Calling @ghgpolicy.org and @davidho.bsky.social: what do you gentlemen think of COF-999? sfstandard.com/2024/11/08/u... - ThreadSky

doctorvive.bsky.social • 109 days ago

Calling @ghgpolicy.org and @davidho.bsky.social: what do you gentlemen think of COF-999?

https://sfstandard.com/2024/11/08/ucberkeley-carbon-sucking-powder-globalwarming/

Comments

tomkimmerer.bsky.social•109 days ago

There are some important comments in this thread telling us it is very early in this developing technology. I just want to comment that this is a very pretty molecule, and we have learned that pretty counts in OChem.

biogeocycle.net•109 days ago

I’d be very interested in the amount of energy it takes to 1) manufacture COF 999 at scale, 2) extract CO2 from it at scale, and 3) pump that CO2 underground. Also, what’s the plan for recycling/disposing of used up COF 999?

odiousallergy.bsky.social•109 days ago

Yes all of this! And maybe if it will stay absorbed over time and any long term effects of the underground plan? Exciting initial results to try building upon in any case 🙌

ghgpolicy.org•109 days ago

Sounds like a neat discovery, but very early stage.

The big issues for scale are the energy requirements for the system as well as the integrity of the novel chemistry in the field. Most of the coverage on this reads like a press release, without addressing the issues relevant for scale.

ghgpolicy.org•109 days ago

No offense to the study authors. I’m outside my depth to judge the material’s performance in the lab and have no reason to doubt their enthusiasm. But the whole “I see the solution to climate change in my hands” talk is bullshit hype.

ghgpolicy.org•109 days ago

I referred a reporter to my Penn colleague Jen Wilcox, who gave a much more polite version of my response to KQED.

biogeocycle.net•109 days ago

This is a much better article than the one in the Standard.

ghgpolicy.org•109 days ago

And perhaps this will seriously cut costs and energy requirements over alternative chemistries. That’d be great! But it’s very early days and I’m allergic to the PR hype about lab-scale results, which are the first of many, many steps on the road to relevance.

doctorvive.bsky.social•109 days ago

Thank you!

eroston.bsky.social•109 days ago

If I breathed a lot of it in, would I still have to exhale?

johnsmillie42.bsky.social•109 days ago

Could you?

johnsmillie42.bsky.social•109 days ago

Yeah much more engineering involved, but the 140F regeneration point and it's capture speed make it interesting as a sorbent.

There's also this from Rice, using electrochemistry and bicarbonate. Seems promising.

https://www.enn.com/articles/75486-reactor-developed-at-rice-could-make-direct-air-capture-more-energy-efficient#:~:text=industrially%20relevant%20conditions.-,Electrochemical%20carbon%20capture%20technology%20performs%20at%20industrially%20relevant%20conditions.,dioxide%20directly%20from%20the%20atmosphere.

samgoff.bsky.social•109 days ago

This is the first breakthrough in carbon capture that seems like it might scale to actually make more than a tiny ripple of a difference. Imagine returning to pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 levels 🤯

That said, the faster we move to grid-scale solar & wind, the less carbon we need to offset.

nazishmunch.bsky.social•109 days ago

Very cool. How is it made and disposed of?

doctorvive.bsky.social•109 days ago

TBD

umsonst.bsky.social•109 days ago

We will need low and high tech solution for the most important project in human history: reduce GHG concentration as fast as we can do it against a biosphere which increases its emissions. We are now far beyond the point where emission reductions will help. The emergent feedback reaction has started

odiousallergy.bsky.social•109 days ago

Wow! No bandwidth atm to read the whole article. Can someone please confirm that this isn’t like a zero calorie celery idea where it produces as much CO2 in the production process as it absorbs from the atmosphere? 😬🤞Trying to remain optimistic but have lost all faith in humanity this week 😓😅

localnewscomment.bsky.social•109 days ago

The lead researcher, Omar Yaghi, has been doing this for decades.

The idea is that with a super high surface area material you can pack smoke stacks and sponge up all the carbon. Then bury it.

I saw a talk about it in 2008. Seems like there's difficulty scaling it beyond the lab.

odiousallergy.bsky.social•109 days ago

Pack into smoke stacks? Appreciate Omar’s dedication and expertise. Can only hope further breakthroughs are made in the near future to address the practicalities 🤞🙏🤞

odiousallergy.bsky.social•109 days ago

📌

eatsleeprepeat.bsky.social•109 days ago

Sounds promising - if used with the reduction of emissions? Doesn’t really say how much is needed to combat the c02 we produce? companies will want to use this- keep burning saying they are now carbon neutral.

jmelville.science•109 days ago

Chem PhD here, I studied similar materials:

It's cool but it will not save us. Lots of materials can suck CO2 from the air but they all take energy to "regenerate"—that's just thermodynamics.

Captured CO2 must also be stored permanently, probably underground, which adds substantially to cost.

jmelville.science•109 days ago

The nut of air capture is the better a material can absorb CO2 from air, the tighter it holds onto it and the more energy it takes to wrest the CO2 away and regenerate the bare material so the CO2 can actually be sequestered.

doctorvive.bsky.social•109 days ago

That's interesting, thank you.

jmelville.science•109 days ago

Finally, as @davidho.bsky.social points out, no amount of carbon removal will save us unless we first hit net-zero. Sucking CO2 out of the air is *strictly harder* than capturing it from high-concentration flue streams — again, it's unavoidable thermodynamics.

https://bsky.app/profile/davidho.bsky.social/post/3l7nitv2zjp2k

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