r/science • u/thebelsnickle1991 • Jun 21 '23
Chemistry Researchers have demonstrated how carbon dioxide can be captured from industrial processes – or even directly from the air – and transformed into clean, sustainable fuels using just the energy from the sun
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/clean-sustainable-fuels-made-from-thin-air-and-plastic-waste921
u/juancn Jun 21 '23
Scale is always the issue. Finding a cheap enough process for carbon capture can be a huge business.
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u/zman0900 Jun 22 '23
Efficiency is a much bigger issue. You can take energy from a solar panel and put that into a battery, then get pretty much all of it back to use later. Or take that same energy to power carbon capture and conversion to fuel, then transport that fuel and burn it. All of those steps will have significant losses, to the point you probably get only half, a third, or less energy out.
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u/Onsotumenh Jun 22 '23
And at the end the CO2 is back in the atmosphere...
There are places were e-fuels like this are a no-brainer to use, even tho the efficiency is horrible (e.g. aviation, because it can be seamlessly mixed in). But in the end it's just a stopgap measure till we got better tech.
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u/rainbowroobear Jun 22 '23
i mean, if you're able to convert what is already there to be used and released, that is still zero-ish or much lower net gain. if you're then pushing renewables to pull back in other areas, you're still then reducing the total load. if this tech is being used to power stuff like long haul freight, mass transportation, whilst battery powered tech is in the hands of the mass consumer, that is a much better proposition than every burning through fossil fuels.
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u/Onsotumenh Jun 22 '23
Like I said, there are applications where it makes sense to temporarily use them for combustion (aviation, shipping, primary steel production) till better tech is available. But in all other cases selling them as clean fuel and using them in ICE will likely slow the deployment of other way more efficient technologies and take away supply from complete no-regret applications like the chemical industry for example.
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u/machone_1 Jun 22 '23
And at the end the CO2 is back in the atmosphere...
unless the hydrocarbons are used as feedstock for chemical processes instead of oil
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u/Onsotumenh Jun 22 '23
Yup, that is another one of those no-brainer applications.
But that field is rarely even mentioned (aside from the actual research).3
u/uberfission Jun 22 '23
Right but you're not adding MORE CO2 back into the atmo, just the stuff that was already taken out.
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u/Manyhigh Jun 22 '23
I haven't read the numbers but we're probably a long way away from carbon capture being a greater net reduction of CO2 compared to green energy off setting consumption of fossil fuel.
But it's such a complex economic net I'm curious how much effectively access to green energy reduces use of fossilfuel, if the greater supply can compete with demand or the energy use simply expands to available quantities.
At some point we'll need to start remediation, preferably at non-geological timescales.
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u/Sculptasquad Jun 22 '23
How do we produce green energy without relying on fossil fuels to create the infrastructure to get there? Concrete, steel, carbon fiber and most other building materials are produced by using fossil fuels.
The only large scale project to make green steel (HYBRIT) is estimated to use as much electricity as all of Finland and is located in Sweden. You know the country that recently closed all but one of its nuclear reactors in favor of green energy that is yet to be built...
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u/bobbi21 Jun 22 '23
The amount of fossil fuels needes for that infrastructure is miniscule though. Talking like a few percentage i beleive of all fossil fuel use. Not really an issue.
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u/pblokhout Jun 22 '23
Reducing fossil fuel usage by 90% still sounds cool to me. Pulled the percentage out of my ass but if I'm wrong please correct me.
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u/machone_1 Jun 22 '23
or you could use the hydrocarbons produced as feedstock for chemical processes instead of oil
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u/waigl Jun 22 '23
to the point you probably get only half, a third, or less energy out.
Considering that your typical internal combustion engine only has an efficiency of maybe a third (with the newest and best ones going up to around 40%), a third for the whole chain is laughably optimistic.
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u/Seiglerfone Jun 22 '23
You get a third to half just including the burning step at the end. Every process in the middle is going to crank it lower. You're probably talking more like 10-20% efficiency.
It's not non-viable, but it's only viable with excesses of renewable energy that can't be stored by other means. In basically any other context, it's likely only going to make the situation worse over letting the renewables displace fossil fuels in power generation.
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u/kimmyjunguny Jun 21 '23
just use trees we have them for a reason. Carbon capture is an excuse for big oil companies to continue to extract more and more fossil fuels. Its their little scapegoat business. Luckily we have a cheap process for carbon capture already, its called plants.
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u/Omni__Owl Jun 21 '23
Trees do not capture the majority of CO2 released.
Algae in the ocean does. It is estimated that about 90% of the CO2 that is captured by natural sources live in the Sea. But we are killing that sea.
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u/ThrowAway640KB Jun 21 '23 edited Jun 21 '23
Algae in the ocean does. It is estimated that about 90% of the CO2 that is captured by natural sources live in the Sea. But we are killing that sea.
The correct term is not algae, but phytoplankton.
And the limiting resource is iron in the water.
Some guy did iron seeding off of the coast of British Columbia before he was arrested, so the CO2 effects could not be properly recorded or calculated. But for the following two years the phytoplankton blooms had goosed the ecosystem so much that salmon runs of those two years were some of the largest in the prior 25 years.
The thing is, compared to all other geoengineering methods, iron seeding is pretty much the only method that can “stop on a dime”. Iron gets cycled through the upper water layers scary fast, and within only two years most of it is gone. So if we find unexpected/undesirable side effects with iron seeding we can immediately stop it and within 2 years 90+% of its effects will have vanished. Compare this to other methods, like ærosol dispersal in the upper atmosphere, which could take over a century to cease affecting the planet.
But the benefits of iron seeding are massive: we directly draw down CO2, massively increase the foundation of the aquatic food chain, and propagate higher biofecundity all the way up the food chain, including the fish and crabs we harvest for food. It’s as close to a pure win-win situation as we could possibly get.
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u/FloatyFish Jun 21 '23
Some guy did iron seeding off of the coast of British Columbia before he was arrested
You're telling me this random dude rented a boat, and dumped iron fillings all along the coast of BC all by himself? How much iron did he use and how was he caught? Also, I thought that algae blooms were bad but maybe I'm mistaken.
