and industry is producing emissions. Lesser emissions per Kiln will allow more kilns ending up with same effect. But good on them for trying to reduce from current levels.
Great video thank you very much!! This makes me think, instead of burying the co2, is not possible to use for certain industries? Notably it can be used as low emissions refrigerant in the hvac industry. I'm sure there's other uses too
It is cheaper to use the captured CO2 in products than to bury it, but the amount of CO2 being emitted is really huge (37 billion tons) compared to what we need in hvac ect. Also, when the CO2 leaks we haven't really mitigated the emissions.
@tombh74 that's a good point. As far as refrigerant goes, co2 is still better than any synthetic refrigerant in use today. But I agree, if it leaks it's all for nothing.
@@martinluescher5009 CO2 captured from biogas burning or woodchip thermal plants have the benefit that if released it is net-zero. Could be used for producing methane or e-fuels.
Stlii relies on carbon capture which is not very effective and expensive. Have you investigated the Dr Cyrille Dunant of Cambrge University's Cement 2 Zero project pilot at CELSA Steel where they are combining cement making with steel making to slash emissions?
I think you may be confusing direct air capture, which has very high costs as the CO2 is very diffuse in the air, with this process, where the CO2 is concentrated and far cheaper in money and energy than getting it from the air.
Wonderful news cement lasts a long time and can be recycled is possibly the best renewable product considering how short time lots of the other products in home's that are knocked down after 20 years or bitumen roads that fall apart constantly 🤔
I think this spiral heating element should be somewhat more efficient than using solar to generate green hydrogen and then burning hydrogen inside the tube instead. Skipping a step usually results in increased overall efficiency.
Fantastic innovation. If they couple the plant with a solar farm they could not only power the furnace but could Convert the CO2 into carbon monoxide and with green hydrogen produce green methanol.
It's straightforward enough to get CO₂ from a calciner. I am impressed by the process improvement and by the potential to use electricity for heating here. There is talk of carbon dioxide capture here but no sign of any equipment to do so, nor any sign of what would be done with the CO₂ once captured. What's the plan? Enhanced oil recovery? Enhanced greenhouse tomatoes? Enhanced weathering? Like MSG, CO₂ is good for enhancing things, it seems ...
This is great news and I have no doubt that technology can at some point solve any of these process problems. Cutting carbon emissions for any process is essential but we also need to avoid the rebound effect (Jeavon's Paradox) which tends to open the doors to ever greater production because it achieves the narrow carbon dioxide target.. Resources are, and will increasingly be, limited and the negative effects on habitat and biodiversity will continue to bring our world to the brink of collapse - irrespective of carbon dioxide levels. The bigger prize is to limit extraction and find ways to re-use the materials we have already dug up.
I'm wondering whether it would be possible to use the resulting CO2 as the carbon source for methane generation in a Sabatier reactor. You would need lots of hydrogen for this though. One of the most carbon neutral ways to power the entire setup would be a nuclear reactor.
Leilac is an ideal, perhaps, adopter of carbon separation from CO2. Heat is one of the main catalysts, perhaps THE main catalyst in the proprietary process owned by University of Washington. The CO2 is presumably already at 900 C at point of capture. The subsequent sequestration is then only of C, much easier and safer than CO2 and the O2 is itself captured or released into the atmosphere.
6:52 - Gotta love video interviews, where just like that, someone just happens to have the thing they're being asked about, in their pocket. Magic. 😆 10:55 - Me, a geek, how perceptive and kind of you to notice and flatter me so 🙂 As for techno optimism. Yes, we can resolve all of our problems, technically, but there's too much money supporting the status quo, so the political will's not able to be expressed. That's what's going to end us.
Thank you for the video. Unfortunately I’m skeptical of carbon sequestration. I’m not sure how sound or practical it really is. Can the carbon scape later on? Also, economics pressures always win and without strong government legislation this type of technology will always be an alternative rather than the norm.
The strongest form of sequestration is through *making* calcium carbonate and sinking it. So, it's hard to imagine success from a process that starts with calcium carbonate.
Add carbon dioxide to water before mixing it to cement when you make concrete and it will become part of the building material forever. This may be hard in a building site, but much easier in a preformed concrete shop.
