The carbon slayers

[mr friendly guy]

Not sure if this is posted before, but taken from the July 2010 issue of the Australian edition of popular science, and I decided to look at these articles again after the climate change tangent in another thread about population growth. Since I can't find the article on line I will retype the proposals. Basically these deal with geoengineering proposals to catch carbon from the atmosphere, store it for later use or convert to petrol.

First article

The Big gun

David Keith believes strong arm strategies could soon be our last resort for reversing record levels of carbon in the atmosphere.

In the 1992 film Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood slowly and methodically avoids violet confrontation with the bad guys before finally turning things around with a bloody burst of gunslinging. That's something like the approach of Canadian physicist and environmental scientist David Keith. Except that his villain is climate change, and while he's still doing everything he can to avoid a fight, Keith is also stockpiling ammo.

Keith, a professor at Calgary University in Canada, runs a start up company, Carbon Engineering, that is developing commercial scale devices to capture atmospheric carbon dioxide. That's the slow and methodical. "But if we can't control atmospheric CO2 well enough, then we might want to do the solar stuff." That's the gunfight.

For several years now Keith who has served as a member of Canada's blue ribbon panel on sustainable energy technology, has been the leading voice in the call for serious research into geoengineered schemes for cooling the planet. The most common example would be to scatter sulphates in the stratogsphere to reflect sunlight away from the planet. The cooling would be immediate and global. We know this because it happened before. When Mt. Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, the resulting plume of sulphuric ash cooled the planet by about 0.5 celsius for a year. Should we find ourselves faced with an immediate environmental emergency - a shifting Gulf Stream or an impending collapse of the Arctic ice sheets - effective "sunlight mediation" could be a quick retreat from the edge.

The immediate problems with this, however are twofold. First, there's an obvious moral hurdle. Most people reflexively reject notions of geoengineering for fear that they may cause more harm than good, and undermine efforts to reduce carbon emissions. The other drawback is that the method would be cheap and easy enough that even a rogue nation could pull it off, which leaves open the very real possibility of unilateral action with global consequences.

The hope is to refine geoengineering methods and develop standards, while simultaneously working toward a future in which they would never have to be used. That's where Keith's carbon sequestration technology comes in. Most carbon capture systems propose sequestering CO2 from large facilities such as power plants. Keith's plan, however, is more mobile, calling for towers that could be deployed wherever land, climate and labour costs are optimal.

These carbon suckers woudl employ fans to move air through a solution of sodium hydroxide, which absorbs the CO2. Inside, lime bonds with the CO2 to form solid calcium carbonate. The reaction releases the sodium hydroxide for reuse in the first step, while the CO2 could be stored in underground reservoirs that once housed oil and gas to be recycled into petrol [see next article I post].

Keith has proven this process with a test tower 6 metres tall and 1.2 metres wide that can capture 19 tonnes of CO2 per square metre annually, using less than 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity per tonne. HIs company expects to spend about US#5 million over the next three years refining the technology and investigating how best to scale it up. The ultimate goal is for fields of towers some 90 metres long and 18 metres tall, scrubbing up to one million tonnes of carbon a year.

Second article

The carbon slayer

Jeffrey Martin's closed loop plan for recycling heat trapping carbon emissions into petrol

Into the category of things that sound too good to be true, add Green Freedom. If the scientists behind this US government funded proposal are correct, we'll be able to continue travelling in petrol powered cars and aircraft indefinitely, in a closed, net zero emissions system that won't contribute to global warming. Green Freedom proposes a netowrk of nuclear power plants that capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and chemically convert it into petrol, all with existing technologies. "We're not taking anything out of the ground, not using fossil fuel to create fuel," explains F. Jeffrey Martin, the nuclear scientist behind the proposal. "The whole thing is carbon-neutral." By that, Martin means that the system releases only as much carbon as it captures. Since mobile sources, such as vehicles and planes, account for half of all carbon emissions, his recycling program, could reduce the strain on the environment and allow sequestration technologies to start cleaning up the atmosphere instead of just slowing the rate at which we damage it.

The catch? Collecting and processing enough CO2 to fuel the US alone would require building 500 new nuclear power plants, each with the ability to produce 2.7 million litres of petrol. Today the US has around 104 nuclear plants, the most recent ones built more than 30 years ago; and they would need to be retrofitted. The key is turning nuclear cooling towers into giant CO2 suckers. Nomrally, the towers inhale air to cool hot water from the reactors. With Green Freedom, they woudl pass the air over a solution of potassium carbonate added to the cooling liquid. "Potassium carbonate is like a vacuum for CO2," Martin explains. To extract the CO2 for recycling, he proposes an energy efficient electrochemical process that produces only hydrogen as a by product.

