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Scientist Discover How to Convert CO2 into Powder That Can Be Stored for Decades
(www.scientificamerican.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Making sodium formate (HCOONa), using electrochemistry :
CO~2~ + H~2~ =>> formic acid
H~2~O =>> H~2~ + 1/2O~2~
NaCl + H~2~O =>> NaOH + 1/2H~2~ + 1/2Cl~2~
formic acid + NaOH =>> sodium formate
I guess they must use something similar to this, probably shortening some steps and using efficient solvent at the right temperature and pressure and with the right electrocatalist.
Well, I still prefer photosynthesis which produces sugar (and +). Plants are self replicating, use free solar energy, captues CO~2~ straight from the air and all this probably at a tiny fraction of the cost.
I prefer algae... much more space in the ocean...
My understanding is that pumping algae into the ocean is actually a really bad idea. In a barren pond or abandoned quarry? Sure, great place for it. However, iirc, if the algae blooms it'll suck a lot of oxygen out of the water and I think puts CO2 back into the water (can't remember if it just sucks up oxygen, or if it does both). That can cause marine life to suffocate and result in mass die-offs.
I never understood that- isn't algae a plant therfore o2 producer?
It dies off and sucks oxygen, but its a balance
The problem is that if algae dies, it's most likely die at the same time making a sudden and great O2 shortage making animals die, which creates the same process.
Plants have a cycle, where sometimes they absorb more CO2 and sometimes they give off more. It’s not permanent storage.
With fossil fuels, we are taking CO2 that gas been sequestered for hundreds of millions of years, and injecting it either directly into the atmosphere, or into plant lifecycle where it is temporarily stored until it goes into the atmosphere. Plants help but are too temporary a solution
You are mostly right, but what I meant (sorry I was not explicit) was this :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bog
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
^article^ ^|^ ^about^
Yeah, woody perrenials lock up CO2 for centuries and we have a lot of abandoned mines and whatever holes are leftover from oil drilling that we could theoretically bury plant material in.
Still whatever we do would need to be on unprecedented scales and the World is just not going to do that. At least not until the effects are so acute that it is too late.
Yes, and this ("World is just not going to do that") is very bad since things will get worse and many people may die (sooner than they would have) in the next 50, 100 years.
if you look at very long time scale, thousand years and more, things will balance up. (...?) But we don't really know : there might be big volcanoes or completely new technologies like Geo engineering. Of course the future is (mostly) unknown.
Yeah, the earth will be just fine. Humans and human civilization are what is at stake.