Rosie, tell Leilac to contact Tesla's Lithium Hydroxide team at Corpus Christi Texas. They are processing Spodumene to LiOH and hoping to do it cheaper than other companies. However, they have installed large rotary cement-like horizontal kilns. Electricity is cheap in Texas. Giant battery farms are being built there. Electric resistance heating should be cheap in Texas. As centre of an old oil and gas industry, there is surely plenty of old well to pump CO2 into
Hmm lacking in critique and balance, dissapointed as these are usually your strengths. What happens to the captured cardon dioxide? Left as a problem for future generations to deal with?
I don't like the problems associated with 900ºC heat transfer through surfaces. That is asking for problems. Another approach to handling the really nasty temperature of making clinker is to use pure O2 and coal with recycle of the flue gas CO2. This would effectively use CO2 as the heat transfer along with radiation. This recycling gas would be almost pure CO2 making it possible to sequester all the CO2. There would be some water from hydrogen in the coal and any moisture in the raw limestone, clay mix which could be removed as a side stream (just cooling) from the CO2 recycle gas. This could be adapted to any existing dry process coal-fired cement manufacturing process that had somewhere to use all the liquid CO2 for sequestration (land elevation, oil enhancement, etc.). Separating O2 from air at 20% O2 can be more economical than separating CO2 from flue gas. The technology for pure O2 production from air is off-the-shelf and well-known at the required scale.
Embrace the acceleration from technology. It's the only way to solve this. There are companies that can turn CO2 streams into natural gas, to avoid net new emissions. I wonder how much solar is required relative to the amount of CO2 used here.
You could look into atmospheric conditions during the jurassic age. Why so high, why do good for earth? When did the bad climate change come and how? Why use tech to reduce crop yields and increase famine? CO2 is it's own thing, doesn't care about our beliefs and feelings.
I love the videos and always learn a lot, but could you please take a breath once in a while? When you speak, it's so fast and compact that it's often strenuous to follow. It's not the Aussie accent, that's fine, it's the flow. Take a breath between sentences. 😊
I want cheap easy fusion power so bad. Once you have the crazy cheap power, there's so many processes for climate remediation that work fine but take too much power. Come on random unpredictable fusion breakthrough!
Yes there is a market for CO2. Professor Licht from GWU has shown that you can electrically refine CO2 into carbon nanotubes/buckyballs and other configurations of graphene. This product has many valuable uses and would be far more valuable than the cement.
Building millions of homes globally using hempcrete, bamboo, and wood will remove vast amounts of CO2 from our atmosphere and lock up carbon for hundreds of years. Homes built with hempcrete require fifty percent less energy to heat and cool.
Wow, actually I hate every video about CO2 capturing. Because of greenwashing bullshit alarm from oil companies. Your video is correctly by the content, but in 12:25 you are mentioning the correct and biggest problem: "What to do with the captured CO2"? And here is the problem. This low prices in the presentation are the low hanging fruits. The extrem costs are comming from the storing. An here we talk about 1000€/ton Co2. So, CO2 production needs to be payed extra 1000€/ton from the consumer, to make it possible to be "neutral". And we all knew, 1000€ is insane for our western world. Because our wealth rely on burning fossils. 😮💨
It's good to be optimistic about the technology being developed for climate change, but I don't think that the techno-optimist community fully understands the fact that no matter how good our tech is, we need to fundamentally shift our economies away from constant growth and towards improved quality of life (human and ecological).That won't happen through pure optimism, it requires an acceptance that our economic and political systems need to change. Also, we need political solutions for how the rich societies of europe and north america will stop exploiting impoverished nations' natural and human wealth, and how we can do that in a sustainable way. Technology will not change that dilemma. In fact, the minerals used to manufacture renewable tech are already a part of this problem.
Rosie, some of your geeks are old fuddy duddies besides; how big a pasture full of solar panels will it it take to run this 24 hrs a day- which is how all such facilities are run in the US? What sort of watt/hours per tonne sill it take at scale? On another topic, how are your geothermal projects going? It seems that many of the solutions to our pollution problems want more and more electricity, which is itself one of the sources of the pollution. Yes, I am aware there really is no free lunch- I'm pointing out that we need a number of parallel lines of research to achieve the end desired; to get there, working with the people who know the most about it would seem a smart thing to do- the utilities themselves, and the oil companies they depend on to do their thing.
This is the best eco-tech channel out there. Only balanced and relevant information, all in 13 minutes, amazing stuff! Other channels give you lot of wanna-be tech but never question cost or usability. Rosie does extremely great job answering these basic questions, very well done!
