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Elon Musk Offers $100M Prize to Best Carbon Capture Technology

levyjl1988

Banned
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Just recreate this from Spaceballs the movie.
 
Generally governments of the world provide financial grants to emerging technologies or start ups for R&D etc. Given how important climate change is these days it's saddening to see such big investment from individuals where the government should have been providing as such all along.
 
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We are pretty far past the point of climate change being irreversible without carbon sequestration. Pay attention because this tech will be worth trillions of dollars as it is literally essential to preserving humanity's existence. Also yeah let's hope we don't Snowpiercer ourselves trying to do carbon sequestration.
 

Dr.Guru of Peru

played the long game
Generally governments of the world provide financial grants to emerging technologies or start ups for R&D etc. Given how important climate change is these days it's saddening to see such big investment from individuals where the government should have been providing as such all along.
$100 million is nice, but its a pittance to what some governments have already invested in carbon sequestration. We also don't know any details yet, so I'm not sure where you're getting that there's no "red tape".
 
$100 million is nice, but its a pittance to what some governments have already invested in carbon sequestration. We also don't know any details yet, so I'm not sure where you're getting that there's no "red tape".

Problem is a lot of those grants go to studies rather than actual technology to directly progress climate change. For example $100M from Bezos 10Billion climate change fund is purely being used to build a satellite to monitor methane instead of carbon dioxide, as they believe it's the more impacting greenhouse gas. It's a huge problem and of course learning about the most effective areas to target is a big deal, I'd just like to see more "in actual action today" rather than learning about tomorrow.

Also I wouldn't say a pittance by comparison e.g. end of 2019 Washington announced $110M for CS.

Perhaps I don't know enough about the USA ventures as I'm more Australia centric.
 
imo we should "farm" carbon using a rotation of forests (lumber can be sold) or bamboo (grows faster, other useful applications) plus grasslands, cut down and chipped, mounded and vented to create high-quality fungal compost, which is then redistributed across the "carbon forest" plot for the next batch of trees, with excess sold to farms, landscapers, and city projects. We could also use local tree waste (millions of tons of fallen branches and leaves every year) to supplement the raw material needs and assist with waste management. If needed, the same materials and process can be used for the production of flammable biogas.

And there's a perfect buyer's market for such plots of land: take chemical-blasted farmer fields that edge against a forest. These fields are essentially dead soil, barely propped up by a cocktail of fertilizers and stimulants, and would be the perfect area to begin repairing and sequestering into grasslands and forests. The bleeding hearts in California won't mention this, but our farming practices put a lot of carbon into the atmosphere, and also nitrogen. You can squeeze even more productivity out of these parcels of land by grazing cattle on it and/or growing crops between seasons, which will increase the amount of carbon sequestration even further (per year) while also providing high-quality meat and crops.

Countries with a lot of land (like the USA, China, Russia) are in the best position to do this, because it requires no new technology and uses existing infrastructure (though in fairness, a lot of this infrastructure should be built up and modernized for our kids to enjoy).
 
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Tesseract

Banned
i'd prolly take a look if i had time and excess capital

not all that interested in losing thousands of hours over a wolf prize unless part of that money is granted to more than one person or idea
 
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Trogdor1123

Gold Member
Build the world's largest SodaStream and turn all the oceans into pop for people to drink. World hunger and climate solved. Looking forward to my cheque
 

V4skunk

Banned
Make everything electrical, stop using fossil fuel.

BOOM, no more CO2 .

Hand in the money, Elon
C02 is plant food and the biggest greenhouse gas is water vapour at 70%.
I'm all for cleaning up our planet rom real pollutants though like plastic.
We need to be spending billions on cold fusion and figuring out how to efficiently extract hydrogen from water.
Hydrogen should be a big deal! Imagine having a device on your car that can electrolysis water at a fast enough rate for an internal combustion engine to run with out having to store the hydrogen in a fuel tank!
Game changing.....
 

GAMETA

Banned
C02 is plant food and the biggest greenhouse gas is water vapour at 70%.
I'm all for cleaning up our planet rom real pollutants though like plastic.
We need to be spending billions on cold fusion and figuring out how to efficiently extract hydrogen from water.
Hydrogen should be a big deal! Imagine having a device on your car that can electrolysis water at a fast enough rate for an internal combustion engine to run with out having to store the hydrogen in a fuel tank!
Game changing.....
Don't you think solid state batteries with a much much larger capability would suit transportation better?
 

V4skunk

Banned
Don't you think solid state batteries with a much much larger capability would suit transportation better?
Producing and recycling our current batteries is very damaging to the environment over the long term.
I believe hydrogen is far superior, especially for a car because pretty much all modern combustion engines can be modified to use hydrogen.
It doesn't matter any way because the globalists already plan for us to replace coal/gas/nuclear with solar and wind which will destroy the west economically.
 

epicnemesis

Member
What I love about this is since it’s a reward for a solution rather than a grant for a theory, the solution would have to be low cost. (I can’t see someone pouring millions into a contest)
 
Producing and recycling our current batteries is very damaging to the environment over the long term.
I believe hydrogen is far superior, especially for a car because pretty much all modern combustion engines can be modified to use hydrogen.
It doesn't matter any way because the globalists already plan for us to replace coal/gas/nuclear with solar and wind which will destroy the west economically.
Hydrogen is very inefficient to create and store. I think when people were comparing Nikola to Tesla, it was like it took something like 2X the energy converted to hydrogen to do the same amount of transportation as it would in a battery. It also is highly explosive and difficult to contain.