With additional funds secured from the US government, Green Freedom has plnas to build a demonstration facility at a nuclear power plant set for construction in West Texas. If all goes as planned, the plant will begin producing power and petrol in 2018, serving as a model for all to follow.

Thoughts?

[Malagar]

I can’t help but wonder: Do we even have enough uranium to use this system for any substantial period of time?

[Kyler]

They are developing Thorium nuclear reactors. Which would be a cheaper and more abundant source of nuclear power. This might be the best solution to the problem.

http://www.popsci.com/technology/articl ... five-years

[someone_else]

That's ludicrous. I mean, we take CO2 that is a bitch to crack (an overly energy-intensive process), then build huge numbers of nuclear power plants (expensive and complex) to do what?

Synthetize petrochemicals to burn them in our fucking cars?
That sounds terribly similar to the antimatter manufacturing process. And just as with antimatter, unless you have magic fairies paying for all the equipment you must use and mantain (500 fucking nuclear plants, of unspecified power, completely dedicated to fuel production) the final product is going to be so expensive to be totally out of reach of the common man.

That's more or less the same for hydrogen cars, but adds a few fuel storage problems to the list.

What about cutting the middlemen (fuels) and go with electrical power alone? That electrical supercar from the other thread again

It doesn't sound so outlandish to me since the main problem of electric cars are the batteries, and better batteries would benefit more or less any field that has somehting to do with electronics.

Just for kicks, Nanocarbon stuff and nanoeingineered paper batteries could be something less idiotic to invest money in. Just sayin'

[mr friendly guy]

1. The problem with electric cars is, its going to take a while to build the infrastructure.

2. I don't know how long it will take nanocarbon based batteries to become available. The current lithium ion batteries is facing the problem of lithium shortage if you compete with the electronics industry.

3. You could suck the carbon dioxide out as a stop gap measure. You don't need to convert it into fuel. You are right in the sense that its most probably uses more energy than it realises (thermodynamics and all that jazz), but if you are most probably polluting less as this process is carbon neutral.

4. You don't need to use the converted fuel just yet. Some countries aim to have a strategic reserve in case things turn to shit, eg war. For example the biggest polluter by country, China is supposed to want a 6 month supply for strategic reserve of oil. Assuming things stay geopolitically stable (or at least doesn't break into a war), those 6 months supply of oil has been formed from taking lots of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and isn't being released back into it any time soon.

[someone_else]

1. what infrastructure? Don't we have already power lines? During the night, the power load decreses considerably (today), allowing citizens to connect their car to the power and recharge the batteries.

2. I don't know how long it will take to build 500 nuclear power plants either, but I'm ready to bet that with less than half the cost you can have better batteries.

3. And that means you are doing it just because you are good, thus that's just an added cost that will just be reflected on the electric power cost (the power produced by those nuclear power plants where this co2-sequestation-only system is installed), making it unattractive and requiring government funds to be done on any scale at all.

4. Just buy that oil reserves. It is various orders of magnitude cheaper than building a fuckton of nuclear plants and then use the power to synthetize oil.

[someone_else]

Anyway, I think I can provide more than just negative feedback.

Since carbon dioxide is a gas it is hard to handle in really decent amounts, but thankfully it is part of the carbon cycle, so you can take carbon from another part of the cycle (in a more manageable solid form) and it will work the same.
Where is carbon in a more manageable (solid) form? Living beings. Plants mostly.

So here is my very original idea to reduce CO2: shovel biomass in abandoned mines that are then sealed.

A cursory google search told me plant mass is around 45% carbon (dehidratated plants I suppose ), so for each ton of grass you close in a cave, that's around half a ton of carbon locked away.
Is that hard? No. Does that require advanced tech? No.
That's more or less the same way the carbon was sequestered some million years ago, forming coal and oil as the eons passed, so it isn't even particularly original.

This article contains some info you may be interested in.

[Zaune]

Electric cars need slightly more elaborate recharging arrangements than a simple power socket, at least away from your own garage; the only reasonably fast option is to swap out the entire battery with a fully-charged one. That requires a place to store and charge the (very heavy) batteries and a method of switching them out.