Rosie, I think this might be one of your best videos ever. I think what I enjoyed most is that you gave voice to a whole team of very interesting people. Overall, I think it’s best when you bring out the best in the people you are talking to and let them tell us their story. So thank you very much for working so much and so hard to bring these people onto my screen.
YEE -Embrace techno-optimism. It's your brand, and techno-optimism is extremely important to guard against climate doomerism.
I applaud you for stepping up the technical production and adding extra voices! The dialogue level was a little jumpy (professional audio engineer) but the source dialogue was pretty good for being recorded with prosumer gear in the field! I'm glad you used a camera op to more completely tell the story.
When it comes to cost, society is paying for the global extraction of wealth and natural resources over the past 300 years. Governments should continue to step up both carrot and stick approaches to reverse the damage to the planet by colonization and industrialization. In the United States our political and current judicial system allows virtually unbridled and legal corruption of lawmakers by industry. Industry can spend a few million to get billions in cost reductions through the form of lax or rolled back regulations. As for the techno-optimism, because of the power of existing stake holders and the societal gains of industrialization, short of a great calamity such as the plot of Star Trek that remakes human society through massive destruction and loss of life (I believe the story goes that the Federation was formed post WW3) implementation of new technology on a massive scale is our best hope for saving our planet and as many lives as possible. Only the privileged few can move to the country and live off grid, and that privilege still relies on the exploitation of the majority, the majority of course being poor/middle class.
Rosie, you can't consider being a techno-optimist as an insult. It is only the techo-optimists who actually install stuff and make real progress. Without them, livery stables would still be an important business.
And so, notably, would be horseshit.
Critics of techno-optimism tend to portray proposed solutions to modern ecological problems as claims of panacea. This is disingenuous or delusional. If there are problems or deficiencies introduced by new technology, they are typically a result of skewed economic incentives of unrestrained capitalism. When externalities are thoroughly accounted for by good governance, the best way forward involves technology.
Simply, the problem isn't technology, it's governance.
@@TheCablebillNapoleon (& presumably others) famously taxed it as the crystals used to make gunpowder form on it!
Another great video Rosie, good to see people applying their minds to such big issues and doing well
Techno-optimist! That's the reason I watch your videos. Thanks Rosie!
Techno-optimist - we need hordes of these.
Great video! Thanks Rosie
"I got excited... if you've watched this far, then I'm guessing you're somewhat of a geek yourself" yup you got me lol
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This is exciting. Thanks Rosie.
Your channel has come such a long way! You are doing a great job Rosie! Keep it up.
Great -this helps concrete companies all of whom need this expertise and these new processes. And cuts a variety of pollutants at the source level. Excellent!
Great video Rosie. I've realised that I really am a big geek :)
was great to have you on site rosie. Such a big fan!
Another great video. How fantastic to see some really clever innovation being done by a little Aussie business. With time they should iron out any final kinks and be set to be a player in reducing CO2 emissions in this important sector. Rosie continues to do a terrific job with this channel. This sort of innovation is where funding through the federal government climate program should really be able to boost further tech innovations.
This is the first time I've heard the term "techno optimist" - I had to look it up. Surely any reasonable person would have to agree that our two choices are either to dramatically advance our technology so it is more environmentally friendly, OR eliminate nearly all technology and along with it the vast majority of the human race in order to heal nature.
I like the first choice better.
Your videos fit some portion of my need for edutainment. Thank you for making them!
Technological-level cannot advance without a permanent increase in power-consumption.
Adjusting behavior and making better choices also helps.
Wood as a building material that captures carbon , reusing metals and plastics.
I'm also less concerned about the carbon and more about the actual toxic and poisonous side products.
@@aliendroneservices6621the problem is not the technology advance. It's the consumer behaviors that could derive from it
Advances to reduce energy usage or emissions are always welcome, but we need people to understand that doesn't mean we get to use that advance to produce more
Which, I have to admit, it's no easy task
@@drillerdev4624 I didn't say either was a problem. You don't get any technology-advance unless you *_first increase power-consumption._* The greatest threat to future generations is *_energy-conservation._*
Techno-optimist is someone arguing that all of our problems can be solved in time with purely technological solutions without any noticable change in their lives, even if such change will not have a significant impact on their actual quality of life. Or at least thats the understanding. What this term means in practice varies widely and is not always reasonable.
Your channel is so informative and high quality! Will you ever talk about BESS as well?
