Where to get hydrogen? Just suck it straight out of the air!

[donald]

I think I remember learning at one point that Earth's gravity is insufficient to retain hydrogen or helium.
They rise up and and basically leave for outer space. Trace amounts must remain diffused for other reasons.
Pulling hydrogen from the air is a lost cause IMO.

You might well be forgetting the analyses showing a vast increase in elemental atmospheric hydrogen from the introduction of a hydrogen infrastructure. Even conservative estimates put it at a loss of some 10 to 15% of total production escaping into the atmosphere.

In fact, the percentage losses possible are enough to destabilise the current bio-active soil-based sinks for elemental hydrogen that can fix it and which stabilise the current 500ppb.

It is not inconceivable that 'H2' as a 'solution' to reducing CO2 could have the perverse effect of destroying the planet's atmosphere. The risk is very low, but it is a possibility. There is no risk that CO2 could 'destroy' the atmosphere because it is a naturally occurring gas, but free hydrogen could destroy the ozone layer that make decades of CFCs look like an ant's fart. It'd be real great to end up with a 'solution' to the high levels of chemically inactive anthropogenic CO2 emissions that ends up destroying the ozone layer and all surface life on earth with anthropogenic atmospheric elemental hydrogen. Nice result!

 

[donald]

This thread raises the question of just what would happen and how people would react/change their behavior if a really good "CO2-scrubber" was invented that could extract CO2 from the air in great quantities over time.

How about solar powered CO2 scrubbers. In fact, how about a great big area packed with them, making some of the models 14 metres high or more, but others at different levels to make a 3D effect to maximise solar absorption. I suggest we call these devices 'trees'. We could have 'forests' of them!

 

[donald]

what could such a scrubber do with all that CO2? Hmm... we could capture it as a gas, then compress it and store it (don't laugh, that is being proposed to be done at power plants). Perhaps we can 'capture' it by chemically altering it into other compounds... perhaps mix some water with it and make complex chains that are solid using just the carbon, oxygen and a bit of hydrogen. Done right these solid byproducts could be reused, perhaps as building materials and maybe even food? Such complex chemistry could be powered by solar power so we don't burn any energy in the process. I wonder if such a process could be invented...

They would bind up the CO2 as cellulose.

This can then be partially burned, or de-hydrolysed if you like, leaving behind solid carbon (charcoal) which could be buried.

....PS This isn't new, this was [also] Lovelock's solution.

 

[mbender]

Donald, I know your response to me above was tongue-in-cheek, but I think Slow1's comment was as well, and you seem to have taken it seriously(?), so I don't know what to think! Perhaps I'm missing people's actual meaning though, with all the sarcasm and reverse-double sarcasm flying around, LOL.

I'm all for planting trees. As I've said before, I believe that the CCC planted three billion of them in the U.S. alone during the depression. We should be doing the same now all around the world. The problem is that with perhaps 3X the population, there's no doubt less space to plant them. That, and the cost/political hurdles are probably insurmountable at this point, even if a lot people agreed that it would be a good idea. I can hear it already, "What? Who's going to pay for this? Not me! I won't benefit!! Now pass me the ketchup for my 72-oz steak...", and "What? Mimic some Commie New Deal make-work program?! Move to Sweden if you hate capitalism and the free market so much!" Oy veh.

So tell me donald, where should all these 'forests' be planted, who is going to plant them, and who is going to (agree to) pay those that do?

 

[Nekota]

I apologize for taking the subject further off topic but there are artificial trees which extract CO2 from the ~400 ppm atmospheric concentrations which have been developed by Klaus Lackner. This process uses sodium hydroxide and is believed to be able to extract CO2 for $100/ton. [removed H2 permeable membrane comments]

 

[mbender]

So if we made enough of these things, for $3 trillion we could remove 30 billion tons per year?!

I think we'd need to bring the cost down a bit if we ever went this route, but maybe it's a start!

Then too I wonder how much CO2 we'd add in their construction, use and maintenance, and how long they'd last. ;-)