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Ask HN: Brainstorm Uses of Outputs from Carbon Recapture

1 points by gamerDude ↗ HN
There are a few technologies now that remove carbon from the atmosphere/power plants and repurpose it into other materials.

However, not all of those outputs generate any income for the companies. So, right now many of these technologies are just used for doing the right thing. But in a capitalist society, solutions that make profits are more likely to get funded, scale and succeed in the long run. So, I've been thinking about what markets could be made for the companies recapturing carbon to then be sold into to make them more profitable and more interesting to investors.

Currently I've found that there are 4 things that carbon recapture companies output.

1. Turning the CO2 into stone. https://www.carbfix.com/ 2. Capturing CO2 and leaving it as CO2 gas. https://co2solutions.com/en/ 3. Turning into a Carbonate Salt and then later into Carbon Gas. https://carbonengineering.com/ 4. Planting Trees and producing wood.

So, what could we make from this repurposed CO2? Given that trees turn C02 into wood, are there any other materials that CO2 recapture could produce?

4 comments

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gamerDude
My first thought is using that CO2 stone for something like countertops instead of granite. The price is quite high per square foot, so it could be quite profitable to produce stone!
PaulHoule
Captured CO2 can be fed through the Fischer-Tropsch process together with hydrogen and built up into hydrocarbons to make jet fuel.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90682603/this-startup-is-using-s...

With similar methods you could make plastic out of captured co2.

7thaccount
Yep. I think carbon capture machines and any technologies that are downstream would essentially run all out when energy is plentiful and super cheap, and shut off when wind/solar drop off.

For the past century, supply matches the demand. In the near future, demand will match the supply (more or less based off of economics).

PaulHoule
Hard to say.

The Fischer-Tropsch process for making fuels was the last refuge of the desperate in the 20th century. (Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa)

The main trouble is that making medium-chain length hydrocarbons requires balancing on a knife edge between reactions that want to break them down to methane or build them up to polyethylene. Avoiding the first requires running at low temperatures, the second can proceed so vigorously it can blow up the container.

The result is a big machine that produces a small amount of product slowly. To justify the capital cost you really want to run it 24-7.