PDF Publication Title:
Text from PDF Page: 005
Copyright © 2018 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120. 5-2018 NEWS & ANALYSIS 48 ELR 10417 DAC unit would draw in ambient air either through pas- sively relying on wind or breezes or by incorporating an active fan or blower. The ambient air would move through screens or other filtration steps if needed to remove con- taminants or debris, and then it would flow over a tank, membrane, or screen that would put the air in contact with a chemical to absorb the CO2. Most current DAC technologies take two different approaches to chemically remove the CO2 from the ambi- ent air: liquid sorbents or solid adsorbents. Liquid sorbents typically use an alkaline solution to capture acidic CO2 gas from the air that streams through them, and then pre- cipitates out the CO2 as a calcium carbonate residue. The system then heats that residue to release the CO2, and the system captures the gaseous CO2 before it escapes. It then returns the separated calcium back to the liquid sorption solution, and the cycle repeats itself. By contrast, solid adsorbent systems use a resin to capture ambient CO2, soak the CO2-saturated resin in water to release the cap- tured gas, and then reuse the recharged resin to absorb more CO2. Under either of these approaches, once the chemical becomes saturated or spent, the operator would remove it from the unit and either dispose of the spent chemical or take steps to release the CO2 from the spent chemical. This step may often involve the use of either heat or other chemicals. The emitted CO2 is captured and then either devoted to commercial use or sequestered at a permanent disposal site. In theory, while the amount of CO2 removed by an individual unit would be relatively small, operators can scale up the process by building a large number of mechanical DAC units subject only to constraints of sup- plies, available locations, and processing requirements for power and chemicals. Even at this basic level, this approach faces several large and immediate challenges. Most importantly, the process would have to capture extremely dilute concentrations of CO from ambient air. Because ambient air now contains 2 only approximately 400 parts per million (ppm) of CO2, most experts assume that the process would need to con- als and captured CO2.29 For example, the NAS’ assessment of climate engineering technologies in 2015 concluded that removing significant amounts of CO2 with DAC could require up to 100,000,000 acres in the Southeast United States.30 This figure assumes, however, that the DAC units would use solar power sources that would demand large amounts of land.31 A more refined calculation based on assumptions that DAC could use natural gas or coal power sources (and then capture and sequester those energy emis- sions) allows a much more compact demand for land that compares favorably with wind or solar energy facilities.32 As research into DAC has progressed, the range of potential removal strategies has expanded to make the technologies more effective and economical.33 For exam- ple, one approach has used alkaline solutions to capture CO2 and concentrate it to high levels of purity for sale as a commercial-grade product, but this process requires substantial energy, consumes substantial chemicals, and can produce significant amounts of waste.34 By contrast, a competing process that uses resins, air moisture, and ambi- ent air movement to power the removal of CO2 uses much less energy, but it removes comparatively less CO2 from the ambient air input stream and only produces a stream of CO2-enriched air that can be used for enhancement of plant growth.35 While cost estimates are changing quickly as research progresses, current projects based on available absorption technologies that use the alkaline chemical solutions strat- egy would likely capture CO2 at costs ranging from $250 to $1,000 per ton.36 Notably, the developers of DAC sys- 29. See, e.g., Center for Science, Technology, and Engineering, U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), Technology Assess- ment: Climate Engineering—Technical Status, Future Directions, and Potential Responses 21 (2011) (GAO-11-71) (projecting that the energy required for DAC to capture one ton of ambient CO2 would itself release a ton of CO2, thereby nullifying the capture). See also Pete Smith et al., Emissions, 6 Nature Climate Change 42-50 (2016) (investment in BECCS sufficient to meet temperature goals would require $123 to $138 billion per year by 2050, which would equal nearly 5% of projected total global energy infrastructure investments by 2050). 30. NAS Report, supra note 11, at 58, 62 (this projection assumes that the DAC technology would rely on solar power rather than non-renewable en- ergy sources that might cause carbon emissions of their own). 