Legendary Glastonbury farm using bovine excreta power plant adds graphene boffinry
- Reference: 1718090765
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/06/11/cow_manure_graphene/
- Source link:
Levidian is a climate technology biz working on what it calls LOOP – a process to convert captured carbon waste into graphene and hydrogen. This lowers pollution, but also turns waste into something more useful.
The business has taken an interest in Worthy Farm's anaerobic digestion plant, which produces power as well as carbon as a byproduct. Levidian will try its LOOP technology in the plant in what it [1]claims is "a world-first example of carbon negative hydrogen production from biomethane."
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"The installation is expected to deliver a saving of up to 25 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent each year, while the graphene will be sold as an additive to boost the performance of products as wide-ranging as batteries, concrete and plastics," Levidian declared in a statement.
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While graphene has been theorized to be useful for all sorts of applications – thanks to being incredibly strong, light, and capable of conducting both heat and electricity – in practice it hasn't changed the world much yet. It was created two decades ago, but the first graphene-based product only came to market in 2020: [5]A face mask .
[6]First functional graphene semiconductor could power future chips
[7]AI offers some novel crystal materials that could form future chips, batteries, more
[8]Graphene foam is the future of IoT power, maybe
[9]MIT boffins build battery alternative out of cement, carbon black, water
A more exciting use case for graphene is semiconductors, and although [10]the first graphene-based chip was finally made earlier this year, it will probably be a very long time before we see them in real products. After all, the chip industry is slow to move – all the cutting-edge fabs are poised to use silicon for the next few years, with no signs of switching to another material.
What's more, graphene isn't the only carbon-based super-material out there anymore. [11]Graphullerene was synthesized last year and boasts even better (albeit hypothetical) attributes.
Perhaps more practical in the short term is the hydrogen that is also produced by LOOP, which Levidian said is the "lowest cost clean hydrogen in the world." Hydrogen is seen as one of the best clean energy sources, since it only produces water as a byproduct, and [12]has lately been used by datacenters . However, getting hydrogen in the first place usually requires fossil fuels – offsetting how green it technically is.
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Granted, animal farms also produce carbon emissions – though it's unlikely they will be replaced by lab-grown meat before fossil fuels are kicked to the curb by renewable energy.
Levidian is seemingly confident about its hydrogen production, and has recruited another climate tech firm, Hexla, to help it deploy 300 LOOP installations around the world. It claims this will cut carbon emissions by hundreds of thousands of tons per year. ®
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[1] https://www.levidian.com/recent-press2/hexla-and-levidian-bring-pioneering-climate-technology-to-worthy-farm
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZmggQ3brcmxIEr7ctGaxfgAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZmggQ3brcmxIEr7ctGaxfgAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZmggQ3brcmxIEr7ctGaxfgAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/03/05/graphene_face_mask/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/first_functional_graphene_semiconductor_could/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/30/ai_predicts_novel_materials/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/07/foam_nanogenerators_paper/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/02/mit_concrete_battery/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/09/first_functional_graphene_semiconductor_could/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/06/graphullerene/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/03/japan_to_test_datacenter_powered/
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZmggQ3brcmxIEr7ctGaxfgAAABI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
That's one way to look at it. A very negative way to look at it.
The other way is to say, this is a demonstrator. If it works and actually removes any Methane from the Atmosphere, whilst delivering a useable amount of Graphene, then it's a win...
Me installing Solar panels on the roof is not going to save Mega tons of CO2 either. But it's doing the little bit I can do. And if everyone else did the same, then actually it might begin to make a difference.
As for this specifically, I assume this is a small test demonstrator. Once the tech is proven, they can I'm sure scale up. Methane is particularly bad as a Greenhouse Gas, so removing any quantity of it, is a good thing. Will this be enough to have a major effect? On it's own, No. But combine this with all the other initiatives people are looking at, and we might finally make a bit of a difference to CO2 levels.
Anyway, they're not selling this to the government, they're not wasting your tax dollars, so why not give them a thumbs up, and wish them well...?
If everyone else did the same, we might have a different problem if you believe what Forbes has [1]published .
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2021/06/21/why-everything-they-said-about-solar---including-that-its-clean-and-cheap---was-wrong/
The problem is that we are trying to create technology that fixes our use of technology, creating more problems, for which we create more technology that requires more technology.
