Carbon Capture: All You Need To Know

Entries for Elon Musk's Carbon xPrize will open on Earth day, April 22nd. In this video, I tell you all you need to know about carbon capture and the entry requirements that you need to know to understand the challenges ahead.

Addendum to what I say at 2 mins 15 seconds. In the long run, we have to get to net zero emissions if we are to keep warming to 1.5 C.

#science #climate

0:00 Intro
0:26 The Challenge
2:37 Competition Entry Requirements
3:07 Trees
4:24 Cremation Digression
5:04 Ocean Fertilization
5:52 Biochar
6:40 Plastic Digression
7:01 Weathering
7:42 Direct Air Capture
8:36 Seawater Extraction
9:36 Capture and Storage
10:18 Summary
10:37 Sponsor Message

[SabineHossenfelder]

What climate change question do you want me to look into for you? Please leave suggestions in the comments.

[amedeeabreo]

Finally a use for those extra dimensions that are just curling around and doing nothing productive.

[LookingGlassUniverse]

Fantastic job finding all this information and summarising it so succinctly. I have no idea how you can make great videos so quickly, but thank you for doing it!

[richardtheweaver]

One of my ideas is "lateral levies". Dig trenches perpendicular to rivers and streams, using the dirt to make a very short levy to the downstream side of each trench. Fill the trenches with carbon-absorbing gravel (water activates the process).
There's a bit more, but the effect is to guarantee a small amount of flooding (to the spillways) but prevent anything damaging.
This inverts the current system, where your levy sends water downstream, guaranteeing serious flooding downstream, resulting in an 'arms race' to build the highest levy; instead, your levy protects your downstream neighbors, recharges aquifers, keeps rivers flowing year round, fertilizes the land, and removes carbon from the atmosphere.
Since the ancillary services are worth more than the cost, lateral levies remove carbon at negative cost.
"Flood like an Egyptian"

[rais]

I don't have a new idea, I've heard it elsewhere but a much faster plant for capturing carbon is bamboo which, being a grass, grows very fast. Some tropical bamboos are thick and strong enough to use for construction and they can also be steam processed into boards and planks for flooring etc. You can grow a crop of bamboo, harvest it, grow another crop and harvest it over and over again in the time that it takes to grow one stand of softwood trees. Once the bamboo is part of a building its carbon is locked up for decades at least.

[raphaelklaussen]

Sabine has a way of explaining complex subjects in a manner accessible to most people with average intelligence. No annoying music and no theatrics, the way it should be done.

[gerhardwesp]

Great summary!

Re enhanced weathering: My understanding is that one doesn't 'artificially create' the absorbing minerals, but one just digs them out of the ground. To start with, millions or probably billions of tons of existing mine tailings *already* could be ground and distributed to take up CO2.

[garethnoble]

Hi Sabine, I'm right in the middle of CCS right now. The high end of the full chain costs is in all honesty a bit more than you stated ... about 50 - 150. I couldn't place your statement about water consumption, though. There are some 50 projects ongoing in Europe right now. But at best a few will be onstream '26 and many wont be before '30. I always introduce CCS by saying ... "if we want carbon to be stored in teh ground, the first and cheapest thing you should do is not take it out of the ground in the first place". Effciiency and redcued consumption is king..More lately I have moved on to saying ... "the time for debating what's best is past. We have to get on and do what we can and do it today. We can do CCS today". Musk has always championed the idea that he's not daugnted by costs unless they have to be reduced by more than a factor 10 PROVIDED THAT thermodynamics do not limit. People who are getting after new ways to meet this challenge really must take that into account for their full chain. Good luck.

[elfenbeinturm-media]

You had me at "...by dumping dead people into the deep sea where they won't rot".