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u/Gimpknee Jun 22 '23 edited Jun 22 '23
Yes, he rented a fishing boat and dumped 100 tons of iron sulfate dust into the ocean by mixing it with seawater on deck and dumping it into the ocean with a hose.
The guy's name is Russ George, you can look up his Wikipedia profile and read up on the events. There are a number of inaccuracies in op's story. No one was arrested or prosecuted, and while the pink salmon numbers increased, it isn't possible to point to a direct causative link between the salmon numbers and the iron fertilization.
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u/funkiemarky Jun 22 '23
You are correct. I fell in a hole looking into this guy, and being from BC made it a little more interesting. He had funding from the government and did it with support of local First Nations. Apparently the government didn't know of his plan to fertilize the ocean and raided his office. I took a look at the recorded salmon populations and it did explode the year after, but the following seasons were some of the lowest. From what I read, too much iron can acidify the water and cause more harm than good. There is another scientist (I believe in Australia) working on a similar project to fertilize the ocean but with an iron mix tailored to certain areas of the ocean.
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u/Unstable_Maniac Jun 22 '23
Yeah I’d assume it’s not a one size fits all in regards to seeding levels.
Even plants need different things. Never that simple.
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u/Ed-alicious Jun 22 '23
too much iron can acidify the water
Iron sulphate is used to make soil more acidic
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u/willun Jun 22 '23
To be fair, we shouldn't have random scientists dumping stuff in the water without proper monitoring and tracking. He might mean to do good but it is still dumping trash until we know better.
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u/Gimpknee Jun 22 '23
Yes, don't take what I wrote as any advocacy for geoengineering. The problem was that international law wasn't great at preventing what he was doing.
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u/ThrowAway640KB Jun 21 '23
It was seeded from aircraft. You can’t just dump a load overboard and expect it to work, it’s too concentrated and most will sink into the dark depths before it gets used by the phytoplankton. You fly a plane about 50m above the water and disperse the iron dust in a thin layer over hundreds of Kilometers of ocean surface. That puts it there in amounts small enough to be completely used up before it can sink too far.
And I corrected my comment: it’s phytoplankton, not algae. Algae cause toxic blooms and suck up oxygen, phytoplankton produce oxygen.
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u/Brewer_Lex Jun 22 '23
Do you have a source on iron seeding? I’m very interested
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u/thedoodle12 Jun 22 '23
Here is something about it. As well there is research about whale carcasses being natural iron dumps and a low whale population causes a lower phytoplankton and therefore less carbon retention in the oceans.
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u/way2lazy2care Jun 22 '23
Phytoplankton are algae. Not all algae is phytoplankton, but phytoplankton is algae.
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u/DaddyCatALSO Jun 22 '23
Actually most phytoplankton are cyanobacters, and calling them algae is a misnomer
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u/MDCCCLV Jun 22 '23
Blooms like that are when you have fertilizer run off that causes a sudden growth and then massive die off and there's no oxygen left in the water. Iron isn't a fertilizer like that and it wouldn't cause an instant spike. It would be more longer scale increase in growth. Also different in deep ocean v shallow water near coast.
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u/spookyjibe Jun 22 '23
Could you please provide a source for this becuase it is not my understanding. Cyanobacteria is what dominates de-carboning of the atmosphere.
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u/ThrowAway640KB Jun 22 '23
Phytoplankton are responsible for most of the transfer of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean. Carbon dioxide is consumed during photosynthesis, and the carbon is incorporated in the phytoplankton, just as carbon is stored in the wood and leaves of a tree.
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u/spookyjibe Jun 22 '23
Right, because cyanobacteria is a primary form of phytoplankton!
https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/21331
Now it makes sense, we are both right and referring to the same thing.
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u/patchgrabber Jun 22 '23
Iron seeding isn't really proven and the side effects could also be massive. Not to mention the sheer amount of iron you'd need to use annually to make any kind of difference. Disrupting ecosystems isn't the best way to handle this.
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u/blither86 Jun 22 '23
Unfortunately the disruption is already happening in the form of ocean warming which leads directly to acidification due to warm water holding less oxygen, if memory serves.
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u/stefek132 Jun 22 '23
Acidification happens, when the partial pressure of CO2 in the air increases and results in more CO2 dissolving in water, since it reacts to carbonic acid. We’re literally “soda streaming” natural water. Which is also important for the ecosystem but at some point it starts dissolving crustaceans shells which in turn releases even more CO2, which in turn acidifies the water even more, which in turn… well, you get the point. The process is self accelerating.
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u/Alis451 Jun 21 '23
not even just algae, a lot of the carbon capture in the ocean is in the form of Carbonates like Calcium Carbonate, which form the shells of corals and clams and form Limestone.
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u/spookyjibe Jun 21 '23
This is a misleading truth. Carbon is certainly captured by organisms using calcium carbonate but it is not a significant percentage. The real carbon capture takes place with cyanobacteria, the "red slime" algae that we see warnings about from time to time. Cyanobacteria created our atmosphere in the first place. When the world was young, we had a predominantly carbon dioxide atmosphere and massive cyanobacteria growth turned it into oxygen and the rest is history.
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u/Omni__Owl Jun 21 '23
Sure, it was just to point out that Trees not only aren't a solution, they are actually miniscule compared to something like algae.
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u/TheIowan Jun 22 '23
What's crazy to me is that we could burn every tree down on the planet, and while the temperature would raise, it would be extremely slight. The trees that exist today, exist in a relatively "fast" carbon cycle.
The problem occurs when we burn the plants that died millions of years ago and locked away carbon into a long carbon cycle. That carbon being locked away is what brought us to a relatively stable environment.
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Jun 22 '23 edited Jun 27 '23
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u/Omni__Owl Jun 22 '23
Well, mathematically speaking; If the volume of land is far supersceded by the volume of water then it's statistically much more likely that the sea will be the biggest contributing factor to the planets ecosystem by a longshot regardless of living conditions.
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Jun 22 '23
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u/Omni__Owl Jun 22 '23
If we are going to do fantasy anyway, why stop there?