Thank you for the share Rosie - this is a brilliant development
Great video, thanks Rosie! Super interesting topic and thanks for sharing your enthusiasm :) Side note: it's interesting to see that there are a lot of different pathways for cement: I recently read about Hoffman Green Cement who are creating a "green" cement by curcumventing the clinker and using slag and additives instead apparently. They have just poured a couple of wind turbines foundations in western France with the stuff.
Another great episode! If geek kind of means interested in how things works, count me in. If techno-optimist is used as an insult, that says more of those who think it's such a bad thing, especially if it's used as an Ad hominem "argument".
Decarbonating cement production is a very interesting topic, even if it's unlikely to lead to reductions in emissions on a global relevant scale anytime soon. If the process can be powered by electric power, and if the process rate can be adjusted at least to some degree to the situation on the grid, maybe some of the extra cost can be offset, by utilizing more power when it's cheap. And that could potentially make the production have less negative, or straight out positive impact on the grid. I don't know how realistic that is, I guess it would be hard to get industry representatives to even seriously contemplate the idea of willingly reducing production rate, even if it's temporary.
Back to techno-optimism, humanity have solved a lot of problems, and while it's true new problems has been created, we've solved, or are solving those too, or have learned our lessons. The history of energy is quite telling, starting with the use of fire, which eventually led to some areas running out of wood, which was part of the reason humans started to use coal in the first place. Then we added whale oil, petroleum oil, natural gas, on top of all that coal.
We have realized that we need to stop burning fossil fuels, and we have developed alternatives, and started to displace fossil fuels. There were no time in history where we had a lifestyle that would be sustainable for billions of people, we can't keep relying on fossil fuels indefinitely, we can't go back to whale oil, and we can't go back to burning wood as the main energy source for humanity. Neither stagnation or regression can be sustainable, that leaves progress.
Another excellent video, another reason for techno-optimism, thumbs up from another techno-optimist..
That's cool, since both Cemex and Heidelberg group also operate here in Czechia, we might get to see this technology here too!
Dear Ing.Rosemary Barnes, you seem to have forgot to link to the sponsorship policy.
Ooh, thanks for the reminder! You can find it here www.pardaloteconsulting.com/blog/engineering-with-rosie-sponsorship-policy
And I'll just add it to the description now.
I think you touch a key point at the end: this tech may be cheaper than amine or oxyfuel CCS for cement, but will *still* add costs... carbon tax (with CBAM) can force the issue but the public need to come to a "new normal" and accept that the low cost of emissions-intensive products (and energy) we are accustomed to is an illusion - the cost was actually high, but being paid for by the planet, not the customer. People need to realise we have to pay for sustainability.
Our job as engineers will be to make that extra cost as low as possible 😊
Selfplug-in V2G EVs or BVs and PV rooftops will easily clean up most of your pie chart. 😊😊😊😊😊😊
Hahaha Hahaha
I do enjoy your videos.
Once you see the $ on each break through you can see the vested interests 'roadblocks'.
Your videos are easy to understand and reinforce the hopeful non technical people.
It is a comfort to see answers.
Great to see this in action on an industrial scale.
Why? CO2 captured reduces crop yields. Who do you appoint to be the next to suffer famine? It's it bad enough?
@@Cloxxki erm, no it doesn't.
Wow, never heard techno-optimist as a compliment? I guess that means you have manged to avoid the echo chambers i keep finding myself in. Good job.
It is exciting to get to a very tangible place with the solutions now. Yay!
Indeed, another excited geek here reporting for duty! 🙋♂ great video!
It would be interesting to see something like Liebriech's Clean Hydrogen Ladder applied to concrete. Any analyst could clearly show an audience what alternatives to OPC are available, how hard to abate each application of OPC might be, what candidates are best suited to each use..
I’m grateful for your good news!
Fascinating as always! Thank you!
Another great video. Greenland, by the way, has minerals in abundance that should enable every cement manufactor to utilize surplus heat from the production, add co2 and the minerals. And run the process in reverse! Capturing co2 and making a material that can be used in a concrete mixer!
great and super interesting video; a simple concept and quite smart idea, well developed to tackle a hard to abate process. These type of initiatives are the ones to be implemented the sooner the possible, you can see that there is no hype behind and fully compies with basi physic laws.
Another great vid thanks Rosie
Great technology!
Of course, in addition to electrical heating (converting high-grade electricity into low-grade heat), we can also use nuclear reactor process heat directly, avoiding any conversion losses and making it even more efficient.
