Engineers Develop a New Way to Remove Carbon Dioxide from Air

" absorbs CO2 on charging and releases it on discharge?"

Isn't this just a storage device? If I use the battery (discharge) won't the CO² just be released?

My understanding is that it is primarily intended as a CO₂ absorption device, controlled by the voltage applied, which controls charging or discharging.

You absorb CO₂ from the air when charging, switch the valves, discharge and pump the released CO₂ into a tank or something.

OK. That makes sense.

Rixter: Then what do we do with the multi containers of CO2 that we will have. Since plastics are hydrocarbons, I wonder if we could somehow combine H with the C and liberate O? Then the question will come: Where do we get all that H? Electrolysis of course, but that is a power-hungry process that also liberates O. Power-hungry leads to nuclear reactors--fast reactors of course. And when do we have to worry about too much O in the atmoshpere? (Now I need to read the links!!!)

Then what do we do with the multi containers of CO2 that we will have.

Maybe make your own fizzy beverage...

Considering Water Vapour is the worst greenhouse gas by far I should think there would be much better bang for buck "tool in the battle against climate change" in harvesting transpiration. Hardly any of the water taken up by plants is used, nearly all of it is lost through transpiration contributing hugely to the greenhouse effect.

Harvesting transpiration is commonly found in survival magazines - "tie a plastic bag around the leaves" but I haven't found it to be used anywhere as a climate change mitigation technique or even as a means of harvesting clean water? If I am wrong and haven't looked hard enough, please enlighten me?

Water vapor already reaches saturation levels and precipitates out of the atmosphere on a daily basis every day somewhere on this planet. Therefore, despite the broader range of infrared energies that water vapor captures and returns this energy capture effect is already maximized.

Pardon? The difficulty may be in providing the CO2 in a closed system. In "survival guides" its just a plastic bag so a closed greenhouse would be a good start http://www.practicalsurvivor.com/transpirationbag

I have read that closed greenhouses that receive CO2 via piping from local industrial waste gases are common in the Netherlands.

The thing needs power to <...Remove Carbon Dioxide...>, otherwise the global climate crisis would be over. It wouldn't be a valid claim on the equipment that it does this amazing thing were the source of the power to be a fossil-fuel-power-station, would it?

Coal fired power plants, of course!

Quite.

Er, what provides the power needed to operate the absorption stage, please?

Of course, it takes energy to remove CO₂ from the air and concentrate it. The energy needed to absorb the CO₂ at a low concentration and release it at a high concentration comes from the amount of charge transferred, Q, times the difference in voltage between charge and discharge, ΔV, as shown in the diagram below.

"Fraction of CO₂ released from the PAQ–CNT electrode with release voltage. At a constant capture cell voltage of 1.3 V, less of the bed is recovered with increasing release cell voltage, but the energy per mole of CO₂ captured and released also decreases."

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/EE/C9EE02412C#!divAbstract

I think you are missing the point. Water vapor is comparatively massive GHG and yet seems soooooooooooooo simple to harvest before it goes into the atmosphere. Nobody seems to like talking about its ghg because its pretty important in the natural cycle. So if you feed the CO2 to plants in a closed loop greenhouse you can harvest clean water and mitigate climate change with huge bang for buck. In my mind its natural progression for this research. “It's not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas” Edwin Land

No, it is you who "misses the point" of atmospheric water vapor.

Your reference to survival guides is not a valid point in this discussion. Solar stills are hardly a viable method of trapping any significant amount of water. Read one of your guides that explains how much water must be harvested to keep a single person alive with no other source of fresh water.

As Redfred said, water vapor is the vapor of life. Without water vapor in the atmosphere, and the rain that it produces, we all die.

How about we worry about the things over which we have some control. Unless you keep the sequestered water in a closed metallic container it will find it's way back into the atmosphere, where it belongs. Plastic is NOT a vapor barrier.

That level of close-mindedness I have previously only experienced with bunny huggers in environmental debate when you go against the orthodoxy - more heat than light. "How about we worry about things over which we have some control" goes a step further as a statement promoting close-mindedness. My reference to a survival guide and the high ghg effect of water vapour are merely supposed to be triggers for the thought process. I am not aware of any technology that effectively harvests transpiration or whether or not this is done on a commercial basis - the reason why I have raised this for debate is not so much "can transpiration be effectively harvested" but "why isn't it effectively harvested" when both climate change and the availability of "clean" water are such hot topics. I don't usually like using wiki as a reference but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transpiration

is good. "water is necessary for plants but only a small amount of water taken up by the roots is used for growth and metabolism. The remaining 97–99.5% is lost by transpiration and guttation. Transpiration occurs through the stomatal apertures, and can be thought of as a necessary "cost" associated with the opening of the stomata to allow the diffusion of carbon dioxide gas from the air for photosynthesis. Transpiration also cools plants, changes osmotic pressure of cells, and enables mass flow of mineral nutrients and water from roots to shoots. Two major factors influence the rate of water flow from the soil to the roots: the hydraulic conductivity of the soil and the magnitude of the pressure gradient through the soil. Both of these factors influence the rate of bulk flow of water moving from the roots to the stomatal pores in the leaves via the xylem.

