Cadillac Chat 2015-11-12

[Bruce Nunnally]

Event link:

https://plus.google.com/events/ckb3abnvekncerrgfsmaq0chr60

Video:

[Bruce Nunnally]

Jump-in Link:

https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/hoaevent/AP36tYd8DfaYgsZigfIRzMIQkp9kaY24IUQZxE5DsClzVoNkrhtX7Q?hl=en-US&authuser=0

[Bruce Nunnally]

Topics:

Cadillac XT5 http://www.cadillac.com/future-vehicles/xt5-crossover.html

XT3, XT7?

MT & Johan de Nysschen talk Cadillac: http://www.motortrend.com/news/cadillac-johan-de-nysschen-talks-halo-cars-diesel-vs-hybrid/

[Bruce Nunnally]

Next week ideas:

High Performance Tires

TPMS systems and life

[Bruce Nunnally]

Capturing CO2 from the air: https://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/proceedings/01/carbon_seq/7b1.pdf

[Cadillac Jim]

The paper on C02 capture or reduction is almost all generalities, of the form "it would be nice to..." and "would be economically feasible..." with no specifics, short of suggesting a slurry of calcium hydroxide to capture C02 instead of just water, as I mentioned in our telecon. That would require an input of calcium hydroxide (or other active alkali metal hydroxide) to form carbonates, and we would be left with the carbonates to process.

Calcium carbonate is less than lucrative as an industrial source material. The fact that chalk is fairly pure calcium carbonate makes that point. But suppose that we have a closed industrial process that processes calcium carbonate and produces hydrdocarbons and calcium hydroxide from energy and water or water vapor, i.e. sort of a reverse combustion, and the calcium hydroxide then goes back into carbon scrubbers.

To save time, I'll ask *you* to look at the numbers, but you can start with the fact that gasoline is about 85% carbon by weight. This means that about 85% of the weight of a tank of gas would go into 12% of the calcium carbonate produced by capturing *all* of the carbon burnt in that tank of gas, which means that the calcium carbonate will weigh about seven times as much as the gasoline burnt to produce the carbon. Gasoline weights about six pounds per gallon.

If you look at the collection process as "like a windmill" as mentioned in the article, the numbers to start with are that air weighs about 28.8 grams per 22.4 liters of volume at 1 atmosphere pressure and 68 F temperature (the definitions of molecular weight and a mole give us this), and carbon dioxide is .0365% of air by volume. The article says that a cubic meter of air contains about 40 moles of air, or 0.0146 moles of CO2, or 0.6424 grams. So if you capture a square meter of air at 62 mph or 100 km/hr, this is 100,000 cubic meters of air with its 64.24 kg of C02 per hour.

The cost of energy, if about two orders of magnitude lower than it is now, might be able to support a plant located anywhere that processes CO2 and water vapor from the air by whatever process and produces impurity-free, low-polluting hydrocarbons for fuel and lubricants and oxygen. But current methods would burn hydrocarbons to produce the energy (effectively reversing the process), or use atomic power at a slightly lower price. I don't have numbers here but if this were profitable then people would be jumping on it. But I think it awaits the second or third generation of fusion power to get the cost of energy that low.

[KHE]

One volcano eruption releases enough CO2 that negates four years of any conservation in emmissions efforts.

[Cadillac Jim]

Yes, it's true that the politics of global warming have obscured the science for many years. But putting aside that for awhile, we can look at the idea of recycling CO2 as a possibility for something that could make a little money, and perhaps sell some cars.

For many years, I've felt that co-locating a plant, that extracts CO2 and water from the air and produces hydrocarbon and oxygen, with a power plant that produces energy a lot cheaper than current atomic power plants, could produce gas and oil and turn much of the auto industry into a carbon-neutral cycle, and the synthetic gas and oil would be better for engines and produce no sulfur and other non-hydrocarbon stuff that is found in natural gas and oil. My long post above took advantage of Bruce's question to edge over to that, which is my pet rock. The cheap energy is still decades away. The first fusion power plants are not likely to be much cheaper than current atomic power, and achieving price potential in fusion power will likely require a second or even third generation of power plant technology. But the thinking in the paper may be an artifact of people thinking about the potentials of game-changing drops in energy costs.

Another, simpler, feasible thing that could be done now is the use of carbon dioxide from coal plant stack scrubbers in algae farms. In an algae farm, the energy is sunlight on the algae, i.e. just nature as it exists now. Other new sources of dissolved CO2 could be generated from condensed water from large A/C systems in buildings, which currently just return CO2 absorbed with the condensed water to the atmosphere by simply dumping the condensation. The algae farms could be used as a source of methane, fertilizers, or other industrial raw materials.

But I don't see personal cars as being big enough to carry out significant CO2 capture. Even large trucks and buses would be hard put to do much unless the CO2 capture system was serviced every refueling interval because of the size and weight of the equipment and the carbon, whether it be dissolved in something or in a carbonate like calcium carbonate.