Great video. good to see engineers doing what they do best. Rosie are they aware of Agora Tech from Canada. Dave from Just Have a Think did a video about them with their CO2 flow battery. Which works both closed loop and open loop, where open loop produces carbonates by sequestering the co2 in the process.
There is so much bad climate related news. Stories like this inject a little bit of hope into what feels like a hopeless situation. Thanks Rosie. Let's all hope this new method is taken up by industry and becomes another brick in the wall of the fight against climate change.
If you are in a sunny region, you could also use CSP to generate (and store) the heat. While CSP isn't the cheapest for electricity, for heat it doesn't have the losses of energy conversion and is thus much better. It can also easily reach the required temperatures.
That’s amazing progress. There is one missing opportunity in this chain. Instead of unreliable and costly sequestration of useful pure CO2 it can be converted to e fuels (by adding green hydrogen) by the time we don’t need it anymore. E fuel can be used in aviation for upcoming decades and or even better or later in petrochemical industry. Potentially It can make this practice more economical than conventional way.
Considering we are talking 60% of cement emissions it can produce significant amount of e fuel, at least way more than the need of global aviation.
but it's still fossil carbon 😢
The fastest way to that end is to use fresh compost rather than fossilized compost as the raw material, Crude Oil is after all just well-rotted compost.
This is an essential step to moving this industry forward. It will make this work if they shift over to hydrogen or pure carbon batteries as the heat source.
This was so interesting! I also think you should embrace your techno-optimism 😊 it’s only an insult if your optimism is placed in pie-in-the-sky solutions which aren’t feasible.
Good info
I agree that the term "techno-optimist" needs to move from a slur to a generally pragmatic position. Most studies put the social cost of carbon in the hundreds of dollars per ton, so preventing a ton of CO2 for 33 euros is an obvious public good. Of course, we need good policy to make that happen, but we should be optimistic that the technology already exists.
Techno-optimists generally believe that future technology will always be invented to solve all our problems, so we don't need to make societal or economic changes.
If pragmatists with some faith in existing technology are going to try to take that term... What are we going to call that large group of climate change obstructionists?
Great video! Thanks for making.
I was thinking that they can pump the CaCO3 with CO2 in stead of air then this will preheating the stone directy the CO2 will be cooler.
The real question is what to do with CO2.
Thanks for putting this out, while it may sound like techno-optimism it is really a vital need in industry to reign in some carbon emissions. While this exact tech may never come to true tuition it's important that people know the issue exists.
I worked at a lime quarry/ processing plant. So much pollution. Not only co2 but particulate matter in the air, raised ph levels, car paint dissolving its’s one to work on
This is brilliant and, yes, highly entertaining!
When no part of a clever idea proves patentable, the idea is later restricted in application. It is my hope that the Euro nation subsidies indirectly bearing this innovation presently, are a sign of things to come. Very nice super-imposed animations you had here too.
Techno-optimist, works, trust emergence.
Video looks good! I'm a bit confused about calcination vs pre calcination, and why the rotary kiln is second in the process
You need lime (calcium oxide) to make cement, so the first step is to 'cook' the carbon off from calcium carbonate (limestone, chalk, seashells, whatever) in the tower.
Then it is roasted in a rotary kiln along with other ingredients like aluminum and iron oxides from a material like clay to create clinker, which is then ground into the powder we know as cement.
At least this is my incredibly simplified understanding of the process being described here.
Please correct me if I'm mistaken.
Is CO2 emission in cement production really a problem? Making concrete is a circular process. The CO2 that gets emitted during the the production gets reabsorbed when the cement binds. So in my mind, everything that needs to be "electrified away" is the heat needed to run the kiln, which is doable.
That's why the video is an understatement of the potential of cement production + CCS: it's actually emissions-negative in stead of potentially net zero.
1. not much CO₂ is reabsorbed as concrete sets
2. the process stage identified here is not the only stage which liberates CO₂
LOL. "If you've watched this far then you are probably a bit of a geek yourself",...... Will add, on the economics site two things: 1)Plants can easily be monitored and 2)Simple legislation, a ban on traditional co2 and heat emitting cement plans, can do the trics. Cos 3)For the end costumer; the buyers of bridges and houses, the cost of cement is a small percentage of the total outlay.
Thanks for another awesome video. If we want to restore ecological systems, processes & services, biodiversity, awa our climate then we HAVE TO STOP burning fossil fuels - end of! Society also needs to tackle (besides electricity generation & transport) agriculture & waste (sewerage, garbage, food waste etc), mining, awa other industrial & manufacturing (eg paper) processes requiring heat including the production of ammonia (for fertilizer etc).
