Comment by todd8 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by todd8 | Hacker News Reader

The numbers seem to indicate some challenges. This is just back of the envelope and this isn't my field so I may be misinterpreting the data, but it looks like extracting 1 million tons of CO2 per year has the following costs (at lab scale values):

* > 1 Billion dollars

* > 5 Million MWhr

Assuming 200 Kg/MWhr of CO2 emissions produced by electrical generation (I believe the average carbon intensity in the USA is over 400 Kg/MWhr) the emissions produced (just for the electricity to do the extraction) is 1 Million Tons of CO2.

Thus, it looks like with the current estimates the process costs 1 Billion dollars and doesn't reduce CO2 at all. Like ethanol, I wonder if this process will be worth it in the end. I don't know what raw materials it requires and how much CO2 is generated in their extraction and production. It's possible that your belief that at industrial scale the CO2 intensity and dollar cost will go down, but are you even accounting for the CO2 cost of manufacturing the facility, transportation of raw materials, etc.

Great points. We are using lab scale equipment today, and as trained engineers we want to be conservative to any forecasts we share publicly since unrealistic claims will not help us or anyone in this space get to where we want to go. We have spent many months building models, demonstrating at a lab scale, & talking to experts to get their feedback, and now we see the most value will come from actually building our pilot plant to get a much clearer sense on the real financial/energy costs & to identify which process parameters need the most focus.

Coming from the chemical manufacturing world, we have (painful) experience modeling & planning for new processes & know that cost/energy models of new processes can only get us so far.

That being said, we see a path forward for our process at scale and are motivated to make it a reality.

If you're setting this up at enough scale to matter, you're going to need more power than is available today anyway. As long as you're building new, it would make sense to build renewable or nuclear.

Yes, but wouldn’t it be better to simply replace dirty power generation with this new renewable electricity rather than expending all of the renewable power on this hypothetical CO2 extraction facility. At some point, I suppose, the overall carbon footprint of our world’s electrical generation will come down to the point where CO2 extraction will be a net win. Right now it’s not clear to me.

Ideally, sure, but then when we replace electricity sources we still have all the things we weren't able to electrify, and we're faced with scaling up something like this from scratch. We need the fastest path to net zero including things like cement and ships and long-haul jets and agriculture, and all that adds up to more than our emissions from electricity. Fastest path probably includes getting a head start on negative emissions.

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