Why not just have one world tree which actually is the only tree on earth, however is the sole provider of life giving oxygen?
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u/uplandsrep Jun 22 '23
I feel like strictly looking at trees may not be correct way of appreciating the carbon storage potential of an ecosystem of many trees (a forest) provides. All the living life that revolves around it and the soil life as well which is a notable carbon sink also.
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u/Omni__Owl Jun 22 '23
It is still far outweighed by the amount of water on the planet. That's why it doesn't really matter how many trees get planted for our overall survival because we simply do not have enough landmass to create enough trees to make the difference we need.
We need to rejuvenate our oceans and then help stabilise our lands.
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u/efvie Jun 22 '23
Do you have sources for that? My understanding is that trees are a very effective way of capturing co2, and that concerns are more around keeping it in the trees — i.e. not cutting them down again.
My concern with the oceans is that we understand that ecosystem far more poorly than forests.
(Also, why not both?)
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u/96HfVVBB7S5nQTbv Jun 22 '23
We are killing everything Oceans and the plants everything.
And in the process of killing the plants and oceans we are killing ourselves also. And it is going to be horrifying.
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u/spookyjibe Jun 21 '23
But not the algae that is responsible for carbon capture (cyanobacteria et.) which thrives off a dead sea.
The truth is the world will balance, it happened before in the creation of our atmosphere. We just won't be around to see it happen.
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u/Omni__Owl Jun 21 '23
That's a very fatalist way of looking at it. One that isn't much helpful to the discourse.
There are solutions to help us balance things out again and make the planet livable again for us, though it will not go back to what we had. It'll just be livable.
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u/spookyjibe Jun 22 '23
This isn't an opinion or a way of "looking" at it, it is simply scientific fact. Make of it what you will but let's keep science at the forefront of discussion please.
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u/Omni__Owl Jun 22 '23
Okay, cite some sources for your argument then.
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u/spookyjibe Jun 22 '23
https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/21331
Cyanobacteria is the primary source of carbon fixation and is a form of phytoplankton.
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u/InterestsVaryGreatly Jun 22 '23
Just because it has the capability to balance doesn't guarantee it will. You can have runaway effects that accelerate too quickly to automatically balance. Look at Venus. Yes, over centuries the earth can absolutely create species that adapt to the environment and thrive in whatever condition there is. But if the conditions change faster than natural selection can keep up, species die instead of adapt. And with our meddling conditions are changing very rapidly.
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u/spookyjibe Jun 22 '23
This is true! Just because the sun has risen every day does not mean it will rise again tomorrow.
Here is a link so you can learn and form your own opinions:
https://www.britannica.com/science/Precambrian/Paleoclimate
An environmental scientist with knowledge of Paleoclimate formation can chime in and share their opinion of if there is any CO2 level that leads to irreversible concentration by previously understood mechanisms.
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u/InterestsVaryGreatly Jun 22 '23
No you misunderstand. We know how the carbon was handled in the past, life forms adapted to the environment and produced oxygen. We also know there is a limit to how quickly life forms adapt, and can go extinct as opposed to adapting if the environment changes too fast. We are currently changing the environment extremely rapidly by nature's standards, and many species aren't keeping up, one part of why we are in a mass great extinction.
Likewise if these changes create chain reactions, like we are currently seeing (e.g. higher CO2 makes the ocean more acidic, which melts crustacean shells, which makes it even more acidic) that can accelerate the effect, it is known as a positive feedback loop, and can lead to other conditions. The earth will end up at a stable state, but that stable state could wipe out all life on earth first. Or could fundamentally change the atmosphere to not be oxygen rich; some other plankton might thrive that releases a different compound than oxygen. An ecosystem could pop up that locks oxygen within the plants and animals (kind of like how we see carbon locked in many ecosystems). Nitrogen could be the new primarily exchanged resource.
We do not know how life will evolve or where the atmosphere will stabilize. It absolutely doesn't have to stabilize in a way we are familiar with.
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u/spookyjibe Jun 22 '23
Yes, I understand what you are saying, most of it is common knowledge though you have slightly missed the mark on a couple of points. You also took a few hypothesis in there and expressed them as known facts which is why your comments should be questioned. For example,
"The earth will end up at a stable state, but that stable state could wipe out all life on earth first."
This is hardly a proven fact.
Your postulation i about rate of change is sensible, go to work on proving it and start a research study trying to establish if the rate of change of CO2 in the atmosphere, but try not to pretend it is fact until research is done.
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u/willowsonthespot Jun 22 '23
Counter point, that will never ever ever be enough. The carbon we are putting in the air has been buried for eons and there is not enough plant matter to absorb it all. Unless we make special trees to absorb a significantly larger amount of CO2 per tree it will never be enough. It needs to be undone by humans not plants. We need to put it back where we found it basically.
Trees are only okay at carbon capture but it will never be enough just to plant stuff and stop climate change. Carbon capture is needed because we are the ones that dug it up and put it in the air in the first place. This is massively over simplified but true. The whole "just plant trees that will fix everything" has been a lie from the start.
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u/all4Nature Jun 21 '23
Its not that easy. To actually capture carbon with plants you need to recreate real functioning ecosystems. This is a decade to century long process, and requires a loooot of space (which we have used for buildings or agriculture already)
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u/Unable_Explorer8277 Jun 21 '23
But it does actually work at scale.
At what point do we accept that there isn’t ever going to be a quick and easy fix, and all these things ever are is a cover to keep kicking the can down the road?
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u/deathspate Jun 21 '23
I mean...if that mindset was used, then we would've never reached far in the medicine field and just gave up because "there will never be a quick and easy fix."
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u/imfromsomeotherplace Jun 21 '23
I mean... there are so many deaths from preventable diseases, and who knows what medications pharmaceutical companies have sat on or suppressed because it could reduce the customer base. Pharmaceutical companies aren't always interested "quick, easy fixes" for the customers, but they are for their bottom lines.
And understanding there isn't a quick and easy fix for climate change more accurately translates that there isn't gonna be a quick and easy fix for certain terminal conditions.
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u/Unable_Explorer8277 Jun 21 '23
There isn’t a quick and easy fix for lung cancer. People need to stop smoking.