One question on the whole "cement" process - is there an opportunity for thermal capture / recovery eg thermal storage that can be used elsewhere (eg a backery) or as part of a district heating system? Here high energy facilities can earn a small income by selling excess heat to other places where heat is required... waste not, want not.
The whole construction industry is changing, or at least it should be...
- building design that's less resource intensive (eg passive design, renewable energy tech, water wise usage, green roofs, edible landscaping, zero waste processes etc)
- use of design processes such as biomimicry, cradle2cradle design, lifecycle analysis etc
- the use of more sustainable materials eg wood / bamboo, hemp, algae / kelp, rattan, cork, mushroom mycellium etc
- revamping rather than demolishing existing buildings eg via using building envelopes
- deconstructing & recycling building materials rather than sending everything to landfill
I saw a very interesting doccie by Freethink on modular re-usable buildings. It's a pre-made & pre-installed frames that look similar to shipping containers, and that can be similarly transported anywhere, anytime. They can be stacked into any configuration required. In this way "moving house" can be achieved literally.
Fertility rates in many places are dropping so the need for new buildings should be stabilising. Most countries are experiencing a housing crisis, but there are many factors contributing to this (lack of affordability, abandoned homes, buildings in hazard zones etc). In countries where fertility rates are still high populations are generally poor so they tend to live in slums using recovered materials. The way we work is also changing - less need for large office spaces etc.
I don't think many of us deny to contribution of technology in our lives and therefore the need for a transition to more sustainable practices (and kudo's to scientists & engineers that are facilitating this). Our current crisis ultimately stems from human attitudes towards nature and not valued as a emperative critical for ALL biological life not just to service human greed; nature has no rights, no voice & no vote!, yet all human activities depend on it completely
- nature as a resource for human greed: biological organisms share nature's abundance to thrive; otoh humans view nature as a resource for their greed to the exclusion of other species etc
- nature as a wasteland: ecological systems, processes & services work "invisibly" and silently eg a peat or wetland provides several critical ecological services yet are regarded as useless unless they are drained and used for agriculture or urban expansion etc
- nature as a waste dump: we throw things "away", but there is no "away"; nature does not have an infinite capacity for human waste
Preserving, conserving & enhancing ecological systems, processes, services & goods requires humans to
- re-examine our relationship with nature, respect it, and learn to live more harmoniously with it, and only use our share of its abundance awa take care of our waste (non tech solutions)
- make human activities more sustainable, efficient, less resource & energy intensive, no waste (science & tech solutions)
- for extractive activities we also need to rehabilitate, restore & restock (mix of ecological, science & tech solutions)
Thank you Rosie. But, how did being an optimist, with respect to any subject, become a bad thing?
Every self-improvement course focuses on optimism. Most measures of the quality of life we enjoy observe that this world keeps getting better for humans; or at least _most_ humans. However up until recently that was achieved with severe inequality, and at the cost of many other species; as well as an unstable ecology.
We now have to work just as hard to make it a better place for *all* living things, and do so in a fully sustainable way.
Please keep your optimism Rosie; I do not need any more pessimists in this world.
Thanks Rosie - be good if we can start working on permaculture-like industrial integration and have the purified CO2 as a feed stock for something else or part of an open cycle energy recovery system.
I think there needs to be a follow up on this video to explore what happens to the captured CO2 as I haven’t seen a convincing answer yet.
Unless it is zeo emission the technology and industry is producing emissions. Lesser emissions per Kiln will allow more kilns ending up with same effect. But good on them for trying to reduce from current levels.
Great video thank you very much!! This makes me think, instead of burying the co2, is not possible to use for certain industries? Notably it can be used as low emissions refrigerant in the hvac industry. I'm sure there's other uses too
It is cheaper to use the captured CO2 in products than to bury it, but the amount of CO2 being emitted is really huge (37 billion tons) compared to what we need in hvac ect. Also, when the CO2 leaks we haven't really mitigated the emissions.
@tombh74 that's a good point. As far as refrigerant goes, co2 is still better than any synthetic refrigerant in use today. But I agree, if it leaks it's all for nothing.
@@martinluescher5009 CO2 captured from biogas burning or woodchip thermal plants have the benefit that if released it is net-zero. Could be used for producing methane or e-fuels.
Okay, aluminium beer cans are a source of emissions, perhaps especially when they are opened and the contents are released?