31. Id. 32. David W. Keith et al., , 74 Climatic Change 17 (2006), available at https://keith.seas.harvard.edu/files/tkg/ files/51.keith_.2005.climatestratwithaircapture.e.pdf. 33. For a good survey of current DAC commercialization projects (and their associated cost projections), see Yuki Ishimoto et al., Forum for Climate Engineering Assessment, Working Paper No. 002, Putting Costs of Direct Air Capture in Context 7-9 (2017) (summarizing technology choices and unit costs for efforts by Carbon Engineering, the Center for Negative Emissions of Arizona State University, Global Thermostat, Clime- works, Carbon Sink, Coaway, and Skytree). 34. Carbon Engineering, , http://carbonengineering.com/ about-dac/ (last visited Mar. 19, 2018). 35. Arizona State University, Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, Research, https://cnce.engineering.asu.edu/research/ (last visited Mar. 19, 2018). See also Tao Wang et al., , 15 Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics 504 (2013) (discussing basic thermodynamic chemistry of reaction). 36. These cost assessments vary widely. For example, a cost calculation for CO2 removal by DAC that assumed the use of sodium hydroxide to capture the centrate the CO before it can be economically recovered 28 2 and managed. This low concentration makes any direct physical separation impractical, and as a result virtually all DAC systems rely on either carbonate absorptives or catalytic chemicals to remove the CO2. In addition, the resulting CO2 or products would presumably need to have sufficient economic value—for example, through a price on carbon via a tax or emissions cap—to offset the cost of collecting, processing, and managing the ambient air streams and CO . DAC to conclude that the technology would consume enor- mous amounts of energy, occupy large swaths of land, and mandate the management of vast amounts of waste materi- 28. See, e.g., Royal Society, Geoengineering the Climate: Science, Gov- ernance, and Uncertainty 15 (2009); James Rodger Fleming, Fixing the Sky 251 (2010). 2 This combination of constraints led early evaluations ofPDF Image | NET Legal Pathways
PDF Search Title:
NET Legal PathwaysOriginal File Name Searched:
Legal-Pathways-NETs-DAC-Hester.pdfDIY PDF Search: Google It | Yahoo | Bing
NFT (Non Fungible Token): Buy our tech, design, development or system NFT and become part of our tech NFT network... More Info
IT XR Project Redstone NFT Available for Sale: NFT for high tech turbine design with one part 3D printed counter-rotating energy turbine. Be part of the future with this NFT. Can be bought and sold but only one design NFT exists. Royalties go to the developer (Infinity) to keep enhancing design and applications... More Info
Infinity Turbine IT XR Project Redstone Design: NFT for sale... NFT for high tech turbine design with one part 3D printed counter-rotating energy turbine. Includes all rights to this turbine design, including license for Fluid Handling Block I and II for the turbine assembly and housing. The NFT includes the blueprints (cad/cam), revenue streams, and all future development of the IT XR Project Redstone... More Info
Infinity Turbine ROT Radial Outflow Turbine 24 Design and Worldwide Rights: NFT for sale... NFT for the ROT 24 energy turbine. Be part of the future with this NFT. This design can be bought and sold but only one design NFT exists. You may manufacture the unit, or get the revenues from its sale from Infinity Turbine. Royalties go to the developer (Infinity) to keep enhancing design and applications... More Info
Infinity Supercritical CO2 10 Liter Extractor Design and Worldwide Rights: The Infinity Supercritical 10L CO2 extractor is for botanical oil extraction, which is rich in terpenes and can produce shelf ready full spectrum oil. With over 5 years of development, this industry leader mature extractor machine has been sold since 2015 and is part of many profitable businesses. The process can also be used for electrowinning, e-waste recycling, and lithium battery recycling, gold mining electronic wastes, precious metals. CO2 can also be used in a reverse fuel cell with nafion to make a gas-to-liquids fuel, such as methanol, ethanol and butanol or ethylene. Supercritical CO2 has also been used for treating nafion to make it more effective catalyst. This NFT is for the purchase of worldwide rights which includes the design. More Info
NFT (Non Fungible Token): Buy our tech, design, development or system NFT and become part of our tech NFT network... More Info
Infinity Turbine Products: Special for this month, any plans are $10,000 for complete Cad/Cam blueprints. License is for one build. Try before you buy a production license. May pay by Bitcoin or other Crypto. Products Page... More Info
| CONTACT TEL: 608-238-6001 Email: greg@infinityturbine.com | RSS | AMP |