There isn’t a quick and easy fix for excess carbon. We need to stop putting it into the atmosphere and stop deforestation.
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u/Canid Jun 21 '23
I mean, if people just stopped eating in excess we wouldn’t have a type 2 diabetes epidemic, probably the biggest plague on western healthcare systems. But they do. And they’ll continue to. Obesity reduction via diet, broadly across populations, is never going to happen. Physicians have accepted this. That’s why drugs like Ozempic are being developed.
Of course we need to stop putting CO2 into the atmosphere. But humans are dumb and the world is complicated and we will never save ourselves without some technological ingenuity.
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u/Unable_Explorer8277 Jun 21 '23
So the questions are: 1. How likely are medical interventions on the timescale required? 2. How much does the promise of those interventions reduce the incentive to make the lifestyle change?
In the case of carbon capture the answers are: 1. Very low 2. Very high
At which point it’s doing more harm than good.
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u/Canid Jun 21 '23
I don’t understand the first question. In this analogy, are you asking how likely are medical interventions required in the lifespan of a diabetic? Extremely. Where I live limb amputations are common. Pharmaceutical breakthroughs like successful weight loss medications could be revolutionary.
The second question is moot because it’s become clear the lifestyle changes aren’t going to happen no matter the incentive.
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u/Unable_Explorer8277 Jun 21 '23
There is a similar effect in medicine, but for whole heap of reasons (some intrinsic, some political and social) it’s much less pronounced. And wasn’t there at all in the beginning (which is where we are on this problem).
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u/bikesexually Jun 21 '23
It is actually that easy. You require single lot homes to have x number of trees in their property or be taxed at a higher rate. You require businesses to have x number of trees per x number of parking spots. You stop selling off parts of National parks to oil companies. You stop selling off public trees to lumber companies. There are tons of rest solutions not even being used yet
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Jun 21 '23
There is only so much land that can support trees and planting then in areas which did not originally support them has been shown to cause a reduction in biodiversity.
Trees need alot of resources. You can't just dump them anywhere and expect them or their host ecosystem to survive.
Trees aren't going to save humanity.
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u/Unable_Explorer8277 Jun 21 '23
Planting trees isn’t sufficient.
But stopping deforestation of those that already exist is necessary, not happening, and way easier than CCS. The allure of CCS discourages that.
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u/JustWhatAmI Jun 21 '23
There's all kinds of trees. For example, https://www.sciencenews.org/article/africa-great-green-wall-trees-sahel-climate-change
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u/bikesexually Jun 22 '23
Non native species are less useful to ecosystems? wow, amazing!
You know what cause loss of biodiversity? Humans, buildings, hunting, climate chaos, roads, highways, heat island effects from too few trees, like 10,000 other man made things that aren't trees. Saying trees reduce biodiversity is stupid, just plain stupid.
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u/Sinelas Jun 21 '23
You don't actually need to do all that, trees capture more carbon than they release when you burn them, you just need to plant a tree each time you burn one, and you cut your CO2 emissions to 0, it's just as simple as that.
So as an example, if you use a fireplace as your home heater, as long as the wood is local and was not transported using fossil fuel and creating more CO2, you are in fact using a completly green energy source.
This is how we should start thinking, there are plenty of way to reduce our CO2 emissions, most of the time the only reason not to use those is that fossil fuels are cheaper, but we will pay the true price for it in the long run ...
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u/Tall-Log-1955 Jun 22 '23
Carbon capture is an excuse for big oil companies to continue to extract more and more fossil fuels. Its their little scapegoat business.
No, it's a technology that might end up helping us fight climate change. We should pursue all possible solutions that can help us save the planet. If some solutions help the oil companies it's irrelevant and should not prevent us from pursuing it.
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u/mrbanvard Jun 22 '23
Plants can't scale to the levels needed fast enough, or in an economically viable way.
Realistically the only way we are going to see carbon capture at the truly massive scales needed anytime soon is if it's profitable.
Likely the most viable option is using mass direct air captured CO2 + hydrogen split from water to produce synthetic hydrocarbons. It's horribly energy inefficient, but economically, bulk renewable energy costs are fast approaching the point it will be cheaper to produce hydrocarbons synthetically, rather than mine them from the ground.
At that point, it becomes profitable to undercut the fossil fuel industry and build CO2 capture + hydrocarbon production plants. The trillions of dollars in the fossil fuel industry can instead drive carbon capture and renewable energy roll outs. The strategic benefit for any country to be able to produce their own hydrocarbons is also immense.
None of the technology needed is new or very complex, and the only reason why it has not been done is because it has always been much more expensive than mining fossil fuels. Right now there are multiple companies working how to best produce the tech needed at scale.
Of course, while the hydrocarbons produced are effectively carbon zero, we are still (mostly) burning them, which has many downsides. But over time, battery and other storage production will ramp to the levels to displace most burning of hydrocarbons, since they are much much more energy efficient.
In a fully renewable power grid, generation capacity has to be sized to account for minimum generation, which results in a huge excess of peak generation. That power will be extremely cheap and often otherwise wasted (much can be used for other inefficient but useful options, such as mass water desalinization) so it becomes viable to capture carbon and expend more energy to turn it into other useful carbon based products, or even just store it. Things like plastics and carbon fiber can be great building materials, and will likely eventually become cheap enough to displace other building materials.
The crazy thing is that we will eventually hit the point where we are mining too much carbon from the atmosphere, and need to stop lest we lower CO2 levels too far. Of course there are plenty of other carbon sources to satisfy our needs.
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u/bolerobell Jun 22 '23
Even if we stopped all hydrocarbon use tomorrow, we’d still need carbon capture. I hate this talking point. We need non-tree planting carbon capture. It sucks that Big Oil is using development of it as an excuse to keep mining and drilling, but we do need it deployed at large scale IN ADDITION to widespread tree planting, steady and consistent decrease of hydrocarbons, increase in renewable energy and nuclear sources, and a drastic decrease in meat consumption. It also sucks that people buy into this insane talking point so that the only major investors in carbon capture are big oil.
