It’s been about half a century since humans have realized (and become concerned) the fact that we are poisoning and destroying the big blue marble we call home. OK, the humans that care past their bank accounts have notcied. There is active effort all around us to come up with new and clean energy producing means but, what about the toxicity problems we already have? Our lands are filled with piles of plastic and refuse that could take 10,000 years to degrade. The oceans are filled with the same. The air is fraught with chemicals that create acid when it rains.
Fortunately, nature has provided us with sort of a blueprint and “machines” to help clean our air. It’s called plants and trees. Sadly, higher value is placed on the lumber and the fruit the greenery produces than the actual plant. It seems like a never ending downward spiral of doom. In trying to have a more positive outlook, parts of our Anonymous population are diligently trying to invent or re-invent ways to combat our destruction. A company called Carbon Engineering in Canada is one in particular. These people are meticulously working on technology to help out the trees and ultimately, the population. A system that pulls ambient air through filtering media to remove carbon dioxide and then goes one step further and reclaims it to re-use. This system will not produce new oxygen as plant life does but, it IS a leap forward in starting the repair of a problem.
The basic operation is just that. Ambient air is pulled through sort of a honeycomb shaped grid that has an inexpensive caustic fluid running down through it. This fluid is a specific blend designed to attract the CO2. As the air comes in contact with this fluid, the CO2 molecules are caught and then trapped within the fluid and turned into a carbonate (a type of salt). The fluid is then flushed through a different filter media, recycled and sent back to the fan units to start again. The “pure” CO2 that has now been removed from the fluid is captured, compressed and stored along with any other CO2 produced by the capture process. The company boasts a success rate of 80% absorption and they haven’t even explored all of their options yet.Ok so giant fans will suck the CO2 out of the air. How much is 80%? How big is this thing? What? How? Huh?
As a reference, if 10 automobiles each burn 1 gallon of gas in a day, those autos would release about 200 pounds (90Kg) of CO2 in that day. The small scale prototype unit being operated by Carbon Engineering is approximately the size of a medium length delivery truck. This unit removes approximately 220 pounds (100Kg) of CO2 from the air per day. The large scale modular design they have in mind is predicted to be able to remove the CO2 from 300,000 autos per day. Not bad for such a simple design. Yet another positive lies in the fact these machines do not need to be located within any metropolitan area, no forest needs to be cut, no massive construction efforts. They can be put on land where nothing grows and no one lives and still do their job. Pair it up with a good solar power system and what do you have? A near zero emission facility that’s turning out cleaner air
If you have 8 minutes of your life to spare, check out this video straight from C.E.
Sources: (2015, July 27). About CE. Retrieved 12 October 2015,
I’m no scientist nor mathematician, but I don’t understand the math here. Gasoline weighs six pounds per gallon. If ten cars burn one gallon of gasoline each, that equals sixty pounds of fuel. How can sixty pounds of gasoline turn into two hundred pounds of CO2?
The O2 is oxygen, which is dragged in from the air to combine with the carbon (the main ingredient of fossil fuel) so the resulting CO2 is heavier than the fuel.
How much energy does it take to run these fans (are they powered by coal or oil fired power plants?) and more importantly, what is the carbon footprint of the production process? It takes a LOT of energy to turn iron and other elements into a finished product.
This idea seems like, at best, a pipe dream that will never come close to producing a return on its carbon investment and, at worst, a way for some well
-connected company to get a tax write off, some government subsidies and maybe some money from Al Gore’s fake organization for redistributing money to his ultra rich friends.
It requires the same amount of energy to make that ‘fluid’ as the energy you get from burning the coal or gasoline that created the CO2. To quote Heinlein, “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.” You get some energy from each carbon and Oxygen you combine into Carbon Dioxide. And you have to spend the same amount of energy to pull them apart. That’s how it works.
If this works, every dirty (coal, natural gas, etc) power plant and factory should have them.
Asauming this works and large scale carbon scrubs start operating where and how does one store CO2 that is being captured at such large scales….?