CREATING METHANE FROM CAPTURED CARBON DIOXIDE AND THE FUTURE OF CARBON CAPTURE

A STORY OF EXTERNAL FACTORS
As alluded to earlier in this article, a major consideration with carbon capture is the efficiency of the process. If we consider that CCU as proposed here relies on a rich source of CO2, as well as a pure source of hydrogen, it would appear that the former would have to come from flue gas and similar waste streams from the fossil fuel industry. For the latter, things are more problematic if we wish to not create additional waste.

Currently virtually all hydrogen on the market is produced through steam reforming (SMR) of natural gas. This makes it not carbon-neutral: if it requires natural gas as input for SMR to create the hydrogen needed to create the SNG, one may as well directly use the natural gas.

This is further illuminated by Howarth et al., whose recent study details the effectiveness of so-called 'blue hydrogen', which uses CCS with SMR of NG and came to the conclusion that it's more effective to just burn the NG directly. This leaves then only so-called 'green' hydrogen as viable input for this SNG process to conceivably make it carbon-neutral.

In 2020, only 4% of worldwide hydrogen was produced via electrolysis, some of it from low-carbon power sources. Even if all hydrogen at these SNG production facilities came from electrolysis facilities powered by VRE or nuclear power, that would still leave the CO2 as an issue. If this came from fossil fuels, then it merely postpones the moment this carbon enters the atmosphere to when the SNG is burned.

True carbon-neutral fuel is conceivable, but so far no viable source of carbon has been found. Carbon from flue gas costs about $7.5 per ton, extracting carbon from sea water as carbonic acid would cost about $50 per ton and direct air carbon capture between $94 and $232 per ton. This then leaves PNNL's process primarily as a way to use the carbon from fossil fuels (coal or NG) twice, though at a considerable energy investment.

HarveyH55 wrote:
https://hackaday.com/2021/10/07/creating-methane-from-captured-carbon-dioxide-and-the-future-of-carbon-capture/

It's a pretty long article, full of charts, diagrams, and propaganda...

As always, the comments are quite amusing, from clueless nerds. James could fit in well. Wouldn't mention the gravity wheel though. Probably not that clueless...

As always, they fail to quote start up, and construction costs. And, of course anything that might repel any interest in the scam.