[Sky Captain]

I can’t help but wonder: Do we even have enough uranium to use this system for any substantial period of time?

With advanced fuel cycles there are enough uranium and thorium in the world to provide the worlds energy needs for many thousands of years. Consider that even common rock contains ~10 - 12 ppm thorium and ~2 - 4 ppm uranium. In other words one ton of ordinary granite in its nuclear energy content is equivallent to ~50 tons of coal.

[LaCroix]

Where is carbon in a more manageable (solid) form? Living beings. Plants mostly.

So here is my very original idea to reduce CO2: shovel biomass in abandoned mines that are then sealed.

A cursory google search told me plant mass is around 45% carbon (dehidratated plants I suppose ), so for each ton of grass you close in a cave, that's around half a ton of carbon locked away.

Carbon output by fossile fuels was about 8.67 gigatonnes of carbon in 2008 - This means we would need to put away about 20 gigatonnes of NOT NEEDED organic mass to offset it. (This means not cutting down trees and stuff, we need them to offset CO2 as well. Lawn cuttings are ok...) If we go by the accepted quota of 40% of this not being absorbed this means we could get away with burying only like 8 Gigatonnes of biomass.

If you want to go the easiest (but morally reprehensible) way, you could use grain and corn surpluses. But I wonder how you want to manage putting away that much biomass every year - You can't pump cornstarch back into the oil fields...

[someone_else]

Electric cars need slightly more elaborate recharging arrangements than a simple power socket, at least away from your own garage

not completely true, although they need some time to charge without a high-power connector (6 hours or so).
But it is also true that unless you work at more than 100 miles from your home (round trip 200 miles), then this isn't a so huge problem, since it will recharge while you sleep after you came home.

Although yes, for a longer voyage the lack of "infrastructure" (a high-power line) is felt since you can drive for only 4 hours before your batteries die. And even with "infrastructure" you need a while (4 hours) to recharge fully. Maybe you can cut it to 2 with some tinkering, but without better batteries...
Nanocarbon stuff batteries and paper batteries (linked above) both promise very fast recharge/discharge times.

I wonder how you want to manage putting away that much biomass every year

So, you say 20 gigatonnes of biomass. (of which around half is carbon)
This tells me that the average US citizen produces 726 kg of garbage per year.
Wikipedia tells me there are a little more than 300 million USA citizens. That's 217'800'000'000 kg of rubbish per year in the USA.
That is 217.8 gigatons of trash dumped each year in the US alone.
Now, the amount of biomass that must disappear is around an order of magnitude less (unless I've screwed up someting ), so I can say it is possible to manage such amount of stuff.
And without calling in other nations to aid the effort, no less.
Will cost something for sure, but remains the most cost-effective carbon-sequestrating thing I can think of.

The only problem I can think of is that anaerobic fermentation will severely annoy you since those pests will decay the biomass and produce methane and carbon dioxide, so you must find a way to keep the landfill where you dump this biological stuff as unhospitable to them as possible. Or sealed so that the bacteria choke on their gases and die.
Otherwise dump more biomass to compensate the gas bubbling out every now and then (redirected at power production facilities if methane, left free if carbon dioxide).
If anyone can add some numbers and experience on this, I'd like to listen.

I thought of seabed dumping since down there decay is more or less nonexistent (lack of microbes able to do that due to extreme conditions), but Undersea Operations that's not an area where I know a lot, and while arguably the best option, I doubt it is cheap.

[Steel]

Slight problem with your maths. You equated kg and tons. Only three orders of magnitude out.

Means the US produces 0.2GT of waste a year.

[LaCroix]

And the US is rather high up on the per capita trash production.

Anyway, collection of 20GT organic waste can be done (worldwide effort) if we add animal feces, grass cuttings and straw bales and all other stuff into the equation (I know, much of that is needed somewhere, but I think it can be done - just look at the pig shit lakes).

The bigger problem is, like I said how to put it away. There just isn't enough volume in 'abandoned mines' to do this very long. - I can see huge fires erupting from the heat of decomposition. Compost heaps sometimes catch fire on their own on hot days - As far as I remember, it's rather hot down in the tunnels, and the amount of methane produced by the rotting biomass will be anything but trivial.

Dumping GT of organic stuff into the seas is a Bad Ideatm. There will be a shitload(no pun intended) of problems because of this - you would probably be better off with global warming alone...

