Sucking Up CO2 In The Desert

April 4th, 2013 by Dr. Karl-Friedrich Lenz

Reposted from Lenz Blog:

Image Credit: Solar panel, wind turbine & globe via Shutterstock

Paul Gipe just posted an article looking back at his three decades of renewable advocacy titled “100 Percent Renewable Vision Building.”

In that article Gipe describes how reality has performed much better than what was expected decades ago. And now we are discussing 100 percent renewable.

That is a great article, and I recommend reading it.

But it also gave me a new idea.

One of the problems with building large scale renewable energy projects in the desert is that you need long power lines connecting the desert sites to the World’s cities. Those need time and cost money.

So I have been looking for alternatives before, and I have come up with some, like transporting quicklime or making silicon.

Another one would be to use the energy right in the desert to suck up CO2 from the atmosphere. It can be done already with present technology, and interest in doing that will increase a lot over the coming decades, once the damages from global warming become even higher than the $1.2 TRILLION a year right now.

I’m bringing this up because to get 100% renewable energy with intermittent sources, you need much more than 100% of peak capacity installed. Which leads to lots of time slots where you get much more than 100% of demand. One way to use the excess energy is extracting CO2 from the atmosphere. And the nice thing about that is that it doesn’t matter where you do the extracting. Any desert site will do.

Obviously, there needs to be a steady income stream from CO2 cleanup, and it needs to cover the costs. That is a problem that would have to be solved one way or another.

But the point of this post is just to note this idea for further reference later on. It is one more way of using energy right in the desert without a grid in place.

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Tags: 100% renewable energy, 100% renewables, carbon capture, carbon capture and storage, CO2 capture, co2 sequestration, desert solar

About the Author

Dr. Karl-Friedrich Lenz is a professor of German and European Law at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, blogging since 2003 at Lenz Blog. A free PDF file of his global warming science fiction novel "Great News" is available here.

http://www.facebook.com/anumakonda.jagadeesh Anumakonda Jagadeesh

There are alternatives to sck Carbon Dioxide in deserts Mr.Paul Gipe. There are CAM Plants.

As the CO2 content of the air progressively declined
millions of years ago, certain plants evolved specialized biochemical pathways and anatomical adaptations that enabled them to increase their intracellular CO2 concentration at the site of its fixation, which
allowed the primary carboxylating enzyme rubisco to function more efficiently. The CO2 concentrating mechanism possessed by these CAM plants operates by sequentially reducing CO2 into carbohydrates at two different times of day. The initial reduction of CO2 into a four-carbon sugar is done at night – when CAM plant stomata are open – by the enzyme PEP-carboxylase. Then, during the day when CAM plant stomata are closed, the four-carbon sugar is decarboxylated, increasing the plant’s intercellular CO2 concentration, and the resulting CO2 is subsequently reduced back into a carbohydrate, but this time by rubisco.

Please see:

https://www.khanacademy.org/science/biology/photosynthesis/v/cam-plants

Among CAM plants, species of Agave have started to attract increasing attention as energy crops .Agave is a succulent genus within the monocot family Agavaceae. The plants have a large rosette of thick fleshy leaves, each ending generally in a sharp point, and are indigenous to both arid and semi-arid regions from the southern USA to northern South America.The genus Agave traditionally includes about 166 species;
however, the genus is paraphyletic to the genera Manfreda, Polianthes, and Prochnyanthes. The entire clade of 208 species has been termed Agave sensu lato .The most important commercial species are Agave tequilana grown for production of tequila; Agave angustifolia, Agave salmiana, Agave americana, and several other species that are grown commercially in Mexico for the production of mescal (a distilled beverage similar to tequila); Agave sisalana that has been cultivated in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, many Pacific islands, Australia,
and parts of Africa for fiber production; and Agave fourcroydes and Agave lechuguilla which are the species of choice for fiber production in Mexico. The saponins tigogenin and hecogenin are extracted from the waste residues of A. sisalana and A.americana fibers and are important raw materials in the synthesis of steroid hormone.