[craigpichach]

Sabine,
Awesome video! Some feedback:
#1) I think it's worth mentioning the Azolla Event in which atmospheric carbon was reduced (leading to the ice ages with humanity). A lot of oil companies actually wanted to develop the Arctic because in theory there are loads of carbon stored there (though it might be all kerogen). It is some evidence of ocean fertilization (in that case slit + fresh water) working. I'm amazed how few people know about it (and it might surprise many to find that before this the CO2 concentration was generally >1000ppm; there is a reason why your dinosaur museums don't have any snow, the Earth geologically speaking usually doesn't have ice caps!). Ironically Azolla still grows today but unfortunately we don't have a massive nutrient rich semi fresh/semi saline environment.
#2) Ocean storage of CO2, beneath the ocean at cold temperatures you form these cool CO2 hydrates (ices) that will essentially sequester. Very cool physics with hydrates!!! At 0C and 30000kPag (hydrostatic pressure at 3km) the ocean can be >10% liquid CO2 without hydrates. Instead of heating, just move the CO2 water down there by low energy turbine. Way WAY less energy than heating and/or compression.
#3) Algae storage - my personal favorite is Sargassum. It floats and is big, easy to filter and capture. Ironically when fertilizer builds up out of the Mississippi and the Amazon and the temps are right BOOM - Sargassum invasion of the beaches! Let's go get it. This might help stop hurricanes from your earlier videos if we did those plumes on purpose!
#4) With biochar the other 50% is fuel that you can upgrade. You upgrade it (sorry, not going to publicly tell you how to avoid all that coke!) and sell the fuels balancing the carbon cycle at a profit while you sequester CO2. Now you have a profitable carbon sequestration option.
#5) With carbon engineering it takes energy to power those fans and I still don't get what they are going to do with the CO2. Carbon capture with amine is cool, but you need to compress the CO2 with power. Annoying. Clean Energy Systems though has a cool oxyfired combuster with a turbine and then they are sequestering the CO2, pretty cool. In Alberta and Sask we have a couple CO2 sequestration projects but you need reservoirs that can store the CO2 (not always nearby). Ocean works but you have a gas generally in these cases and who wants to compress to 10000kPag to overcome hydrostatic pressure?
#6) Don't forget your super cool chemolithoautotrophic organisms! Here you use H2S (that's right, hydrogen sulfide) and oxygen reduced by bacteria to make biomass. Then you make some fuels by hydrothermal liquid faction and then pump the organics and sulfates under ground where geothermal heat and anaerobic digestion make H2S again and you get to cycle the H2S. Unfortunately it is much easier to have concrete with CO2. The Western Research Institute actually has a patent on the CAT process. I have seen these organisms (the bacteria of which is usually in tubeworms under the ocean) used for sweetening natural gas. Some cool physics there, some have said that this might be how life would develop with the sulphur cycle on other planets (though you still need oxygen for reduction, so go figure).

[dustinirwin]

Amazingly succinct video!

Is scalability not a consideration? The mineral solution is $10/T, which seems awfully cheap, but not practical to remove 20GT per year globally.

[HectorDeAnda]

I’m glad she mentioned that plastic is an actual stable carbon sink. The best idea would be to find large geologically stable areas for plastic carbon storage. The carbon will be locked away cheaply. Recycling is not feasible for most plastics and releases more carbon in the air. We need to remove the political stigma of plastic and go from calling it “garbage” to calling it potential “carbon storage “.

[mheermance]

The CO2 was emitted through burning which liberated energy, so wouldn't any form of carbon capture require a greater amount of energy? It seems like the technology is doomed to be cost ineffective.

[mac]

I dig your deadpan humor, thanks for the video!

[OZMus]

Thank you Sabine that was really cool to learn and you are awesome to learn from. Much love.

[melovepeas]

I'm also sponsoring a prize but for the best Oxygen Capture technology instead since I'm a supervillain billionaire with diabolical schemes

[drd]

Trees are a proxy for plants. The key is maximizing biomass production per unit area. Aquatic plants produce far more biomass than terrestrial plants (up to 7X). I did experiments to measure biomass production in 2009-10 in connection with wastewater treatment. One of the key factors to consider is ease of harvest. Algae is produces the most biomass by far, but is hard to remove and produces eutrophic lakes when it falls to the bottom. (The bottom strata of the lake become oxygen poor killing benthic organisms and disrupting the food chain). Macro algae is a better option for ease of harvest. There is some very good research at the Salk Institute in the area of biosequestration (Joanne Chory). I think she has a lock on the $50M prize.

[cashkaval]

Build a carbon capture technology around hydrothermal vents, on the bottom of the ocean. At least, you've got free geothermal energy

[Sulinthmachin]

"it's like you elected someone out of office and now they're really pissed off, but they've got six weeks left on the job and nothing you can do about that" LOL!

[dougg]

Anti fart seaweed for cows is in testing, reduces farts by 80 percent I think.