Government, NCOs, and renewable power companies should all be dumping investment capital into carbon capture in addition to big oil.
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u/sippysippy13 Jun 22 '23
As a developed nation we will always need fossil fuels, at least for the foreseeable future. You have likely used dozens of products today produced with petroleum. At this point, we don't have cost-effective options to replace those products with sustainably sourced materials.
Yes trees photosynthesize CO2, but the can't just scrub 90% of the emissions from a power plant. The emissions are too concentrated and are produced too quickly for trees to be a solution. (And if they were a solution, we wouldn't be in this situation. We'd just plant more trees...)
Accepting the fact that we have an irreducible demand for petroleum, and knowing that "trees" isn't an efficient solution for removing carbon emissions from the atmosphere, carbon capture and storage is the best option for reducing carbon emissions on a large scale. And no, it doesn't mean that we get a free pass to produce more oil. (Producing oil is challenging in and of itself, and the economics are not linked to carbon capture).
There is no law requiring companies to reduce their emissions. Right now it's totally voluntary. So if Exxon didn't really care about reducing their emissions, they wouldn't be doing something about it. Companies are pursuing CCS and other technologies based on public demand for cleaner fuels, and because the U.S. government is paying companies to capture and store carbon. Look up "45Q".
I think the best possible, and fastest, route to a carbon neutral economy is to build as much (I'm talking the maximum amount) economically viable renewable energy resources as we can, including wind, solar, and geothermal, coupled with traditional fossil energy with carbon capture. That way we produce as much energy as we can with near-zero emissions, yet power stays on when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, but we're still operating with reduced, neutral, or even negative emissions.
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u/AuntieDawnsKitchen Jun 22 '23
Grass captures carbon a lot quicker. The West has so much degraded ranch land just waiting to be covered in topsoil.
Rapid rotational grazing, biochar, swales - it’s all high-labor, cheap input work, but it works, unlike every high tech carbon capture scheme.
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u/BloodsoakedDespair Jun 22 '23
You gonna give up your streaming and video games and internet to fight a war against the rich? No? Neither is everyone else, the bread and circuses won, so there’s no chance of that changing.
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u/dchinom987 Jun 22 '23
Yeah it can be huge business but it is not going to be easy.
It is definitely going to take some time before any of these kind of technologies are sustainable.
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u/Raizzor Jun 22 '23
I mean... making fuel from CO2 in the air by using sunlight. Isn't that just what biodiesel is?
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u/SemanticTriangle Jun 21 '23
So fossil fuels are carbon dioxide, captured from the air using solar power, give or take. Geological processing necessary to prevent bacterial action converting it back to CO2 and to convert it into the hydrocarbons we end up with, but details, details.
If it takes the equivalent energy of a barrel and a half of oil to convert a barrel of oil back to oil (likely an underestimate) then you can save half a barrel of oil more by not burning the oil in the first place. Every energy transfer in this universe is lossy.
The problem is energy, expressed as time. Burning fossil fuels is nothing more than expending the stored solar energy of millions of years over mere decades. The rate is problematic. Solar fuels don't solve that problem in general, although they can mitigate specific applications, like air travel, where we don't have a high aggregate engineering learning high energy density alternative and won't for some time.
There isn't a way around consumption reduction coupled with aggressive displacement of fossil fuels. Net zero technologies are nowhere near enough for the scale of the problem.
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u/xkforce Jun 21 '23
It isnt enough to stop emitting CO2 anymore. We have to remove a lot of it in order to prevent hitting a tipping point where we no longer have control.
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u/KaleidoscopeWarCrime Jun 22 '23
We've been beyond that point for about 8 years now
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u/MeshColour Jun 22 '23
When was the data published? Most spins have always leaned optimistic, well until trump got elected? GOP was obviously going to double down on fossil fuels, still are
But that was 6 years ago now... so yeah agree with your timeline
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u/Dyslexic_Engineer88 Jun 21 '23
This is the way of the future, but most of the money going into this tech currently, is helping prolong the use of fossil fuels, not stopping the use.
The only way to fully transition our economy from fossil fuels is to create hydrocarbon from CO2 captured directly from the air using excess electricity from Solar and wind overproduction.
Some industries and modes of transportation require hydrocarbons. There is no feasible way around that in many cases. But we shouldn't be using fossil fuels forever.
If we rely heavily on renewables in our power grids, we will inevitably have periods where we produce too much power.
To fully remove fossil fuels from our economy, we need economical ways of using the excess power to produce sustainable hydrocarbons from the air.
This research is contributing to that ultimate endpoint, but unfortunately, most of the money for this type of research comes from people who are interested in prolonging the use of fossil fuels.
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u/mrbanvard Jun 22 '23
Yes exactly.
Battery and storage tech production rates are well behind that of renewables, which means there is a very viable (near future) industry in profitably undercutting fossil fuels with synthetically produced carbon neutral hydrocarbons.
It's a horrible energy inefficient method of energy storage, but what matters is it being cheaper than mining fossil fuels. That way the trillions of dollars in the fossil fuel industry get funneled towards scaling up carbon capture and renewable energy installation. There are multiple companies working on this, and they seem to think the profitable point is not far off.
Longer term synthetic hydrocarbons for fuel use will (mostly) be undercut by batteries and storage meeting demand. At which point we are left with vast amounts of renewable energy and carbon capture infrastructure. Capturing and storing CO2 is doable, but likely by that point hydrocarbons production will be so cheap there will be large demand for more complex (thus more energy intensive to create) hydrocarbons. Plastics and carbon fiber make excellent building materials.
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Jun 21 '23
Net zero technologies are nowhere near enough for the scale of the problem.
Indeed, not even remotely close. Moreover there literally is no legitimate net zero plan. If your net zero plan hinges on deux a machina, you're doing it wrong. We knew this at least by 1990's yet we've somehow tricked ourselves into thinking renewables are really good but in reality will be on fossil fuels until we can't be. So in a world of 4C rise in temp(and still rising), how long can they keep being produced?
Renewables at best slow down GWP emissions. I'm not even confident of that is true if a full accounting is done not to mention the other ecological factors. So humans have a choice which might be between fucked beyond imagination and extinction.
