A New Negative Emissions Method and Our First Customer
Andrew Lockley
https://charmindustrial.com/blog/2020/5/17/a-new-negative-emissions-method-and-our-first-customer
A New Negative Emissions Method and Our First Customer
Over the past century humans have extracted and burned hundreds of gigatons of fossil fuels, increasing atmospheric CO₂ from 280 to 415 ppm. Today we’re excited to announce that Charm has developed a new, patent-pending method to help reverse that: bio-oil sequestration.
Bio-oil is produced through fast pyrolysis of waste biomass, then transported to an injection well, prepared for injection, and pumped underground. In the US these injection wells are typically EPA Class I or Class V salt caverns. The process effectively takes atmospheric CO₂, captures it in biomass, converts the biomass to a liquid similar to crude oil but with half the energy content, and injects it into rock formations that have stored crude oil for hundreds of millions of years. In the coming months we plan to publish a white paper documenting this new method in detail.
We’re also excited to announce our first customer for this method: Stripe. Stripe has committed to spending a total of $1m this year across a portfolio of negative emissions projects, and today Stripe has announced that Charm will receive a portion of that to sequester 416 tons CO₂e at $600/ton, using our new bio-oil sequestration method.
While $600/ton CO₂e may seem like a high price for negative carbon emissions, it’s already cheaper than equivalent-scale direct air capture. In the long-run at scale, we believe costs as low as $45/ton CO₂e are achievable.
We plan to complete our first injection in the next few months. Subscribe here for updates. In the interim, you can find answers to frequently asked questions or contact us.
Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
Listed below is the disproved American Physical Society and MIT works from 2011 on direct air capture at $600 ton. Even David Kieth's 2018 work at $100 a ton is excessive with natural gas energy at $0.03 to $0.06 kWh and a 10 percent carbon penalty, 8 percent profit. The large quantities of energy required for DAC will not be supplied on the grid but via site built utility scale facilities that bypass addition costs for transmission and energy generator profit. Then we gigascale from Kieth's 1 Mt per year to 100 Mt per year or more and with nth process refinement cost reduction, ultimately costs will be in the $10 per ton range.
It's great to see new processes like Charm, but the misinformation that many of these provide about the costs of DAC is not great to see.
Attached is a literature review of the disproved APS and MIT works in 2011. Keith's work is on the Carbon Engineering potash/lime process - a mature, very simple and very cheap process, but it was first used in submarines to keep our sailors safe from CO2 poisoning 80 years ago! The amine processes today use one of the most widely found classes of chemicals in the world that are 60 years old... There's gotta be something even better!
Cheers,
B
CEO, Climate Change Now Initiative
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Inst...@bruce.c.melton
The Band Climate Change
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Bruce Parker
If "ultimately costs will be in the $10 per ton range", we should forget spending money on reducing emissions today and just "grow the economy" so future generations will be richer and will be able to afford to pay for the necessary sequestration when the costs come down. We'd then be OK if emissions continue to increase for 30 years and the temperature exceeds 2°C - we should just count on getting the costs down so that we are removing 100 GTCO2/year (at $1.5 trillion/year) by 2060 - meeting the 1.5°C target in 2100 should be easy.
(I'm not advocating the above approach, just pointing out the logical conclusion of expectations for $10/ton CO2 sequestration)
Bruce Parker
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Shannon A. Fiume
Hi,
It isn't so much the cost to by the energy that limits the lower cost DAC but the energy requirement is so large that the process has to paired with a more concentrated source of carbon dioxide. Ideally we want to stop using all fossil fuels, and unless we're pyrolizing biomater or kiln out gassing from concrete, some metals, glass, etc., we don't have CCS stream for today's lowest cost DAC to reach gigatonne scale.
The key question is will carbon reach $25 per tonne in 2030 or lower? And if not, then we need to do everything we can to get carbon to converge to about that price and then lower, while having enough energy for carbon neutral and running DAC and friends.
Why 2030? That's likely the last cheap option of when humanity needs to reach carbon neutral or nearly neutral (and offset the rest by negative emissions tech/processes). By the mid 2030s should we continue on our present track we'll hit 450ppm. Today, we're already at warming levels that have set off the first stage tipping elements, and also weakening the permafrost tipping point per the 'Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene' paper. (Should we miss 2030, and delay by softly trending to neutral by 2050, it will be radially more expensive, as we'll need to move more negative emissions in order to stabilize the climate. Think at least 3x more expensive that goes up exponentially with delay, like Earth's setting a price to remove carbon. This price doesn't including habitat remediation or crashing food chains, so compound the new price by 3-10x?)
