Dear Macho,

I had a read on a related topic a couple of months ago when doing research about carbon capture and storage (CCS) and alternate techniques for CO2 sequestration. Currently I don't have the full text but if you have access to journal databases, you will surely find it.

Here's the title and authors:

"Development of suitable photobioreactors for CO2 sequestration addressing global warming using green algae and cyanobacteria"

Author: Lindblad, Peter

Journal: Bioresource technology

ISSN: 0960-8524

Date: 2011

Volume: 102 Issue: 8 Page: 4945

From my personal perspective, bio-based solutions for CO2 sequestration are the strongest ones nowadays (reforestation, micro-organisms, algae, etc) versus other alternatives such as CCS, which by the way, it hasn't been completely proven to work and to be feasible at a macro-scale.

Hope this info helps. Cheers!

Dear Macho,

in terms of terrestrial ecosystems based carbon sequestration, I suggest that you read the most recent IPCC AR5 WGIII report (ch. 11 AFOLU; you can find it on my publication list). There you will see that combined, biologically based solutions, of which reforestation is an important albeit not the most significant part, can contribute some 2-10 GtCO2eq/yr. Compare that to the some 50 Gton CO2eq/yr emitted annually today, and you will see this will not solve the problem of increasing atmospheric CO2. In my view, the best way to go about the problem is to reduce emissions at the source, not try to sequester the unwanted CO2 'after the facts.''

Best Regards,

Francesco

Macho,

Regards natural means (living) for carbon capture and storage (CCS) or techniques for CO2 sequestration, we have an abundance of methods available. Virtually every plant on the planet makes use of CO2 and sequesters carbon in the form of cellulose, carbohydrates, and/or sugars. Processes that we can encourage or adopt that use these materials constructively without putting their carbon back into the carbon cycle - like building with hemp-crete, using hemp hurd mixed with a form of portland cement, which is lighter and stronger than concrete and constitutes permanent carbon sequestration - make good sense.

The problem with any living solution is that no matter how you harness it the process takes a required amount of space and a required amount of time. Generally, the space is large and the time is long (by comparison to human production rates for CO2) Francesco is right - cessation of excessive CO2 production is the primary function available to us. I emphasize cessation because there is no reduction that is enough to solve our current problems short of cessation. The rest of the planetary ecosystem is already working overtime to balance out what we are doing, but it will take a long time for that to happen, and meanwhile the focus needs to be "stop putting carbon into the atmosphere!".

Anything we can do to augment and improve that planetary ecosystem is also vital. Tropical reforestation, aggressive handling of wildfires, stop removing hydrocarbons from the ground - all of these and more will help.

Regards

John

Dear Macho,

The best simple answer is to tax fossil carbon emissions with off-setting tax cuts to make it income neutral so the market prices emissions higher proportional to their intensity and advantages carbon negative technologies proportional to their benefits.  It would even create domestic jobs with less imports as a side benefit.  Most current poliices are counterproductive, like paying small tree farmers not to harvest promoting more use of fossil intensive products rather than using wood products which have a hgh leverage in dispalcing fossil intensive products.  We subsidize ethanol which steals food off your table and the feedstock from engineered wood products that are far better at displacing fossil intensive products.  We rquire minimum renewable fuel standards that in theory will bid the feedstock awary from any other user yet it is one of the lowest leverage ways to displace carbon emissions.  The problem isn't with science it is with polices that are shown by science to be counterproductive that are ignored.  There may be other emissions that also need a tax but carbon is high on the list. With costs proportional to emssions there would be all sorts of innovations to reduce them. And it would not take thousands of regulators to write the rules that are not working.  

Probably not the answer you were expecting bet there is plenty of science to support it.  I attach a fact sheet detailing the carbon negative impacts by using wood which is in surplus without even planting more trees.

Bruce

Dear Macho, 

I just recently read on the news that a Dutch researcher published a paper on using the mineral "olivine" for CO2 mineralisation, as well as estimating that the amount of olivine available on the surface of the earth exceeds the needs to neutralise existing atmospheric CO2. I haven't found the paper or had undertaken formal research on the topic yet, but if you are doing it, it would be a good idea to look for this new technique.

Julio

Marcho & Julio,

That would be http://www.innovationconcepts.eu/res/literatuurSchuiling/olivineagainstclimatechange23.pdf , and http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/01/carbon_seq/6c1.pdf , and http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/01/minecarb/oconnor.pdf to get you started (among others). Unfortunately that process has the same problems that I mentioned other natural processes as having - takes a lot of space and extended time. In essence it's like using a doser to clean up acid mine drainage in a stream... except several orders of magnitude bigger. That has some practical problems of implementation folks. The first paper suggests distributing the materials around the planet in likely locations, which would be vastly more expensive than processing the CO2 stream in locations that are near the olivine or serpentine sources, which in turn has it's own issues.

Dear John,

Thank you for the links provided. It's still somehow exciting to see this new advances in CO2 sequestration/mineralisation, looks like a new field is opening with many opportunities. I will have a read and let you know my comments.  Regards.

Julio