Stlii relies on carbon capture which is not very effective and expensive. Have you investigated the Dr Cyrille Dunant of Cambrge University's Cement 2 Zero project pilot at CELSA Steel where they are combining cement making with steel making to slash emissions?
I think you may be confusing direct air capture, which has very high costs as the CO2 is very diffuse in the air, with this process, where the CO2 is concentrated and far cheaper in money and energy than getting it from the air.
Wonderful news cement lasts a long time and can be recycled is possibly the best renewable product considering how short time lots of the other products in home's that are knocked down after 20 years or bitumen roads that fall apart constantly 🤔
aahh.. progress marches on... must be a real pain point for the conspiracy theorists. Great video, nicely explained
I think this spiral heating element should be somewhat more efficient than using solar to generate green hydrogen and then burning hydrogen inside the tube instead. Skipping a step usually results in increased overall efficiency.
Thank you.
Fantastic innovation. If they couple the plant with a solar farm they could not only power the furnace but could
Convert the CO2 into carbon monoxide and with green hydrogen produce green methanol.
It's straightforward enough to get CO₂ from a calciner. I am impressed by the process improvement and by the potential to use electricity for heating here. There is talk of carbon dioxide capture here but no sign of any equipment to do so, nor any sign of what would be done with the CO₂ once captured. What's the plan? Enhanced oil recovery? Enhanced greenhouse tomatoes? Enhanced weathering? Like MSG, CO₂ is good for enhancing things, it seems ...
11:46
To be fair regular cement production is only cheaper because we don't include all the costs. (Letting other people pay the price)
This is great news and I have no doubt that technology can at some point solve any of these process problems. Cutting carbon emissions for any process is essential but we also need to avoid the rebound effect (Jeavon's Paradox) which tends to open the doors to ever greater production because it achieves the narrow carbon dioxide target.. Resources are, and will increasingly be, limited and the negative effects on habitat and biodiversity will continue to bring our world to the brink of collapse - irrespective of carbon dioxide levels. The bigger prize is to limit extraction and find ways to re-use the materials we have already dug up.
A real engineer is always a techno-optimist, otherwise they wouldn't have become an engineer.
External heating !
Another way to do this is to use the CO2 itself as the heat carrier, tapping off waste stream as needed.
Ionisator may be can be considered to a solurions
I'm wondering whether it would be possible to use the resulting CO2 as the carbon source for methane generation in a Sabatier reactor. You would need lots of hydrogen for this though.
One of the most carbon neutral ways to power the entire setup would be a nuclear reactor.
Shared on Mastodon ClimateJustice by JdeB
Sequester it ... Famous last words.
C02 batteries ??
Leilac is an ideal, perhaps, adopter of carbon separation from CO2. Heat is one of the main catalysts, perhaps THE main catalyst in the proprietary process owned by University of Washington. The CO2 is presumably already at 900 C at point of capture. The subsequent sequestration is then only of C, much easier and safer than CO2 and the O2 is itself captured or released into the atmosphere.
6:52 - Gotta love video interviews, where just like that, someone just happens to have the thing they're being asked about, in their pocket. Magic. 😆
10:55 - Me, a geek, how perceptive and kind of you to notice and flatter me so 🙂
As for techno optimism. Yes, we can resolve all of our problems, technically, but there's too much money supporting the status quo, so the political will's not able to be expressed. That's what's going to end us.
Thank you for the video. Unfortunately I’m skeptical of carbon sequestration. I’m not sure how sound or practical it really is. Can the carbon scape later on?
Also, economics pressures always win and without strong government legislation this type of technology will always be an alternative rather than the norm.
The strongest form of sequestration is through *making* calcium carbonate and sinking it. So, it's hard to imagine success from a process that starts with calcium carbonate.
“The CO2 is just sent off and sequestered.” Where? How? And what “other” renewable energy sources are there apart from electricity?
Biomass, biogas.
Add carbon dioxide to water before mixing it to cement when you make concrete and it will become part of the building material forever. This may be hard in a building site, but much easier in a preformed concrete shop.
I hope thanks to technology like this one I'll be able to build a house without causing shitload of emissions.
👍
Rosie, tell Leilac to contact Tesla's Lithium Hydroxide team at Corpus Christi Texas. They are processing Spodumene to LiOH and hoping to do it cheaper than other companies. However, they have installed large rotary cement-like horizontal kilns. Electricity is cheap in Texas. Giant battery farms are being built there. Electric resistance heating should be cheap in Texas. As centre of an old oil and gas industry, there is surely plenty of old well to pump CO2 into
Great!