The genus Agave is important for the consideration of these species as biomass feedstocks. Some Agave species have a real potential to be bioenergy crops.Water-Use Efficiency and Crassulacean Acid Metabolism About 7% of all plant species possess CAM many of which represent the predominant plant biomass in arid,semi-arid, or marginal regions of the world. Normally, a CAM plant has approximately 33% of the water requirement of a C4 plant and approximately 16% of the water requirement of a C3 plant to produce the same amount of biomass.

Thanks to CAM, several cultivated species of Agave can reach good productivities in areas where rainfall is insufficient for the cultivation of many C3 and C4 crops. For example, the productivity of A. salmiana under only 32 cm of annual rainfall
was 10 Mg ha−1 year−1. CAM permits the net uptake of CO2 at night end,
thereby dramatically improving water-use efficiency for carbon assimilation in plants growing in arid habitats.Stomata (the microscopic pores in leaves) open to allow CO2 to enter to carry out photosynthesis. This opening leads to the loss of water vapor (transpiration). C3 and C4 plants open their stomata during the day when the temperatures are higher, the sun is brighter, and the loss of water by transpiration is high. The key feature of the CAM photosynthetic pathway used by agaves is the opening of stomata and CO2 uptake during the night, thus allowing less water to be lost by transpiration.During the daytime, CAM plants tend to close their stomata, so any CO2 fixed during this period
must come from within the plants.

Agave Uses and Potential By-products

Alcoholic beverages, sweeteners, fibers, and some speciality chemicals are currently the main products coming from agave plants.

Beverages

Among the most common products of agave are alcoholic beverages, tequila (from A.tequilana) and mescal (mainly from A. angustifolia) .Another product is the nectar or syrup, consisting of non-structural carbohydrates and used as a sweetener. Recently, this has appeared internationally in chain grocery stores .

Fibers

These are the vascular bundles that carry water from the soil. They have been used for bindings, nets, sacks,twines, and ropes, etc. The preferred species for fiber production have been A. lechuguilla, A. fourcroydes, and A. sisalana. The agave fiber industry once consumed
over 1million ha of land, but this has now been reduced by about 90% due to the growth of the synthetic fiber industry.

Chemicals

The steroidal saponins tigogenin and hecogenin, extracted from the waste residues after production of sisal fibers from A. sisalana and A. americana, are important raw materials in the synthesis of steroid hormones. They are used as starting materials in the production of corticosteroids (cortisone, cortisol, prednisolone, prednisone,
dexamethasone, betamethasone, triamcinolone, etc.). They have cholesterol-lowering, anti-tumor, and anti-inflammation activities .Other
saponins identified within the Agave genus include manogenin, yucagenin,agavogenin, sarsasapogenin, texogenin, esmilagenin, gitogenin, clorogenin,diosgenin, gentogenin, and ruizgenin. A. lechuguilla leaves contain between 1% and 2% of the dry matter as steroidal saponins.These could serve as valuable products from Agave species cultivated primarily as bio energy crops.

In Kenya and Lesotho people cut Agave into pieces dry them and mix them in concrete. Also Agave can be a potential input for biogas production.

In the waste lands Agave and Opuntia can be grown extensively as both are care-free growth plants and can be potential input for biofuel and biogas and subsequent power generation.

Reference:

Potential of Plants from the Genus Agave as Bioenergy Crops, Luis Lauro
Escamilla-Treviño, Bioenerg Res. DOI 10.1007/s12155-011-9159-x.

Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India

E-mail: Anumakonda.jagadeesh@gmail.com
blue green

The idea that everything must be done for a financial profit is what is destroying this planet. We need to do what is right and necessary whether some CEO makes millions doing it or not. The fossil fuel companies should be made to use their billions and billions of dollars in profit to clean up the devastating and immoral mess they have made of our home.
- mk1313
  
  Agree fossil fuel companies should pay but it’s a bit unrealistic to expect that to happen. Profits, no but pay the expense, yes.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  Are you willing to work for no pay? (I’m assuming you aren’t a trustafarian and need some income to eat.)
Georg

Although it harms – the CO2 is in the general atmosphere allways a trace gas with below 4%.
To suck it there requests so much effort that it becomes very inefficient.
The success does not come and the investition is useless.
It is much more better to suck the CO2 at the concentrated sources – by sequestering it.
Once separated, it can be easily converted to liquid fuel – e.g. Methanol.
Note : you need only about 50 kg H2 for converting 1,000 kg CO2 into Methanol.
Normally we would transport the smaller mass towards the larger. But the Transport of H2 is a sophisticated and expensive matter. As soon as there are better ways to store/transport H2 it would be beneficially to bring the H2 to the CO2 Sources – and the greater part of water splitting – the O2 also.
Then the CO2-sources can be fed with O2 instead of normal air – (so much Nitrogen ~ 80%).
Then it is very easy to separate the CO2 because it is no more mixed with N.
So we have a double effectiveness. The industry may be more willingly to cut the CO2 if it is much less expensive.
Note: from burning of 100 tons coal is output of CO2 more than 300 tons ( ! – not m³ – ! ). A middle coal powerplant uses 300t per day and blow out so about 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide!!! This I call “concentrated source”.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  There’s a little problem with your “concentrated source”.
  
  Burning fossil fuels is going to change the climate into something which we will not find enjoyable.
  - Ronald Brakels
    
    A concentrated souce wouldn’t have to involve fossil fuels. But the lowest cost methods of removing carbon from the atmosphere currently involve growing plants which makes use of diffuse CO2. There may not be a more cost effective method for the foreseeable future.
    - Otis11
      
      Well, you can use methane capture at Waste Disposal Sites, Water Treatment Plants and even medium-to-large sized farms/ranches to capture a very significant amount of methane. You then use this methane to run generators during time of strong demand but weak supply and run that exhaust through a carbon capture system. Voila – carbon negative, concentrated carbon source that might actually be profitable if policies are established properly…
James Wimberley

Where would the extracted CO2 go? Turning it into hydrocarbon fuel – gas of liquids – is feasible and , but what this does is replace CO2-adding fossil fuel with a sustainable alternative. Worth doing, but not the CO2 extraction Lenz is aiming for. For that, you need burial: reinjection in depleted oilfields or something. This cant’s be done everywhere that has wind or sun such as the entire Sahara desert )
- http://twitter.com/Kf_Lenz Karl-Friedrich Lenz
  
  I think it would be an excellent idea to convert CO2 to synthetic fuel, as you propose. Any country starting that would be the first real “oil producing” country. Note that there is no need to burn it immediately; one could use it as raw material in the petrochemical industry or stockpile it for a rainy day without wind (energy storage), or just bury it.
  
  This would make sense economically immediately if there was a regulation requiring at least X percent of oil to be actually produced, with X starting out at a low number. Portfolio standard for oil.
  - Otis11
    
    Or more simply, we could just establish a carbon tax that taxed pulling it out of the ground. If you establish that rate correctly, and do not tax produced fuels with the carbon tax (as they are technically neutral), that market will develop on it’s own.
    
    The US Navy has demonstrated that they can produce diesel fuel from sea water and electricity at a cost of between $6-10/gallon (projected) depending on the scale. The problem is, the only place this price exists is in Europe, and they tax the fuel, not the crude oil, so even this new “sustainable” fuel would be taxed.
    
    The other thing to note – taking carbon dioxide out of the air is incredibly hard and fairly inefficient. It is much easier to extract carbon dioxide from ocean water where it is ~25x more concentrated. Plus, we already have refineries with much of the necessary equipment (oil refining equipment actually makes a fair substitute for true CO2 sequestering equipment to my understanding – but I’m not well versed on this point). While you fixed this to a degree with the quicklime argument – that falls apart a bit. Since limestone is so abundant, much of it is mined at the site of cement production. While these solar kilns would decrease CO2 from the quicklime production, they would add a new source of CO2 – quicklime transportation. While probably not as much as production, it would still negate much of your desired effect and make cement significantly more expensive to produce. Would be better to simply tax carbon.