And remember, this whole thing must be sealed so that (most) of the carbon stays in there - I 'm afraid it can't be done, technically. In the long term (fuel spent to transport these 20GT to their destination must be added to that mass), you are probably getting off cheaper if you just filter that CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it in pressurized gas tanks/old gas fields/ocean floor/somewhere for safekeeping.

[Broomstick]

2. I don't know how long it will take to build 500 nuclear power plants either, but I'm ready to bet that with less than half the cost you can have better batteries.

Don't fall into the “all-or-nothing” trap. Even if we have less than 500 nuclear power plants we could still scrub some CO2 from the air and turn it into liquid fuels and industrial feedstock.

4. Just buy that oil reserves. It is various orders of magnitude cheaper than building a fuckton of nuclear plants and then use the power to synthetize oil.

Have you looked at the cost of oil lately? Over the long term the price is only going to go up. At some point this scheme make become economically more sensible than attempting to extract ever more rare petroleum deposits.

Not to mention that buying oil doesn't solve the problem of too much CO2 in the atmosphere. The guy proposing this isn't looking to make gasoline, making petrochemicals is just a way of disposing of the collected CO2, and selling them just offsets some of the costs. The primary motivation here is to suck CO2 out of the air, and simply buying petroleum just doesn't do that.

So here is my very original idea to reduce CO2: shovel biomass in abandoned mines that are then sealed.

A cursory google search told me plant mass is around 45% carbon (dehidratated plants I suppose ), so for each ton of grass you close in a cave, that's around half a ton of carbon locked away.
Is that hard? No. Does that require advanced tech? No.

You do realize that that biomass has other important uses? Uses like revitalizing the soil that plants live in. And that we grow crops in. Not to mention the volume of space this would require.

That is, of course, a problem with any of these large scale schemes – the side effects.

Electric cars need slightly more elaborate recharging arrangements than a simple power socket, at least away from your own garage

not completely true, although they need some time to charge without a high-power connector (6 hours or so).
But it is also true that unless you work at more than 100 miles from your home (round trip 200 miles), then this isn't a so huge problem, since it will recharge while you sleep after you came home.

That assumes that ALL you do is go back and forth to work. You do that, plus shopping plus running the kids around after school... People will bump up against that limit all the time, and unlike liquid fueled engines, if they run out of juice on the road you can't just pour another liter in the tank and resume driving.

Or situations like that recently faced by Buffalo's southern suburbs, or near me on Route 30 – people stranded overnight in their cars due to horrible weather. At least when they dug out all those cars if any had run out of gas they could just pour in a couple gallons and get them moving again. Even while stuck, police in the Buffalo area could use snowmobiles to deliver fuel to stranded cars so occupants could run them enough to keep decent heat inside – with an electric car, again, once you're out of energy you're fucked in that situation. You'll need a tow to a charging station. And you'll have to evacuate people in horrible conditions rather than letting them shelter in place.

Although yes, for a longer voyage the lack of "infrastructure" (a high-power line) is felt since you can drive for only 4 hours before your batteries die. And even with "infrastructure" you need a while (4 hours) to recharge fully. Maybe you can cut it to 2 with some tinkering, but without better batteries...

See, I just recently completed a 1032 mile road trip. (That's 1,660 km) It took eleven hours. Let's see, if I have to stop every four hours and if I could located a fast recharging unit that works out to... 20 hours minimum for the trip by my calculations. I'll have to add in the cost of a hotel room to the trip. You see, this is just not convenient. Maybe it wouldn't matter so much if we had trains going everywhere, and the airlines flew to more than just hub cities (I remember the days when airlines where required to maintain routes to underserved areas, but that was decades ago.)

This is aside from such irritations as having pets that can't be left alone but which would be difficult to safely take on an airline, and TSA agents so fucking retarded I can't get my Other Half through airport security. We pretty much have to travel by road these days, and your electric cars just aren't going to cut it. That would mean if we had an electric car we'd either have to own a second, gas powered vehicle or rent whenever we took a trip. Renting is expensive. If you own the vehicle you need to run it regularly because it's bad for an engine/vehicle to sit idle for too long.

I thought of seabed dumping since down there decay is more or less nonexistent (lack of microbes able to do that due to extreme conditions), but Undersea Operations that's not an area where I know a lot, and while arguably the best option, I doubt it is cheap.