World Wide Winds solution?
Hmm lacking in critique and balance, dissapointed as these are usually your strengths. What happens to the captured cardon dioxide? Left as a problem for future generations to deal with?
3:26 why blow it with air? You have CO2 available, this would delete a contamination source.
I don't like the problems associated with 900ºC heat transfer through surfaces. That is asking for problems.
Another approach to handling the really nasty temperature of making clinker is to use pure O2 and coal with recycle of the flue gas CO2. This would effectively use CO2 as the heat transfer along with radiation. This recycling gas would be almost pure CO2 making it possible to sequester all the CO2. There would be some water from hydrogen in the coal and any moisture in the raw limestone, clay mix which could be removed as a side stream (just cooling) from the CO2 recycle gas.
This could be adapted to any existing dry process coal-fired cement manufacturing process that had somewhere to use all the liquid CO2 for sequestration (land elevation, oil enhancement, etc.). Separating O2 from air at 20% O2 can be more economical than separating CO2 from flue gas. The technology for pure O2 production from air is off-the-shelf and well-known at the required scale.
Embrace the acceleration from technology. It's the only way to solve this. There are companies that can turn CO2 streams into natural gas, to avoid net new emissions. I wonder how much solar is required relative to the amount of CO2 used here.
U should look into carboncorp
You could look into atmospheric conditions during the jurassic age. Why so high, why do good for earth? When did the bad climate change come and how?
Why use tech to reduce crop yields and increase famine? CO2 is it's own thing, doesn't care about our beliefs and feelings.
I'll be climate optimist right along with you.
I love the videos and always learn a lot, but could you please take a breath once in a while? When you speak, it's so fast and compact that it's often strenuous to follow. It's not the Aussie accent, that's fine, it's the flow. Take a breath between sentences. 😊
I want cheap easy fusion power so bad. Once you have the crazy cheap power, there's so many processes for climate remediation that work fine but take too much power. Come on random unpredictable fusion breakthrough!
Awesome, now you just need to use the carbon to replace plastic with a way to turn carbon gas into carbon fibre
If we could find a market for all of this captured CO2, the problem would take care of itself...
Yes there is a market for CO2. Professor Licht from GWU has shown that you can electrically refine CO2 into carbon nanotubes/buckyballs and other configurations of graphene. This product has many valuable uses and would be far more valuable than the cement.
Building millions of homes globally using hempcrete, bamboo, and wood will remove vast amounts of CO2 from our atmosphere and lock up carbon for hundreds of years. Homes built with hempcrete require fifty percent less energy to heat and cool.
Wow, actually I hate every video about CO2 capturing. Because of greenwashing bullshit alarm from oil companies. Your video is correctly by the content, but in 12:25 you are mentioning the correct and biggest problem: "What to do with the captured CO2"? And here is the problem. This low prices in the presentation are the low hanging fruits. The extrem costs are comming from the storing. An here we talk about 1000€/ton Co2. So, CO2 production needs to be payed extra 1000€/ton from the consumer, to make it possible to be "neutral". And we all knew, 1000€ is insane for our western world. Because our wealth rely on burning fossils. 😮💨
It's good to be optimistic about the technology being developed for climate change, but I don't think that the techno-optimist community fully understands the fact that no matter how good our tech is, we need to fundamentally shift our economies away from constant growth and towards improved quality of life (human and ecological).That won't happen through pure optimism, it requires an acceptance that our economic and political systems need to change. Also, we need political solutions for how the rich societies of europe and north america will stop exploiting impoverished nations' natural and human wealth, and how we can do that in a sustainable way. Technology will not change that dilemma. In fact, the minerals used to manufacture renewable tech are already a part of this problem.
Rosie, some of your geeks are old fuddy duddies besides; how big a pasture full of solar panels will it it take to run this 24 hrs a day- which is how all such facilities are run in the US? What sort of watt/hours per tonne sill it take at scale? On another topic, how are your geothermal projects going? It seems that many of the solutions to our pollution problems want more and more electricity, which is itself one of the sources of the pollution. Yes, I am aware there really is no free lunch- I'm pointing out that we need a number of parallel lines of research to achieve the end desired; to get there, working with the people who know the most about it would seem a smart thing to do- the utilities themselves, and the oil companies they depend on to do their thing.
Carbon storage: No!…Use it to make graphine, to carbonate my cola, etc.