During a growing season, a leaf will transpire many times more water than its own weight. An acre of corn gives off about 3,000–4,000 gallons (11,400–15,100 liters) of water each day, and a large oak tree can transpire 40,000 gallons (151,000 liters) per year. The transpiration ratio is the ratio of the mass of water transpired to the mass of dry matter produced; the transpiration ratio of crops tends to fall between 200 and 1000 (i.e., crop plants transpire 200 to 1000 kg of water for every kg of dry matter produced)."

Reducing the amount of water that transpires through a plant is a good way to kill the plant. Killing plants is usually not eco-friendly. Killing a plant will ultimately add more CO2 to the atmosphere. There are circumstances where specific plants should be removed but wholesale removal of plants to reduce water vapor is a monumental task that can kill most life on the planet. I don't know what you eat but somewhere down your food chain was a plant.

But the carbon in most plants is not really secured. One brush fire can release so much devastation and CO2. Did you forget about Paradise California already?

As for your volcano comment, the slow carbon cycle is the dominant effect volcanoes have in the climate and CO2 balance. The usually localized temperature drop due to particulate ash shading is a relatively brief effect of a year or two until rain washes the dust out of the sky. (The multiple square kilometers of dust Krakatoa put into the air did drop global temperatures by 1.2° C for five years.)

well a "year or two", of no summer will wreak havoc on earth. but this one lasted centuries..

https://www.livescience.com/18205-ice-age-volcanoes-sea-ice.html

So are you advocating for someone to make at least four massive tropical volcanic eruptions to induce another little ice age?

(From linked webpage and Wikimedia Commons)

I found the massive 1257 Samalas, the 1452 Kuwae, and the 1815 Tambora eruptions that occurred during the little ice age. It seems the four eruptions that supposedly started a chain reaction to initiate the little ice age are still unidentified. (How inconvenient.) These articles all seem to agree that short term cooling from particulate shading does happen but with the greenhouse gasses released, long term global heating occurs as a result of volcanism.

Wait, is that a hockey stick I see in that temperature chart?

Fortunately I wasn't around in the 1600's therefore I cannot comment on it. Put plainly, the climate is always changing.! There are idiots in Australia who are spooking kids in schools about it, getting them to blockade streets on a daily basis. Talk about the blind leading the blind. There are 4 seasons every year, that is climate change and quite natural. I have only been reading and logging my locations weather for about 16 years, a drop in the ocean of course. What have I noticed.? The weather AVERAGE temperature from year to year has varied by only .1 of 1 degree over that time. Both ways of course, both warmer and cooler. Why become hysterical about that.?

Hello setlock77, I agree whole heartedly with your comments. I personally use the analogy of a room full of cigarette smokers.

If 1 person from every country in the world met in a large room, every one was a chain smoker and the Australian (from my perspective) left the room but left his supply of cigarettes behind, would the room be a lot cleaner.? The answer of course is no.

Our government here in Oz. Has shut down power stations run by coal, but is our small amount of global pollution going to make a difference.? No! of course not. We export the coal to China and others, they burn it and it is still in the same planet. Nothing different from the smokers.

This is my argument to those who are spooking young people to get them on board.

As Adolf Hitler declared, "Give me the youth of today and we can rule the world." or words to that effect.

Jacko: "There are 4 seasons every year" But I say 3 seasons; however, not very seriously: Mud, Orange Barrels, and Miserable.

Great answer Lehman57. I even cracked a large smile to that one..

Don't volcanoes also produce greenhouse gasses - by one estimate that I found an estimate of around 645 million tons of just CO2 per year.

"Don't volcanoes also produce greenhouse gasses"

The point was that a volcano can and has caused the climate of earth to cool down for a year, 100yrs or even 10,000 yrs.

Ys, but my point is that a volcano pumps millions of tons of a greenhouse WARMING gas into the atmosphere! And unless the effect of the ash is universal over the entire globe, some of that warming effect will be picked up in the gaps.

That is precisely my point in reply to #13 about the slow carbon cycle. In my reply #18, I even showed that three of the most violent known volcanic eruptions made a less than 0.1° C drop in long term global temperatures using multiple methodologies to ascertain how much of a change happened during the little ice age. (I tried to find out which color was which methodology but could not. Since the graph was part of an earlier proffered rebuttal citation I felt it was acceptable data.) Ironically the proffered four volcanic eruptions that started the little ice age have yet to be found even though they supposedly produced a more significant temperature drop.

You shouldn't be surprised by a denier's reluctance to accept anything outside of their beliefs. For me, I enjoy the practice of presenting a methodical presentation.

What a wonderful idea!

First - we mine and burn all that coal, . . . to generate electricity . . .

This will allow us to charge all those batteries that will absorb all that CO2 we generated, . . .

We will end up with piles & piles of charged batteries instead of coal in the coal mines.

Will we be any further ahead ???

<...a battery that absorbs CO2 on charging and releases it on discharge...>

A bit like a fossil fuel reservoir, though on a much shorter cycle, then?