What nobody wants is to have/do/want less and be content. To abstain is seen as a negative and defeat. Therefore, we create technology which brings us into problems for which we create technology to solve our problems that require technology to solve the new problems, ad infinitum.
We should break that cycle.
"What nobody wants is to have/do/want less and be content"
I have a book on life in Stratford in Shakespeare's time. It's based on analysis of wills, and it's really interesting in that the bequests of even highly commercially successful people indicate how little they owned but were apparently quite content. The big problem we now face is unbridled competition for our attention and dosh among rivals doing much the same thing as each other. I recently counted up the shelves in my local supermarket and found about 80 metres (a whole aisle) dedicated to potato crisps and about the same each to confectionary and fizzy drinks in cans -- multiple very similar product lines from different producers in each case. Encouragement to consume is now essential to keep the wheels (and revenue streams) of commerce turning because most of us in the Western urban culture already have all the basic essentials we need. The snag is that the waste and the environmental impact can't be reduced without loss of revenue, so we try to sidestep this with fantasies such as "carbon credits" and piecemeal technical fixes. And at the personal level it's much the same -- any trip to the local dump (sorry "recycling centre") shows how wasteful we continue to be. I recently saw someone disposing of an entire home cinema system (5ft TV and all). He told me it was fully operational but he'd bought a new one.
> this is a demonstrator
Perhaps. Though it looks far more like token environmentalism (aka 'greenwashing'). We need to stop emitting greenhouse gasses at orders of magnitude more than schemes like this could ever hope to realise.
> they're not wasting your tax dollars
They most certainly aren't old bean!
They're not removing much methane from the atmosphere - the methane produced from the cow shit is a tiny proportion compared to what the cows fart out every day in the fields. And it's a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. If they removed the cows from the farm entirely, it would be much more planet saving. But much less cheeseburger producing.
It's a bit like how they have a wind turbine at the festival, supposedly powering the main stage, that makes the hundred thousand people who drive hundreds of miles there and back by car feel like they're saving the planet.
More of these small-scale positive LCA companies should be backed. While each one seems like a drop in the ocean compared with total global emissions they start to add up quite quickly. Often these technologies are currently the only solution for smaller emitters that are a long distance from industrial clusters that are considering bulk scale capture and storage projects.
The ability to deploy this with "only" 25 tonnes CO2eq improvement drives investment in the company to be able to deploy further and scale up the technology to make it a bigger player in decarbonisation. It is also utilising CO2 to make a product that is locking away some of the carbon that would otherwise have been emitted.
It's important to note that this is being installed now. The large scale capture and storage projects that are being talked about for all the major sources of emissions are (like cold fusion power) always years away from meaningful implementation. Any CCUS project that can be rolled out today helps normalise the behaviour towards carbon reductions in industry.
This is a demonstrator for their carbon-capture coal-seam-gas to clean-hydrogen process.
This is fantastic technology that will finally let us make green coal. As a steam afficionado, I am delighted. Of course I do recognise that steam trains can be just as easily fueled with a tender of liquid hydrogen that can be bucketed into the firebox by the stoker, but's great to have choices.
Shit at Glastonbury
The obvious question is whether this tech can handle the rather less "pure" excrement found in abundance at Glastonbury once a year.
I was at [1]EMF Camp this year, and as usual they used mostly composting toilets (except for next to the bar area, where perhaps the composting toilets would not handle the increased amount of liquid ...) They seem to work really well, there is no foul smell or swarm of flies. All that's needed is a cup of sawdust thrown over each turd, and the microbes handle the rest.
Not sure what is done with it afterwards, but presumably it could be fed into an anaerobic digester to produce methane, which is then either fed into the gas network. I suppose whatever gunk is left afterwards is mostly extra carbon..
Whether or not cow manure, never mind human manure from Glastonbury with all kind of exotic chemicals mixed in would produce good Graphene though is less certain but it does grab the headlines
[1] https://emfcamp.org
The installation is expected to deliver a saving of up to 25 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent each year,... [emphasis mine]
That must be an almost useless installation then. The 2022 UK CO 2 emission was more than 318 Mega tons of CO 2 . To compensate the total emissions you'd need, let me do the math, more than 12.7 million of these installations. And then, we're not even talking about real CO 2 , but about equivalent .
This is a save-the-planet-by-carrying-water-to-the-ocean type of installation.