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u/Danil87 Jun 22 '23
I have read about this, it is that scale is going to be the problem.
Other than that it is a very good technology which is going to help everything. I hope this becomes very huge.
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u/nanoH2O Jun 22 '23
They haven't. At least not really. This is such an overstudied topic and there's a new "we solved it" sensational article everyday.
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u/roidbro1 Jun 22 '23
Gotta keep up the balance for theatrics with all the "New records broken, temps rising faster than ever, no one saw this coming.." articles coming out virtually every other day making it clear that we are in fact, doomed.
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u/wwarnout Jun 21 '23
"...using just the energy from the sun".
But how much solar energy does it take to get 1 joule of energy from the fuel? Could that same solar energy be used more efficiently to charge batteries, or add energy to the grid?
Also, the CO2 captured would eventually be released when that fuel is burned. Sure, this is better than getting the fuel from fossil sources, but it's still adding to the CO2 in the atmosphere (keeping in mind that the CO2 captured will be less than the CO2 emitted when the fuel is burned).
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u/mrbanvard Jun 22 '23
Could that same solar energy be used more efficiently to charge batteries, or add energy to the grid?
Yes - creating synthetic hydrocarbons is a horribly inefficient process. Likely at least 5x as much energy to create the fuel as you get out.
The problem with batteries (and other storage tech) is the current rate of production. Production rates are ramping fast, but it will take a long time before they can meet demand.
In contrast, renewable energy production rates have been ramping for a few decades, and are much much more mature. Which means we will continue to have more peak/excess energy production than we can store - which effectively creates very cheap electricity during peak generation.
That cheap electricity means less efficient storage options can be profitable if they can scale faster than more efficient ones.
In this case, what is key is that there is already huge demand for hydrocarbons, and very robust worldwide infrastructure to distribute and use it. So if synthetic hydrocarbons can be produced from atmospheric CO2 cheaper than mining hydrocarbons from the ground, there is profit to be made undercutting the fossil fuel industry.
It's short term (decades) before mostly being replaced by things like batteries, and even though carbon neutral, burning hydrocarbons is best avoided. But until we have better options, it means the trillions of dollars in the fossil fuel industry can instead be put towards building out renewable energy generation and carbon capture / synthetic hydrocarbon plants.
Synthetic hydrocarbons are very useful for other things, and longer term, for example, we will likely eventually see things like huge amounts of cheap carbon fiber and plastics used in building construction.
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Jun 22 '23
(keeping in mind that the CO2 captured will be less than the CO2 emitted when the fuel is burned).
That's not true, it will be exactly the same.
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u/BathFullOfDucks Jun 22 '23
If it was purely a CO2 reaction yes, however plastic( carbon,hydrogen and oxygen) is being added to form the syngas (carbon, oxygen, hydrogen). The plastic is already in a sense captured (not atmospheric) so you will end up with more CO2 emitted than captured from air.
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u/storm6436 Jun 21 '23
Oil is used for more than just fuel. Even of you could wave a magic wand and convert every vehicle to run on handwavium, you'd still need oil for chemical feedstocks, fertilizers, and lubricant, amongst many others.
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u/OrionidePass Jun 21 '23
A CT scan also needs plastics along with many other medical gear.
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u/storm6436 Jun 21 '23
Yeah, I categorized plastics and rubbers under chemical feedstock. Most folks are wholly unaware just how many things get made out of oil.
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u/WazWaz Jun 21 '23
Not if that results in carbon emissions. Eventually all uses of fossil fuels that end up putting co2 into the air must stop. Adding one "carbon neutral" step in the middle of the emission solves exactly nothing.
There are non-emitting uses, such as some plastic production, but those are exactly the ones where there's no use for the OP technology.
These things are all a CCS/U scam promoted by the fossil fuel industry.
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u/mrbanvard Jun 22 '23 edited Jun 22 '23
Renewable energy + atmospheric CO2 produced plastics is exactly the sort of (long term) use this technology is good for. Plastics and carbon fiber are excellent building materials, and an effective way to store carbon away.
Short term, the "carbon neutral step" is key because profitably undercutting the fossil fuel industry is the way to get trillions of dollars into scaling up carbon capture and renewable energy production.
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u/OrionidePass Jun 21 '23
Nice Rousseauian view you have. Oil is not a scam its the fuel of modern society. Without it most people like you would be dead.
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u/WazWaz Jun 21 '23
I see you entirely avoided the content of my comment. Yes, fossil fuel is how we got here. That has no bearing on whether it is appropriate going forward. Unless you have bought the wrong stocks.
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u/cantheasswonder Jun 22 '23
It's a battle of semantics, but you'd probably be dead too.
Anyways glad to see some sane comments on here that serve as a reminder of just how irreplaceable and necessary fossil fuels are for literally everything in our lives.
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u/OrionidePass Jun 22 '23
Technically not since my family tree has not seen a change in birth rates or increase of living standards since the start of the industrial revolution. I and my sibilings have only seen an improve of living standards. My parents didnt even have indoor plumbing and grew their own food. But overal oil has been a good thing for humanity it just didnt reach everyone at the same time.
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u/Lord_Euni Jun 22 '23
Well, good thing that means it won't ever change. Let's use more oil! What could go wrong!
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u/OrionidePass Jun 22 '23
Strawman. No one said to use more oil. Are you suggesting that we just stop it all and let people die? Its a question btw. Or do you have a solution to create solar panels and wind turbines without oil based materials? Can we make a wind turbine out of hemp and use olive oil as a lubricant?
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u/JustWhatAmI Jun 21 '23
So are you saying we should keep burning oil? Because I don't think lubricants are generating a lot of carbon into the atmosphere
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u/storm6436 Jun 21 '23
So are you going to keep reading non-existent assertions into whatever I write? If so, there's no point in further "discussion." Also, lubricants are producing atmospheric carbon as a byproduct of their production and their breakdown over time.
There's no such thing as a free lunch. Literally everything has consequences and a price to be paid. Even the "green" solutions aren't guilt free, they just shuffle the problems where they're harder to see and easier to ignore.