If no one buys the expensive solutions now, it will take longer to get the price down. It's only because people are buying solar, and the tech is able to be made nearly exponentially that renewables are being deployed at an exponential rate. We are unlikely to see that type of deployment for carbon removal, outside of growing plants till they cap out and then occur at a much lower rate. We need R&D to progress to selling things and seeing strong adoption and growth within eight-nine years. Five years ago I was told new materials typically take 20 years to get from the lab to the hands of the consumer. We don't have that kind of time.
Ideally we want replacements for all hydrocarbon based products asap, so the switch to neutral happens asap. This is largely why my carbon emission balance includes what will hopefully be legacy petroleum based hydrocabon made from emitted CO2, and (will) include a rough estimate of 2020-2030 product market volume.
I'm not wild about the idea of 'bio oil' being burried in the land sink. However, what we do need in horrifically short R&D order is a replacement for bitumen, and it ought to be non-toxic, including curing process and hopefully store more carbon. Maybe they can develop that, and in ten years we'll have new renewably sourced greenphalt. Existing green chem companies could partner so developments get out the door faster.
But if no one takes the first and successive leaps now, the price won't come down and the entire infrastructure won't exist in the much urgently needed time-frame of ten years. Look at how slow policy is moving -- and they are still subdizing ff. Think policy alone will get R&D to get us green products in ten years to fully replace petrochemical based products? Policy still thinks they can wait till at least 2040 and later.
Growing non ff energy, energy storage, NETs, carbon tech and
telling policy makers 2030 is the hard stop* is the rally for
2020s.
Best,
~~sa
*At 57 minutes into the EarthX Earthday video Sen. Whitehouse
talked about how congress needed a little pass on this as the
people, and tech, and other special interests didn't tell them
loud enough to act on climate.
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-- Shannon A. Fiume sha...@autofracture.com | +01.415.272.7020 https://twitter.com/safiume | https://linkedin.com/in/safiume http://www.autofracture.com/research | Go Carbon Negative!
Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
Well, after all -- when we discovered human sewage was killing millions in the 19th century, we did not stop creating human sewage!
But... There are many reasons to continue down the decarbonization path and at the same time remove dangerous climate pollutants from our sky. Societal sustainability is one of the primary reasons for decarbonization and unfortunately because sustainability issues are so difficult, one of the primary things that have cause the climate crisis. If we had of treated climate pollution like any other pollution, like we always treat pollution by removing it from our world so we can be safe, no climate crisis. So then, what are the advantages of continuing with decarbonizing our world?
Relative to clean energy: fossil fuels are vastly unsustainable. Fossil fuels cause 70 times more deaths globally. the environmental cost of mining fossil fuels is staggering relative to clean energy, and fossil fuels wealth carries on a continuation of social injustice that is not yet near as prevalent in clean energy. Beyond these clear and simple things there is one more very important reason to continue to respect and carry n with decarbonization of our world for reasons related to climate; psychology.
Our climate change culture has been built upon decarbonization. To many of the most important people in this culture, a fossil fuel extinction is paramount. It is why the moral hazard exists. Abandoning this fundamental reasoning -- even though it is no longer as valid as it once was -- is immoral according to this emotionally based fundamental. See the Avoiding the Moral Hazard discussion in Sierra Club's new climate policies on page 11. We thought the moral hazard was so important, we included it in the overall introduction above justice and below carbon dioxide removal.
My personal opinion is, "Dangit! Just treat the pollution before
it's too late... This 30-year long sustainability path we have
been on is wicked hard." But I keep this to myself because I do
not believe it is the fastest route to success, and fast is really
the most important thing of all.
And one more important thing about atmospheric removal vs.
emissions: because half of emissions are absorbed by the
biosphere, and because greenhouse gases are a very rapidly and
well mixed fluid and because there is no difference in the warming
forcing between future emissions and GHGs already in our sky, as
soon as emissions are made, in the world of climate warming
science we can consider that half of those emissions are
spontaneously absorbed by the biosphere. This means that removing
greenhouse gases from the atmosphere is worth twice the forcing
reduction as reducing emissions the same amount.