Um... apparently you are unaware that the ocean floor is NOT a lifeless Zone of Death but there actually are critters and microbes down there munching away at all the stuff raining down from above – when they are colonizing whale carcases or undersea vents. Yes, the ocean floor is extreme by our standards but compared to some places life thrives it's a pretty tame environment. See any recent pictures of the Titanic? Notice all those "rusticles" hanging off the ship? That's due to bacteria utilizing the iron in the hull. I mean, you have bacteria down there digesting metal ships, clearly there is life down there. I can't help but think dumping our CO2 down there could have unintended consequences which will require yet another complicated fix.

See, this is why it's almost always better NOT to fuck up your environment – it's so much cheaper and less bother when nature takes care of maintaining things.

[someone_else]

Slight problem with your maths. You equated kg and tons. Only three orders of magnitude out.

Ah, to hell my theory then. Thank you for checking.

Dumping GT of organic stuff into the seas is a Bad Ideatm

I said SEABED. Since biomass tends to float... you'll need containers of some kind to make it safely sink and keep it contained while on the seabed. But since I did a noob mistake in math that's a far more complex task than I thought.

Don't fall into the “all-or-nothing” trap.

I just wanted to point out how absurd was the original proposal.

Have you looked at the cost of oil lately? Over the long term the price is only going to go up. At some point this scheme make become economically more sensible than attempting to extract ever more rare petroleum deposits.

Buy it now then. And no, I think we should start getting rid of petrol asap, so I keep my view that researching better batteries is preferable.

The guy proposing this isn't looking to make gasoline, making petrochemicals is just a way of disposing of the collected CO2, and selling them just offsets some of the costs.

Huh, so how he plans to make a profit? milking gov funds? What about something more profitable?
Also, let's remind that if you burn such petrol, the co2 gets back in the atmosphere, so it shouldn't be sold as a fuel.

The primary motivation here is to suck CO2 out of the air, and simply buying petroleum just doesn't do that.

reread the question 4. He talked about reserves of oil if shit hits the fan. The main concern in my answer to it is having a reserve of oil.

and your electric cars just aren't going to cut it.

I thought this particualr point was obvious when I said 4 hours of driving and then wait 4 hours to recharge. The battery recharge time sucks, and you just talked more about the same issue.
Must be a language barrier problem.

But I clearly said "Nanocarbon stuff batteries and paper batteries (linked above) both promise very fast recharge/discharge times."
And by fast I mean "takes the same time of fueling a liquid fuel car". Although the fuel station will need to have heavy-duty power lines to deliver enough juice in so little time. Or a big capacitor that stores enough juice for a few hundred refills like they do with methane and LPG tanks that in the free time recharges itself from more normal power lines (this means you can have a capacitor truck to recharge cars that were blocked by snow too).

[Broomstick]

Dumping GT of organic stuff into the seas is a Bad Ideatm

I said SEABED. Since biomass tends to float... you'll need containers of some kind to make it safely sink and keep it contained while on the seabed. But since I did a noob mistake in math that's a far more complex task than I thought.

There is also the problem of making containers sufficiently strong and durable to withstand the pressure, salt water, and all those odd little critters down there that eat strange things.

Have you looked at the cost of oil lately? Over the long term the price is only going to go up. At some point this scheme make become economically more sensible than attempting to extract ever more rare petroleum deposits.

Buy it now then. And no, I think we should start getting rid of petrol asap, so I keep my view that researching better batteries is preferable.

Oh, I agree, weaning ourselves off such dependence on petroleum is all for the good. Aside from the greenhouse/global climate change problem, I just don't think it's a good idea to base too much of our civilization on one resource if we can avoid it. While technologies such as nuclear, wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal can contribute to our energy needs (though no one of them will serve all needs) there is still the problem of needing a portable energy source for moving vehicles around. Right now, petrochemicals are our most efficient fuel for that purpose. They will be hard to replace, as the obvious alternatives are either less energy dense or difficult to handle or both.

The guy proposing this isn't looking to make gasoline, making petrochemicals is just a way of disposing of the collected CO2, and selling them just offsets some of the costs.

Huh, so how he plans to make a profit? milking gov funds? What about something more profitable?
Also, let's remind that if you burn such petrol, the co2 gets back in the atmosphere, so it shouldn't be sold as a fuel.

The first step is arguably to stop adding to the problem - sucking our fuel out of the atmosphere is a step in that direction, even if we burn it again. THEN we can talk about reducing the overall CO2 load in the air.

