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Author Topic: New ideas for carbon capture  (Read 1844 times)

Neven

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New ideas for carbon capture
« on: July 14, 2017, 11:31:25 AM »
This thread was opened by Jontenoy in the wrong category. I wanted to move it here, but accidentally removed it. Fortunately it was still in my cache. Here's Jontenoy's text:

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Most discussions seem to be about reducing emissions. This is all fine except it is not going to happen fast enough. I think a possible solution would be to develop a vegetable with the following attributes :
* Has deep roots
* Produces food (grains, leaves, stalks etc)
* Keeps growing downwards
* Spreads rapidly

This would produce a vast tangle of treadlike roots which would capture and store carbon. If it died, a new plant could continue and grow around the old roots. Clover fixes Nitrogen. This would fix Carbon in the soil as biomass.  Some grape vines and Olive trees have roots greater than 40 metres deep.
The same idea could be considered for the ocean whereby algae would form, reproduce and die on a continuous basis.
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numerobis

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Re: New ideas for carbon capture
« Reply #1 on: July 14, 2017, 04:25:50 PM »
With modern materials science we can build skyscrapers out of wood instead of concrete (where by "can" I mean there's a few projects that have actually for-real done it, not just calculations on a napkin). That switches from using a carbon source as construction material to using the construction itself as a carbon sink. Wood buildings can last centuries, and then you can replace them.

With the recent paper about how BECCS can't possibly provide enough of a sink to get the negative emissions implied by RCP2.6 though, I'm a bit dubious.

Converting the marine ecosystem in addition to land-based systems could help, but at what cost?

rboyd

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Re: New ideas for carbon capture
« Reply #2 on: July 14, 2017, 08:38:29 PM »
numerobis - can you provide a link to the BECCS paper?

numerobis

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Re: New ideas for carbon capture
« Reply #3 on: July 14, 2017, 09:21:00 PM »
I can't seem to find it right now; made a splash a month or two back.

Second-best, Carbon Brief got blurbs from a bunch of researchers:
https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-experts-assess-the-feasibility-of-negative-emissions