Atmospheric CO2 Capture
Discussions center on the feasibility of removing CO2 from the atmosphere using excess energy, including debates on energy costs, sequestration methods, practicality, and skepticism about direct air capture versus prevention or point-source capture.
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Couldn't you just pump co2 out of the atmosphere if you had sufficient energy/money ?
Can’t excess power be used to remove carbon dioxide from the air?
This process doesn't capture carbon, it captures CO2. Splitting CO2 back to Carbon and Oxygen does indeed take a great deal of energy, but if you can efficiently and cheaply store CO2 permanently (underground, in concrete, in greenhouse-grown plants, or wherever) then this can still be a net win.
Stopped reading at "carbon capture". It does not make sense at this point. There just isn't a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere (currently ~400ppm), and it is a very unreactive molecule. Any method of extracting it from the atmosphere is fighting against entropy and adding energy to molecules would be extremely inefficient. We should use all the renewable energy we have to reduce the emissions from our grid first. For a more near-term possible mitigation of global warming, geoengineeri
They won't be wasting CO2, they will be replenishing it.
if you burn coal, and use _all_ that energy to capture co2, does it even balance out?
They plan to sequester the CO2, not "unburn" it back to carbon and oxygen. The CO2 reaction you posted has nothing to do with the cost of capturing CO2 and sequestering it.
It will never be cheaper than avoiding co2 in the first place (or at least catching at the source) so while it might have applications, it seems impractical for making significant progress towards saving the planet at this point.
We pull almost all of the CO2 we burn from coal and oil, which were basically underground carbon reserves. To replace all of that CO2 with plant matter would take an immense amount of nutrients, which have to come from somewhere. Then there's the chance that the plant matter will turn to coal or oil again, meaning it may be used again. By turning the CO2 directly into carbonate, you both remove the need for nutrients and turn the CO2 into a form that is both incredibly stable and not useful
are you capturing Carbon or CO2? It seems we've released Carbon from prehistoric oil, but not O2. what is the consequence of capturing O2 as well?