Cheers,
B
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Inst...@bruce.c.melton
The Band Climate Change
Jim Baird
Bruce, the most dangerous climate pollutant is heat. It can be turned into an asset.
Jim Baird
A November 2017 analysis by the McKinsey Global Institute of around 800 occupations in 46 countries estimated between 400 million and 800 million jobs could be lost due to automation by 2030.
Fast forward three years and the UN reports twice that many, nearly half of the global workforce of 1.6 billion people, could see their livelihoods destroyed due to the continued decline in working hours brought on by lockdowns to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Clearly, there can be no global prosperity in a world where half of the workforce is without the means to support itself.
Sixteen years ago, the late Richard Smalley, Nobel laureate in Chemistry, challenged the world to provide 10 billion people by 2050 the level of energy prosperity we in the developed world are used to, in his Terawatt Challenge. And with this energy, he said, the rest of the problems of the world from water, food, the environment, poverty, terrorism and war, disease, education, democracy and population are surmountable.
In order to provide the equivalent of 900 million barrels of oil per day, as Smalley called for, we would have to produce 60 terawatts (TW) a year.
Marc &Richard Perez, in their paper, A Fundamental Look at Supply Side Energy Reserves for the Planet, estimated the global demand for energy will reach 27TW a year by 2050. And updated their previous 2009 estimate of the planet energy reserves with the following graphic.
What the Perezs failed to acknowledge, however, was the annual heat accumulation being stored in the oceans, land and ice and the potential for thermodynamic geoengineering (TG) to meet the Perez’s 2050 goal and half of Smalley’s objective per the following.
The wind shown above is for scale and the ocean heat is based on the revised estimate of Resplandy et al (2018), in RealClimate. The Land & Ice heat is prorated from the ocean heat depicted in the graphic below.
TG is 7.6% of the Ocean Heat per the calculation of Melvin Prueitt in his US patent 20070289303A1, heat transfer for ocean thermal energy conversion.
As shown below, the accumulation of heat in the ocean has been accelerating since 1990 but has existed since the birth of industrial revolution.
As shown in the following tables and graphics, TG can recycle this heat until it is totalling consumed so, it is partially a finite resource that can provide renewable energy for thousands of years depending on how it is depleted on either a straight-line or declining balance basis.
In the latter case the resource provides diminishing returns since, after the heat of warming has been converted and radiated back into space, the ocean can continue to provide TG heat at a level of 14 TW in perpetuity with TG, which is at least twice as efficient as the OTEC shown in the Peres graphic.
The assumptions for the above are that it will take at least 50 years to build out the TG infrastructure and that it takes about 226 years for the heat relocated to deep water by TG to resurface. Therefore, the finite ocean heat resource is 226*384TW or 86,784, TW which is 3.8 times the annual solar energy depicted in the Peres graphic and 55 times the finite fossil fuel and uranium resources.
Deliverology is the science (or art) devised by Sir Michael Barber of Delivery Associates, and Dominic Barton, CEO of McKinsey Consulting, for delivering on goals and promises, made by governments. It relies on a clear identification of priorities; the setting of targets and the collection of data related to those priorities; and the exercise of central oversight through a unit reporting directly and regularly to the leader.
It is clear our political leaders aren’t delivering on energy and the environment and therefore aren’t delivering global prosperity.
The following data for the environment is for Smalley’s fourth problem, where TG alone scores positively:
And where the IMF notes the environmental cost of producing fossil energy in 2017 was a staggering $5.2 trillion that essentially wipes out the total energy expenditure of US$6 trillion for 2010, and where Smalley’s other concerns are ranked below, where the $5.2 trillion in environmental cost is reallocated instead to the other priorities.
To produce a prosperity factor, the number of years the finite energies can be productive has to be divided by 29, the annual production of TG, and the fossil fuels have to be docked 20 percent to account for the energy required to sequester sufficient CO2 to keep their emissions within the two degree limit of the Paris accord.
So, the prosperity ranking below is for the next 3010 years, where any energy source greater than Smalley’s 60TW is redundant.
Although solar and wind are more abundant than TG for the next 3,000 years, the planet would prosper more with TG than the former due to waste heat that is produced by the former while TG is a conversion of heat that heretofore has been consider waste.