And I'm not sure the folks behind such things are thinking of profit in terms of dollars or euros or other currency - more along the lines of the benefit being a stable climate. I realize the concept of spending money to maintain the commons is an odd notion to many of today's most selfish free-market capitalists (and I do not intend to imply you are one) but not everything of value can be distilled into money.

The primary motivation here is to suck CO2 out of the air, and simply buying petroleum just doesn't do that.

reread the question 4. He talked about reserves of oil if shit hits the fan. The main concern in my answer to it is having a reserve of oil.

Well, OK, but if you can make your own oil out of air then it's still harder to have some outside entity cut off your source of petrochemicals. Sure, have a big ol' reservoir - but develop the tech to make your own. That way you're not putting all your eggs in one basket.

The funny thing would be if a nation developed this tech to the point that not only could they serve their own needs, they could make enough to start exporting it at a competitive price. However, I doubt that is feasible at this time, if ever. (Maybe when all the easy oil is extracted from the ground)

But I clearly said "Nanocarbon stuff batteries and paper batteries (linked above) both promise very fast recharge/discharge times."
And by fast I mean "takes the same time of fueling a liquid fuel car". Although the fuel station will need to have heavy-duty power lines to deliver enough juice in so little time. Or a big capacitor that stores enough juice for a few hundred refills like they do with methane and LPG tanks that in the free time recharges itself from more normal power lines (this means you can have a capacitor truck to recharge cars that were blocked by snow too).

Well, hey, I did point out the problems on a practical level - if you can find the means to solve them so much the better. I have no problem with you countering my "stranded in snow" with "recharging capacitor mounted on truck for on-site charging".

Now, is that sort of thing practical? I don't know. Over my lifetime I've seen things declared impossible become commonplace and other things that were "just around the corner" never come to fruition. I have become a bit of a skeptic until something actually hits the market, I'll admit that.

[Ryan Thunder]

Use standardized, easily-changed battery packs. When you stop somewhere, instead of recharging the pack in your car, you trade it in for another one and the station charges the one you just gave them to give to some one else. You just pay them for the electricity.

[Broomstick]

Nope, you're going to have to pay them for the attendant's time and labor in swapping out your battery, plus enough for overhead. Won't be just electricity. But is might work, if you can get people used to the concept AND get the industry onto one standard battery pack.

[someone_else]

There is also the problem of making containers sufficiently strong and durable to withstand the pressure, salt water, and all those odd little critters down there that eat strange things.

Since my math was rather off, this is no more a problem.

there is still the problem of needing a portable energy source for moving vehicles around. Right now, petrochemicals are our most efficient fuel for that purpose. They will be hard to replace, as the obvious alternatives are either less energy dense or difficult to handle or both.

There is also the possibility to replace the way we use to move around, like having efficient pubblic transportation systems (trains and whatever), but that seems to require unrealistically low levels of corruption (at least here).

The first step is arguably to stop adding to the problem - sucking our fuel out of the atmosphere is a step in that direction, even if we burn it again.

And this bring us back to the original 500 nuclear plants of unknown power vs better battery technology. Sure, batteries will just cut car and truck emissions, so that isn't a complete solution, but cars and trucks burn a pretty significant fraction of petrochemicals, around 70%.

And I'm not sure the folks behind such things are thinking of profit in terms of dollars or euros or other currency - more along the lines of the benefit being a stable climate. I realize the concept of spending money to maintain the commons is an odd notion to many of today's most selfish free-market capitalists (and I do not intend to imply you are one) but not everything of value can be distilled into money.

I'm just very disillusioned . I have gigantic doubts anyone will move a tool if there is no profit to be done. So, for me a solution must solve the problem in a way that at least pays for itself to have any remote chance of being implemented. Otherwise it will remain just a dream.

Well, OK, but if you can make your own oil out of air then it's still harder to have some outside entity cut off your source of petrochemicals. Sure, have a big ol' reservoir - but develop the tech to make your own. That way you're not putting all your eggs in one basket.

You will have to build a huge quantity of power plants, that means you then will have huge problems in finding the power plant's fuel (unless you start building huge solar plants in the deserts, that is). And then the enemy can cut off your power plant's fuel.

Now, is that sort of thing practical? I don't know. Over my lifetime I've seen things declared impossible become commonplace and other things that were "just around the corner" never come to fruition. I have become a bit of a skeptic until something actually hits the market, I'll admit that.

