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Void

Member

Registered: 2011-12-29

Posts: 7,831

A Carbon Capture method which may generate power. Mericulture too.

I ran into this today, and it set my mind spinning.
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-rivers-ca … years.html
Quote:

Rivers help lock carbon from fires into oceans for thousands of years

First however before I go there, I will say I have adopted some of Dr. Robert Zubrins thinking.
He does not like Anti-Humanism, which I suppose indicates that he prefers Humanism.

I can conditionally agree.  However I am not an atheist.  I am also not saying that he is.  That is beside the point.

There are people of the Mouth and Ear.  Many of them are Anti-Humanists.  They seek to use words to enslave the populations with their words.  They often victimize the Hand and Eye people as well.

But their uses can also be good.  Religion and schooling can be good.  The internet can be good, but you may notice that just now I am using my hands and eyes.  These things can "Program" people for good.  There is not enough time in a human life for an individual as an island to experimentally discover everything about reality.  Plus many such experiments would harm the individual.

Dr. Zubrin seems to say that he believes resources are created from materials.

The above setup is so that I can warn you that many of the Anti-Humanists, will not like the resources that I will talk about.  Well so what they live off of us as if we were their food.

So, here it is:
I have been thinking about a situation where a basin at the bottom of the ocean could be filled with brine.  The hope is that in certain places, the brine would largely stay put, provided strong ocean currents were not abutting it.

The Black sea is somewhat like that.  An oxygenated surface water layer, and below that an anoxic deeps of water.  This I believe is because the lower layer is saltier.  So, for the black sea you might try to sequester organic matter, and so sequester Carbon.  There is little to no Oxygen in the lower waters, it might stay put for a while.  Human waste might be an item that could be put there.

But I am really interested in something more advanced, in my opinion.

Most people live on the coasts of oceans, and if they are alive, they poop.  They also generate some organic matter which may end up in a land fill.  But I really don't want to dump these organic materials into a brine pool at the bottom of the ocean, so.....
Pyrolysis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis
Solar driven Pyrolysis actually.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power
Perhaps a solar power tower.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_tower

It would be a lot of trouble to pump feces and organic waste to the top.  I don't think it would work well at all.
But you could circulate a gas without Oxygen through it and then use that hot air to induce pyrolysis on organic waste, to generate two things.
1) A burnable gas from which you might generate power.  The hope is to extract the Hydrogen bearing molecules, and to not extract the Carbon.
2) Carbon as in the first posting in this post, to simulate a forest fire, to generate Carbon to sequester.

Many places already desalinate sea water, and it is likely that more of it will be done in the future, so a heavier than sea water brine is already generated, and disposed of into the oceans.

This should flow like a river to lower places by gravitation.
The Carbon generated could be ground into a powder, perhaps, and included into those flows.

One of my concerns with this is that nutrients might be lost.  But during the flowing at least some of the soluble nutrients should leach out.

I will also make the point that the Carbon dumped into the oceans would be sterile, so as to cut off any flow of pathogens, into the oceans.

Here is that article again:
https://phys.org/news/2020-06-rivers-ca … years.html
Quote:

Rivers help lock carbon from fires into oceans for thousands of years

Thousands of years....

But I intend that the basin that it eventually ends in will be anoxic.  It is already hard for microbes to digest the Carbon, depriving them of Oxygen may help make the Carbon stay put.

I also hope to generate hydro-electric power from the flow of this briny slurry containing finely ground Carbon.  The best location might be the continental shelfs.

Granted, not an easy place to work, but oil rigs go deep and so some of the technology exists already.  Plus we are "Space Age", we could try for this as well.

I suppose at the continental shelf, I would want tubes that go all the way down.  Problem could be that they might plug up if the slurry isn't exercised with a turbulent flow.  So that would need solving.

The slurry would be heavier than sea water due to the extra salt and the powder of Carbon.  The drop off would be very deep in some cases.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_shelf

It might not be imposable to use under water dams, but then some Carbon would likely settle out.  So, that might not work so well.

Perhaps a river of the slurry would flow down the slope of the impoundment, and the flow would be released from the bottom of the dam.

That might help.

And so the flow would eventually collect into an undersea basin, with the intention of sequestering the Carbon in a basin filled with brine.

And this would disrupt that environment.  Most likely the creatures that formerly lived there would not continue to do so.  It would become at most, a microbial ecology.

However, if we are to believe the global warming notion, many ecologies will be disrupted by that global warming.  So, it would be a trade off.  Triage if you like.  I suppose before doing such a thing you might want to evaluate how unique the creatures are in that basin.  If they also exist in other basins, then I would be more inclined to do it.

Another thing is that by getting power from this process, less of other types of ecology disrupting activities could be done.

I will admit, developing the technology to do this would be a real challenge.

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So, you end up with a rather large brine basin under the ocean.  If you wanted to store heat in it you could up to a point.

And so it would be a long term source of heat, located quite close to waters above it that would be cold, maybe only a few degrees above, freezing.  So, energy could be extracted from that on demand, as long as your equipment worked.

Where does the heat come from?  Well you are not getting that.  At least not today.

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Mariculture:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/ag … ariculture
I believe I read on that topic in a book by Dr. Robert Zubrin.  "The case for space".

I can accept the injection of useful iron in certain locations of the ocean where it is not going to upset a unique ecology.

More food for humans, more sequestered Carbon.

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As for waste from animal feedlots, well, if it is at the interior of the continents, that may be harder.  Still something to think about.

Done.

Last edited by Void (2020-06-03 10:23:11)

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End

tahanson43206

Moderator

Registered: 2018-04-27

Posts: 19,442

Re: A Carbon Capture method which may generate power. Mericulture too.

For Void re Carbon Capture topic ....

This topic was languishing without a reply to help set it in motion ...

I logged in just now to see what we might have that relates to Carbon Capture ...

Your topic here deserves support and I hope other members will help to move it along.

However, the post I'm here to drop off is so different from your new topic here, I will have to start a new one.

It is a shame to start a new topic, when an existing one comes ** so ** close.

However, the new topic will only be about carbon capture, and not about making power.

Again, best wishes for success with this topic!

(th)