At least until the energy demands of the population exceed the annual 29TW potential of TG.
Bloomberg, today, reports, “Across continents, bond investors are struggling to answer what Deutsche Bank AG strategists dubbed “the question of our age” -- how much societies are willing to sacrifice in economic growth to counter climate change, and what that spells for the world’s $31 trillion sovereign debt market.”
The real “question of our age” is, why are bond investors, politicians and policy makers so obtuse about both the science as well as economics of climate change.
The only way to counter climate change is to stimulate the right kind of economic growth.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/71dc564f-ca5d-2d33-0039-7f4a9189d175%40earthlink.net.
Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
Great stuff! But what about ocean heat that has activated
Antarctic collapse and through Atlantification and Pacifacation of
the Arctic Ocean, could likely disallow refreezing of Arctic sea
ice until the ocean heat is returned to it's former stable
equilibrium with polar ice?
CEO, Climate Change Now Initiative
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Inst...@bruce.c.melton
The Band Climate Change
Jim Baird
|
|
Bruce, the two graphics above demonstrate what I am trying to get at. If you trap the heat of warming within the tropics, it can’t activated Antarctic collapse or the Atlantification and Pacifacation of the Arctic Ocean and the heat moved into the deep isn’t available to melt the poles which in turn then can stabilize.
Jim
Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
Hi Jim,
Is this surface warming or does it include mid-level?
Another issues is that already realized warming in the mid-levels is what has activated Antarctic tipping. It appears likely that the equilibrium was disrupted as early as the mid-1990s. (Jacobs 1994)
Regardless, any heat removal in the upper oceans will reduce transfer as you have shown, so all engines full ahead ~ ~ ~ It's going to take everything we know how to do all at the same time!
B
CEO, Climate Change Now Initiative
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Inst...@bruce.c.melton
The Band Climate Change
Adam Sacks
--
Adam Sacks
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/dc88a50d-20e0-a881-29c4-f5be5fb28b75%40earthlink.net.
Jim Baird
Bruce,
Per the following this would be all levels.
Levitus et al. says, “If this heat were instantly transferred to the lower 10 km of the global atmosphere it would result in a volume mean warming of this atmospheric layer by approximately 36°C (65°F).”
Its is greenhouse gases that are preventing this kind of atmospheric warming. CDR will allow for the release of ocean heat to the atmosphere and in the extreme case of Negative-CO2-emissions ocean thermal energy conversion, at the maximum power level of 29 terawatts, I get we would drawdown atmospheric and ocean CO2 levels to preindustrial levels in just over 7 years.
So, to prevent this almost instantaneous release and catastrophic release of heat to the atmosphere we have to recycle it for at least 3,000 years to allow for the waste heat of the energy conversion to dissipate to space. We help ourselves by essentially becoming energy gluttons. The conventional wisdom notwithstanding.
Jim
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Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
True, there is fundamentally no waste biomass but the story goes beyond the fundamentals. We went to great lengths in our new resilience and carbon dioxide removal policies at Sierra Club to ensure that things like Biochar, BECCS, and myriad other agricultural practices were appropriate only if they used biomass that would have otherwise gone to the dump.
And to blow the climate policy advancement horn once again, for
the first time anywhere with a major environmental organization we
now support a target of less than 1.0 C warming. Yay! And for
further policy language enjoyment, there are dozens of instances
in our new 99 pages of policies on 19 different topics, where we
clarify that "waste" biomass is needed by ecologies and not to be
considered for removal for any reason -- including fire safety.
Cheers,
Bruce
CEO, Climate Change Now Initiative
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Inst...@bruce.c.melton
The Band Climate Change
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/CAA2mHQ%3DOs4y2eOPrxa6jR2MNFHB2o9ANLWudVsF37W6j1MVBag%40mail.gmail.com.
Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas
You are not wrong Adam! As I write, I have been trying to finish up an agriculture cropland sequestration quantification spreadsheet for the 5-year revision of the Austin Community Climate Plan. This effort is for the Natural Systems Advisory Group and takes a deep dive into the excellent work done by Paul Hawken and team with Drawdown.
Cheers,
B
(Note: this is a demonstration only, it is draft, incomplete,
and requires likely several more hours to get in decent form.)
CEO, Climate Change Now Initiative
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Inst...@bruce.c.melton
The Band Climate Change