Heh, I have no Truth for you. But I'm pretty sure the idea in the articles in the OP is not pratical.
I just threw in my pet theories on electrical cars to make a comparison.

Use standardized, easily-changed battery packs.

Would work, but that requires lots of annoying store management (uhm, I'll keep 100 or one thousand packs? and if too much people get here and I don't have one ready? and if I have too much and i cannot pay them back in a reasonable time?) and standardization. And also battery packs that don't cost like a normal car.
I see that as a major pain in the backside.

[mr friendly guy]

1. what infrastructure? Don't we have already power lines? During the night, the power load decreses considerably (today), allowing citizens to connect their car to the power and recharge the batteries.

I was thinking of the electrical equivalent of the petrol station for you to recharge. Britain has a few, but I am pretty sure most countries don't even have that. Sure you can recharge at home, but what happens if you aren't at home or are visiting another city?

2. I don't know how long it will take to build 500 nuclear power plants either, but I'm ready to bet that with less than half the cost you can have better batteries.

We will need nuclear plants anyway to offset pollution from coal. May as well let them do something else. And as for better batteries, could be happening. In fact I want it to happen. The thing is, what these people are proposing is supposed to work with existing technology.

3. And that means you are doing it just because you are good, thus that's just an added cost that will just be reflected on the electric power cost (the power produced by those nuclear power plants where this co2-sequestation-only system is installed), making it unattractive and requiring government funds to be done on any scale at all.

Thats why we try and offset by selling the petrol produced. Geopolitically it also has some benefit, which one could argue its worth paying for. These benefits are 1) good PR and 2) less reliant on Middle Eastern oil.

4. Just buy that oil reserves. It is various orders of magnitude cheaper than building a fuckton of nuclear plants and then use the power to synthetize oil.

The aim of this is not so much to produce oil, but to take out carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Selling the oil to someone wanting x months of oil reserve just helps offset the costs, plus will be carbon negative in the near future.

[Broomstick]

there is still the problem of needing a portable energy source for moving vehicles around. Right now, petrochemicals are our most efficient fuel for that purpose. They will be hard to replace, as the obvious alternatives are either less energy dense or difficult to handle or both.

There is also the possibility to replace the way we use to move around, like having efficient pubblic transportation systems (trains and whatever), but that seems to require unrealistically low levels of corruption (at least here).

I am not only an advocate of mass transit, I used it to travel to and from work for over a quarter century. For most of those years I also used it for nearly everything else - shopping, visiting friends, whatever. I've not only taken airplanes to other cities, I've ridden Amtrak. I'd happily use public transportation. One BIG problem with the "convert everyone to mass transit" ideas - mass transit will never serve all needs. It certainly hasn't for me, and I prefer taking a bus or train to driving myself around. You need a minimum population density, to start. There will always be a need for stand-alone vehicles for various purposes. And so forth.

Not to mention another problem I never anticipated 10 years ago - the country has gone security crazy. This adds yet another barrier to mass transit. You get crazy-ass situations where things like poorly written regulations wind up as a de facto ban on entire categories of people using certain transportation modes even if as individuals they are no risk. The example in my life is that because of asshats writing security regulations for the TSA it is now impossible for my Other Half to board an airplane - they want the operating surgeon to document his implants, which would be fine except the surgeon has been dead for over 20 years and the TSA will, apparently, accept no substitutes. So until sanity strikes (ha!) my Other Half is essentially banned from commercial air travel in the USA. If he wants to go to, say, Europe we'll heave to drive to Canada to catch an airplane.

And that's an example of how reality can be even more hair-brained than the schemes of futurists and transhumanists.... and how factors other than infrastructure, hardware, and energy supply can complicate otherwise straightforward plans.

Well, OK, but if you can make your own oil out of air then it's still harder to have some outside entity cut off your source of petrochemicals. Sure, have a big ol' reservoir - but develop the tech to make your own. That way you're not putting all your eggs in one basket.

You will have to build a huge quantity of power plants, that means you then will have huge problems in finding the power plant's fuel (unless you start building huge solar plants in the deserts, that is). And then the enemy can cut off your power plant's fuel.

How about hydroelectic power? Don't forget there are ways to generate power outside of coal/petroleum and nuclear.

Remember, you don't need 500 actual nuclear plants, just the equivalent of 500 nuclear plants. If you can manage to achieve a significant percentage of that through other means (solar, geothermal, hydroelectic, whatever) then that's fewer nuclear plants you have to build.