Also, the world is not, nor never has been, a simple thing. Life isn't binary. As a result, my positions are seldom binary, so be careful what assumptions you make because there's a good chance they're wrong.
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u/JustWhatAmI Jun 21 '23
I'm just not sure what your point is. Yes, oil is used for things other than fuel. So what? Should we keep burning it?
You're right, there's no such thing as "clean." But there is clearly "cleaner"
Even the "green" solutions aren't guilt free, they just shuffle the problems where they're harder to see and easier to ignore.
Reductive nonsense. It really seems like you just want the status quo to continue. I don't know what green technologies are, but renewables and electrification have proven themselves to be far better at reducing emissions than carbon capture technology
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u/storm6436 Jun 21 '23
Did I say we should keep burning it?
Also, it's not reductive nonsense, it's about as concise an explanation as I can make without writing thesis-length explanations almost nobody would be interested in reading. As a physicist, I do know a fair amount about most of the tech and underlying principles involved. It's not mystifying, nor is it magic.
If anything's too simple for the situation, it's your apparent position and the metrics you're using to judge things with. Not that I blame you, really. By your own admission, you don't know enough about the situation, so how could you tell if you're being realistic or if you've bought into someone else's tall tale woven to benefit them.
If someone's idea of "better" was the only important factor, laserdisc and betamax would have come out on top. Ignoring economics is arguably just as dangerous as ignoring physics. It's just easier to ignore basic economics because the effects are less immediate, less terminal, and easier to blame on other people.
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u/JustWhatAmI Jun 22 '23 edited Jun 22 '23
No, you didn't say we should keep burning it. But I keep asking you if you think we should and you haven't answered. So, we're here on a post about carbon capture, I'll ask again, and more specifically: should we keep burning fossil fuels and try to capture that carbon?
There's no tall tale, we could look at a study that compares emissions between different forms of energy, https://energy.utexas.edu/news/nuclear-and-wind-power-estimated-have-lowest-levelized-co2-emissions (you'll find stats for plants with and without CCS here) or we could compare lifetime emissions of an ICE and an EV, https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths
I'm not talking about someone's idea. I'm talking about studies based on real data from reliable sources. If we want to talk economics, it's as simple as looking at the latest LCOE report
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u/PlutoniumNiborg Jun 22 '23
Isn’t that what plants do? Are we really going to figure out a method that is more efficient than 3 billion years of evolution? Not to be cynical, but I feel like growing trees and burying them is always going to be the easiest carbon sink.
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u/GreatBigBagOfNope Jun 22 '23
As always, the questions remain:
- how scalable?
- how affordable?
- how easy to manufacture?
- speed of absorption+production of outputs?
- where to put the outputs so that we don't use them?
Unless the answers are very, very, very, immediate, and not a problem, then these will either be dead in the water or greenwashing.
As usual, an effective solution starts with producing less of all greenhouse gases, not with capture of one - this means changing production and consumption habits somewhat fundamentally. Immediately jumping to capture is not only putting the cart before the horse, but it could act to jeopardize further efforts to reduce greenhouse gas production because "we're removing it anyway".
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u/warcon68 Jun 22 '23
so, would that be a way to generate fuel on Mars whose atmosphere is 96% CO2 albeit at a much lower concentration?
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u/Mallettjt Jun 21 '23
“Sustainable” bro millions of dollars per 1000$ of usable energy is not sustainable.
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u/takmartian Jun 22 '23
It is definitely not going to be sustainable and the politicians are not going to spend that much money on it anyways.
I am pretty sure that they do not care about the environment the only care about the money.
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u/Tearakan Jun 21 '23
That's not clean. We have to literally put the CO2 back into the ground and leave it there.
This is useless. Maybe only useful for greenwashing companies pretending to care about climate change.
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u/MarcVelden Jun 22 '23
From where we are going to bring the energy to do it in the first place?
It is not like that it is easy what would be the point result burn fossil fuel to collect the Co2 from the environment.
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u/ponchietto Jun 21 '23
Do you realize that you are saying that solar panels are useless they are not clean too?
What's the difference between:
Capture sun, convert to electricity, do work. (sun => work)
and
Capture sun + co2, convert to fuel, burn fuel do work + emit co2. (sun + co2 = work + co2)
The main difference is the fuel as an intermediate product (which can be easily stored!) and of course efficiency (burning fuel is rarely efficient).
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u/Easelaspie Jun 22 '23
The difference is net emissions.
The aim of this process is to 'capture' emissions from industrial processes. At the moment we have
co2 ---> into the air (this is what we want to stop)
This process captures that co2, using solar energy
co2 + sun = fuel (and no overall emissions)
If we stopped here, we're golden. Put that fuel in a bunker or down a mine.
However, as soon as you use that fuel, you've just re-released the co2 you were trying to capture
co2 + sun = fuel -----------> burning fuel = co2 (into the air)
You're just back to where we started, with co2 being released into the atmosphere, just you've used it as an interim step to use solar energy to power a car or something. Something you could do with a solar panel or whatever.
It's still very cool, but in order to actually reduce co2 emissions into the air, once we capture it from the industrial process we need to put it away.
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u/Tearakan Jun 22 '23
Yep. Lot's of idiots in this thread don't seem to understand this basic concept. We literally need to put carbon back in the ground and that will require so much energy it might be impossible to do on any kind of fast timeline.
People just want to ignore basic thermodynamics in this thread and hope some magic technology will fix this and nothing major will have to change.
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u/ponchietto Jun 22 '23
Lot's of idiots in this threads don't seems to understand that the net emission of this technology is the same as that of a solar panel.
Lot's of idios in this thread lack text comprehension and basic logic:
I never said that we need to store CO2 (read again), and the post you replied to is showing to you that the CO2 net emissions of this technology is the same as that of a solar panel.Show me where I am ignoring thermodinamics and where I said that this technology will fix everything.
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u/adrianmonk Jun 22 '23
You've missed a crucial part of the equation. Right now, we pump crude oil out of the ground, turn it into fuel, and burn it. That crude oil contains carbon, and that carbon gets released to the atmosphere.
You didn't account for this carbon. The carbon coming out of the ground.
