Startups Capture CO2 and Store It In Concrete
- Reference: 0170262539
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/02/03/2244253/startups-capture-co2-and-store-it-in-concrete
- Source link:
> Heirloom Carbon Technologies delivered about 30 kg (66 lb) of CO2 collected from the air around its San Francisco Bay Area headquarters to neighboring Central Concrete, a Vulcan Materials' (VMC.N) subsidiary that on Wednesday incorporated the gas into new concrete. That's equivalent to tailpipe emissions of driving about 75 miles (120 km) in a car. The joint effort was the first time that carbon dioxide absorbed from the atmosphere using such Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology had been secured in concrete, where the CO2 will stay put for centuries, several scientists said.
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> Heirloom heats crushed limestone to release naturally absorbed CO2, then puts the CO2-starved rock on columns of huge trays, where they act like sponges, soaking up close to half their weight in the gas over three days. The rock is then heated to release the collected ambient carbon dioxide, and the cycle repeats. Canada's CarbonCure, the concrete technology company, mixes CO2 with concrete ingredients, turning it into a mineral that strengthens the concrete, cutting the need for cement -- the part of concrete with the biggest carbon footprint.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/concrete-traps-co2-soaked-air-climate-friendly-test-2023-02-03/
Re: ArchieFlunker - Slashdot's Second Biggest Lose (Score:1)
I'm pretty sure his dumb ass is also PopeRatzo.
And yeah, AmiMoJo is an even more disingenuous piece of shit.
Laughable (Score:2)
I refuse to trust anyone named Shashank.
Bring back the dinosaurs (Score:3)
Why don't we breed dinosaurs en masse and then bury them? It's a proven technology.
Re: (Score:2)
ok starting with raptors
Re: Bring back the dinosaurs (Score:1)
Or just an raptor.
Re: (Score:2)
> Why don't we breed dinosaurs en masse and then bury them? It's a proven technology.
You're obviously trying to be cute, but a serious approach would indeed to be plant a heapload more trees. The second part, cutting them down, pulverizing them, and putting the bricks of compressed chips into tapped-out coal mines is optional.
And there's absolutely nothing stopping us from doing that along with sequestering CO2 in concrete as TFA suggests.
Re: Bring back the dinosaurs (Score:2)
Concrete production is a CO2 intensive process already. The summary stinks, but the article isn't much better. They are using lime to "soak up" CO2 then heating it to release it. Then through some form of magic it gets put into the concrete, they ignore that detail entirely. They also don't explain what they've done to eliminate the CO2 release from the concrete production so how this ends up as a net negative CO2 contributer is unclear.
Re: Bring back the dinosaurs (Score:1)
That got me too. I started thinking "This sounds a lot like quicklime mortar". Things will get interesting when engineers and chemists start asking questions.
Re: (Score:2)
Concrete naturally absorbs CO2 from the air. Concrete is alkaline, CO2 is acidic, they are going to get together. Hydrated calcium oxide reacts with CO2 to turn back into the limestone (calcium carbonate) from which it came. If they found a way to speed up the process then it's actually useful. Normally it takes decades, ambient temperature diffusion being quite slow.
Scrubbers (Score:1)
So someone rediscovered CO2 scrubbers of the sort used for diving, space ships, and other breathing applications? This doesn't really scale well. But I guess it requires less equipment than distilling liquified air.
Somehow this does not explain (Score:2)
"crushed limestone to release naturally absorbed CO2, then puts the CO2-starved rock on columns of huge trays, where they act like sponges, soaking up close to half their weight in the gas over three days. The rock is then heated to release the collected ambient carbon dioxide, and the cycle repeats" They capture CO2 gas and then release it back into the air. How does this mean "stores it in concrete"? I do not see that conclusion.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, especially that first part where they "release naturally absorbed CO2" seems like a bit of a deal breaker as it sounds like they are releasing as much CO2 as they are storing in the process. If they talked about how to capture that CO2 released during the heating, that would be different, but this is just switching which CO2 is there, not putting in new CO2 in an empty container. And it seems like it's just left in the air. If the cycle repeats, does that mean the loop is so short that the collected a
Re: (Score:2)
helps to read the full article...
the limestone is used as a cheap, natural tool to temporarily capture CO2.
The lime stone is heated to release CO2 which is then (per the effin article) "CarbonCure, the concrete technology company, mixes CO2 with concrete ingredients, turning it into a mineral that strengthens the concrete, cutting the need for cement — the part of concrete with the biggest carbon footprint."
So the limestone acts as a natural, re-usable tool to absorb CO2, then put into a chamber, heat
Re: (Score:2)
It's two processes from two companies. The heating and soaking is done to concentrate CO2 gas. The collected gas is then sent off to be sequestered into concrete.
Re: (Score:1)
It needs to be as convoluted as possible with enough smoke and mirrors so that no-one truly understand it. Only then can gullible and clueless legislators pitch it to equally clueless and gullible voters, who will subsequently stumble around in a Brownian motion repeating the words "trust the SCIENCE!" in a haughty tone to anyone within audible range, believing it will somehow "save the planet". And they will feel good because it's all about "the feels", up until the point they are living out of a cardboard
Key bit right here (Score:1)
> The rock is then heated...
Three guesses where that heat comes from. And the first two don't count.
I suppose I could rag on them for sequestering the co2 by cooking off the already sequestered co2 in the limestone, but that's just too easy. Let some greenhorn cut his teeth on that one...
Clown world (Score:1)
Just plant trees and stop cutting down the Amazon
I'd like to know how much CO2 ... (Score:2)
... this process generates.
Re: (Score:1)
It's not a novel idea either. They have been doing the same thing with plaster walls for a few millenia. Plaster requires CO2 out of the air to cure.
Re: I planted a tree. (Score:1)
The kind of plaster that does this is lime plaster, which is not commonly used anymore. Gypsum plaster doesn't do that. It's sad because there are a lot of other nice properties of lime plaster, but lost out to gypsum because gypsum is easier to work with.
Re: (Score:3)
Science isn't a belief system, its a process. All those people you hate are trying to trick you, and you are falling for it. Do you really think those guys in private jets want the party to stop? No. They want people like you to carry water for them, trying to convince us they are part of the solution, rather than the cause of the problem.
Re: (Score:1)
You're right that the environment needs some CO2 but it doesn't just need CO2 and you're definitely smart enough to know that your argument is disingenuous and the current CO2 mix in our atmosphere is both above optimal and rising at an alarming rate. What you left out however that could have strengthened your shitty troll-faced argument is that methane is also currently above optimal levels, on the rise, and far worse than CO2 at equivalent volumes.