[Zaune]

Use standardized, easily-changed battery packs. When you stop somewhere, instead of recharging the pack in your car, you trade it in for another one and the station charges the one you just gave them to give to some one else. You just pay them for the electricity.

There's moves afoot to do that very thing, apparently; a firm based in Texas of all places, whose name escapes me, are working on a battery-leasing model that would work a bit like the way Calor supply propane and butane, where you own the contents of the container but not the container itself.
Though I hope they come up with something better than the automated system I have vague recollections of seeing illustrated in a newspaper article a while back, which suggested that the batteries would be switched out through the bottom of the chassis via a complicated arrangement of hydraulic platforms and conveyor belts.

[LaCroix]

We're talking about battery packs in the weight range of several hundred pounds, and bulky, true. It's a bit like you were switching motors, but nowhere as complicated as that, and certainly no need for conveyor belts and stuff.

It could be as simple as lifting the car, fork-lifting the battery out, putting it into a rack while another forklift moves the loaded battery to the car. You just select one of those with the charge indicator at green...

Basically, it's like when everybody is changing tires at the start of a season. While this can be done somewhat quickly, storage (while reloading) is a bitch for such bulky stuff.

Quick math - a gas station serves a few dozens of cars per hour minimum, some serve hundreds.

Also, with dozens of batteries loading at the same time - because you can switch them much faster than loading a battery, obviously - the power needed per station would be much higher than in comparison to x number of cars hooked up to the net at any point. (If you can load the pack in twenty minutes, but change in one, you would have 20 packs loading per switch station.)

So there would be a storage shed needed where a high number of batteries is hooked up, and the mother of all cables running there, while it sucks hundreds of KW out of the net (probably 24/7, with a bit less consumption during nights).

Would mean that power lines need to be seriously upgraded if you were to have a net of such stations. That's pretty serious construction work.

[Ryan Thunder]

I was actually thinking that you could use multiple smaller batteries instead of one big heavy one. Yeah, it'd increase overall mass, but it'd make it easier to change, I figure. It'd also mean you could chose to get half a tank, so to speak, instead of all or nothing. The cost would be more frequent stops.

[someone_else]

We will need nuclear plants anyway to offset pollution from coal. May as well let them do something else.

The way I understood it is that those 500 power plants's power output was required to "make the oil out of air", to cut it short.

That may help since you are now mass-producing the power plant components (if anyone is smart enough to do it), but their output is all blocked in oil-production.

Thats why we try and offset by selling the petrol produced. Geopolitically it also has some benefit, which one could argue its worth paying for. These benefits are 1) good PR and 2) less reliant on Middle Eastern oil.

As I said, natural petrol will be pretty cheap in comparison, since you have to pay off the nuclear plants that aren't particularly cheap to build.
But the (usual) mantra "less reliant on Middle Eastern oil" as you said, may help convincing the government to pay them (throwing away money) for you and having to offset only the working costs (much lower).

How about hydroelectic power? Don't forget there are ways to generate power outside of coal/petroleum and nuclear.

Hydroelectric? The classical ones based on rivers tend to have the same problems of nuclear plants (very costly, long to build, bad environmental impact, cannot be built everywhere), but hydroelectric based on ocean currents/tides/waves should have some more chances. And I've always been partial to solar thermal .

Remember, you don't need 500 actual nuclear plants, just the equivalent of 500 nuclear plants.

Which is like saying we need 500 apples. Without knowing how much power each generates, we cannot have the slightest idea if this is feasible or fucking stupid.
The fact they don't tell the power figure (they just say that each of these plants will produce 2.7 million liters of petrol), make me wonder if they actually figured how stupid it is on their own and decided to shut up for the wellness of their experimental project.
Shuttle went like that, if they hadn't lied on the costs to make it look cheaper than continuing with Apollo, congress wouldn't have approved the project.
Ended up more costly than firing off a few saturns per year.

Would mean that power lines need to be seriously upgraded if you were to have a net of such stations. That's pretty serious construction work.

Well, consider that if you have good car batteries, you can also have a BIG battery (like the gasoline undergound tank nowadays), that can be big as a freight container or even more since there is no need to move it, and use that to recharge the cars. The Big Battery will be always under charge from normal power lines, and if its level goes down too much, the guys can call in a battery truck (instead of a gasoline truck) from another station.
If power is cheap enough, moving trucks around remains cheaper than building better power lines.