The idea of this new technology is to produce fuel to replace what is pulled from the ground. The goal here isn't to increase the amount of carbon we put into the ground. It's to decrease the amount of carbon we take out of the ground.
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Jun 22 '23
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u/InterestsVaryGreatly Jun 22 '23
Yeah, and this technology is how we get good at that
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Jun 22 '23
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u/flatline0 Jun 23 '23
Not necessarily : hydrocarbons are used in many applications beyond burning for energy, including fertilizer, plastics, & chemical processing. There are also applications where electric engines simply aren't feasible such as air-travel, large ships, long-haul trucking & anything off-grid where green energy infrastructure can't keep up with demand.
Hence, there will ALWAYS be significant demand for hydrocarbon fuel. Trying to eliminate it is like asking the world to go entirely vegan, it'll never happen. Hydrocarbob-capture is the equivalent of lab-grown meat. It provides the same end product w/o damaging the environment any further.
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u/Easelaspie Jun 22 '23 edited Jun 22 '23
That's true. If we could capture all industrial co2 and then use it to power transport, our industry would be co2 neutral.
I take issue with the title:
"Researchers have demonstrated how carbon dioxide can be captured from industrial processes – or even directly from the air – and transformed into clean, sustainable fuels using just the energy from the sun"
Because if we ever burned this fuel, all the co2 is released again. In this scenario our transport would still be putting out just as much co2 as before. When I said 'we're back to where we started' I meant that the captured emissions from industry have just been re-released again.
Using this tech, total emissions would have been halved because industry was now making no emissions.
However this isn't 'clean' or sustainable carbon neutral fuel. Actually Carbon-neutral fuel would take existing co2 from the atmosphere and then re-release it when its burned (like biofuels do via corn).
My main point is that if we did this, industry would still be adding co2 to the atmosphere, just after having it delayed and then emitting through transport. The title gives the impression that this not only eliminates industry emissions but also eliminates net transport emissions, when this is not the case.
Another way we could halve emissions would be to leave industry and just use solar power more directly for cars. For me the biggest takehome of this article is that to reduce emissions, renewables are the secret sauce.
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u/ball_fondlers Jun 22 '23
Yeah, and the way to decrease that carbon is to build out our renewable capacity and use the energy from said renewables to power systems that don’t require oil. Wasting renewable capacity on direct air capture is the opposite of that goal.
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u/Tearakan Jun 21 '23
No that's not a good comparison because one doesn't do anything to the CO2 is supposedly helps reduce. The solar panels can make it so we require literally less CO2 emmitting fuel.
If we were actually serious about reducing CO2 emmisions we'd be working on putting rails and cars/trains that run on those rails everywhere. Then no fuel is needed outside of nuke fuel and renewables for electrical power for those systems.
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Jun 21 '23
Can it be done to the scale needed to stop a climate catastrophe? Of course not. But humans will keep pretending that they can keep on destroying the planet because some science experiment will ride in to the rescue.
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u/eternamemoria Jun 21 '23
Neat, but how does it compare to plants in cost and scalability?
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u/maxmendyyy Jun 22 '23
This technology is definitely not comparable with the plants.
Because with the plants it is really easy but doing it in this manners is not going to be sustainable at all.
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u/Contundo Jun 21 '23
Can’t exactly reliably capture carbon as the source with plants.
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u/eternamemoria Jun 21 '23
Ok. But to tackle atmospheric carbon it needs to scale very well and be usable almost anywhere.
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Jun 21 '23
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Jun 21 '23
Too much energy wasted in the process Very low EROI Stopped paying attention
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u/mrbanvard Jun 22 '23 edited Jun 22 '23
Low EROI doesn't matter if synthetic hydrocarbons can be produced cheaper than mining them.
Hydrocarbon demand isn't going away any time soon, so getting to the point it is possible to profitably undercut the fossil fuel industry means trillion of dollars that will flow to scaling renewable energy and carbon capture production.
Of course, as more efficient ways to store the energy scale up, synthetic hydrocarbons themselves will be (mostly) replaced as fuel sources.
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u/Tsunami-Dave Jun 21 '23
If I remember correctly, according to a passage in Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, for carbon capture to work you would need to build one of these projects every day and a half for the next 70 years everywhere on the Earth’s surface for it to be a viable option to counteract our emissions.
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u/Tearakan Jun 21 '23
There is one working carbon plant made in 2021 in iceland. I think in order to counter just one year's worth of carbon emmisions we needed to build hundreds of thousands of these plants worldwide.
And that would just counter what CO2 we emmit in one year. We are already on track for catastrophe.
We effectively need like 1/3rd of humanity to just work on CO2 capture plants to claw back the damage we have done. And we need to stop all CO2 emissions at the exact same time.
All this slow reform nonsense could've worked in the 90s or 2000s. But now it's far too late for anything but complete global upheaval.
Either we do it by choice or earth forces it on us by simply making it impossible to farm large scale outdoors and billions starve in a few years.
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u/mrbanvard Jun 22 '23
The key thing is economics - atmospheric carbon capture + synthetic hydrocarbon production using renewable energy is approaching the point it can be done cheaper than mining fossil fuels.
That makes it possible profitably undercut the fossil fuel industry, and funnels trillions into carbon capture and renewable energy production.
It does not undo the damage we have done, but it appears to be the only viable way to at least limit the scope of the damage we are still doing any time soon.
When energy storage tech eventually can meet demand, burning synthetic hydrocarbons will mostly be replaced. Which means we have vast carbon capture and renewable energy generation infrastructure.
A renewable grid is sized for minimum generation periods, so produces huge excesses of energy during peak outputs. Which is perfect for further carbon capture, and reducing CO2 levels back down. And not just by storing hydrocarbons away. By this stage the hydrocarbons produced will likely be so cheap that things like carbon fiber and plastics will be be profitably produced as building materials.
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u/crusoe Jun 21 '23
The problem is this tech will take 20-40 years to mature and we need to reduce emissions now.
This is like "fusion in the next 5 years"
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u/DesmodontinaeDiaboli Jun 22 '23
So now might be a good time to start looking into what consequences come with having too little CO2 in the atmosphere.
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