Long range trucks and heavy machinery might be able to benefit, as it is unlikely battery energy density will be sufficient anytime in the near future.

That said I think unless battery tech energy density can be increased dramatically, without becoming explosive, modifying organisms to produce gasoline like substances might be preferable. Already synthetic material and microbe cells have achieved over 10% solar efficiency, far higher than any plant, and some experiments comment that they have 80% solar energy efficiency by combining microbes with nanoscale particles. Suppose you modified a tall weed like plant to have edible parts and fuel parts, and could get efficiency of 30+%. It would outcompete all other weeds and plants by virtue of its massive energy efficiency, and would have hypergrowth. Being a type of weed it would proliferate massively throughout the land without needing any farming at all. Add genes to adapt to various climates, and it could go spread throughout the world, ending world hunger and providing free fuel for all.
 
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V4skunk

Banned
Hydrogen is very inefficient to create and store. I think when people were comparing Nikola to Tesla, it was like it took something like 2X the energy converted to hydrogen to do the same amount of transportation as it would in a battery. It also is highly explosive and difficult to contain.

Long range trucks and heavy machinery might be able to benefit, as it is unlikely battery energy density will be sufficient anytime in the near future.

That said I think unless battery tech energy density can be increased dramatically, without becoming explosive, modifying organisms to produce gasoline like substances might be preferable. Already synthetic material and microbe cells have achieved over 10% solar efficiency, far higher than any plant, and some experiments comment that they have 80% solar energy efficiency by combining microbes with nanoscale particles. Suppose you modified a tall weed like plant to have edible parts and fuel parts, and could get efficiency of 30+%. It would outcompete all other weeds and plants by virtue of its massive energy efficiency, and would have hypergrowth. Being a type of weed it would proliferate massively throughout the land without needing any farming at all. Add genes to adapt to various climates, and it could go spread throughout the world, ending world hunger and providing free fuel for all.
You are talking about current hydrogen technology.
In the future if enough money is spent on research the idea is to develop a way to efficiently extract hydrogen from water at a fast enough rate that an combustion engine can run with out having to store any hydrogen in a tank.
 
You are talking about current hydrogen technology.
In the future if enough money is spent on research the idea is to develop a way to efficiently extract hydrogen from water at a fast enough rate that an combustion engine can run with out having to store any hydrogen in a tank.
Efficiently extract from water? That takes energy, and will always take energy. You will need another source of energy to do that. And physics dictates there is a minimal amount of energy needed to break the hydrogen away from water, an amount of energy you can't go below.
Conventional alkaline electrolysis has an efficiency of about 70%.[26] Accounting for the accepted use of the higher heat value (because inefficiency via heat can be redirected back into the system to create the steam required by the catalyst), average working efficiencies for PEM electrolysis are around 80%.[27][28] This is expected to increase to between 82–86%[29] before 2030. Theoretical efficiency for PEM electrolysers are predicted up to 94%-wiki
It seems current electrolysis is close to peak theoretical electrolysis efficiency limit. And again you're not going to extract a substantially large amount of energy from hydrogen chemical bonds through burning reaction compared to that which it takes to break the hydrogen from water. If you were to use the hydrogen for fusion you could probably extract massively more energy, but chemical reactions I don't think so.

EDIT: I'm pretty sure the energy produced by hydrogen fuel cells which are very efficient, is less energy than it takes to create the hydrogen. Similar should apply to burning hydrogen too. If you could extract more energy from a hydrogen fuel cell or the burning of hydrogen than it takes to produce the hydrogen, then you could use that excess energy to produce more hydrogen effectively providing unlimited energy. Pretty sure that ain't possible, or you'd see hydrogen itself being used to produce more hydrogen. Even in the future hydrogen has never been mentioned as a potential energy source from reducing the energy necessary to produce it vs the energy obtained from using it.
 
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V4skunk

Banned
Efficiently extract from water? That takes energy, and will always take energy. You will need another source of energy to do that. And physics dictates there is a minimal amount of energy needed to break the hydrogen away from water, an amount of energy you can't go below.

It seems current electrolysis is close to peak theoretical electrolysis efficiency limit. And again you're not going to extract a substantially large amount of energy from hydrogen chemical bonds through burning reaction compared to that which it takes to break the hydrogen from water. If you were to use the hydrogen for fusion you could probably extract massively more energy, but chemical reactions I don't think so.

EDIT: I'm pretty sure the energy produced by hydrogen fuel cells which are very efficient, is less energy than it takes to create the hydrogen. Similar should apply to burning hydrogen too. If you could extract more energy from a hydrogen fuel cell or the burning of hydrogen than it takes to produce the hydrogen, then you could use that excess energy to produce more hydrogen effectively providing unlimited energy. Pretty sure that ain't possible, or you'd see hydrogen itself being used to produce more hydrogen. Even in the future hydrogen has never been mentioned as a potential energy source from reducing the energy necessary to produce it vs the energy obtained from using it.
Electrolysis isn't at peak theoretical efficiency.
Already scientists are developing ways to increase efficiency by using so called meta materials on the electrical side and using small mechanical highspeed flywheel on magnetic bearings to atomise the water.
I'm no expert but shit is getting done and even if you cant make this shit work on a car it will still open up hydrogen fuel to the masses at an affordable price.
And storing hydrogen isn't that big of a deal with some of the technology we have today like with kevlar/cf type woven materials becoming more mainstream.
If you want your mind blown look into nikola tesla turbine+pump that engineers are working on.
 
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