What's going on with mining carbon from the atmosphere?

[mfb]

Any place dense enough would mean significant atmospheric drag what you must compensate with fuel.
But if you have fuel (mass) at hand already then you don't need atmosphere anymore.

Different use. The atmosphere scoop would use modified ion engines and expels most of the mass it collects to stay in orbit. The rest is accumulated and can be used in a conventional rocket engine to leave Earth quickly.

A rotating tether for ... gas collection? That's a curious approach, but I fear torque will ruin that concept. It would spin up until it breaks (unless you have a few breakthroughs with carbon nanotubes).

 

[mfb]

Let's keep this discussion about the science as good as possible.

 

[Jarvis323]

Is it really such a stretch to mine carbon from the atmosphere? Couldn't you just manufacture a practically arbitrary number of tiny carbon capturing objects (as much as needed), using solar energy in outer space, and then let them drop to the earth, capturing some carbon along the way? Is there a catch, because this type of approach seems pretty easy and feasible to me? Heck, you could probably even manufacture little bots capable of dipping down, grabbing some CO2, and then coming back into space. There should be plenty solar energy in space to not have to worry about energy efficiency. I guess just make sure to do it on the dark side of the Earth to avoid blocking the Sun.

 

[Rive]

Couldn't you just manufacture a... in outer space, and then let them drop to the earth...

If we could, it would be better to simply replace Earth based manufacturing instead of all that drone-and-whatnot for keeping the CO2-generating Earth based manufacturing running too.

Is it really such a stretch to mine carbon from the atmosphere?

Yes, it is: at least, it takes more resource and footprint than use the carbon directly from mines.

 

[Jarvis323]

If we could, it would be better to simply replace Earth based manufacturing instead of all that drone-and-whatnot for keeping the CO2-generating Earth based manufacturing running too.Yes, it is: at least, it takes more resource and footprint than use the carbon directly from mines.

But extracting it from the atmosphere using energy and resources acquired in space has some major benefits.

1) A practically limitless supply of resources and energy to use.

2) The energy used doesn't add anything at all to the carbon footprint, and the resources used would not be taken from our supply on Earth.

3) Reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere to reduce global warming (to any level we choose).

 

[Khatti]

Let's keep this discussion about the science as good as possible.

That is more than fair enough.

I freely admit that there is a Holy Grail aspect to this whole discussion. If when all is said and done, it comes to naught, fine. There is no guarantee that you will find a technical solution or scientific breakthrough if you're looking for it. But it's even more unlikely that you will find a technical solution or scientific breakthrough if you're not looking for it.

 

[member 656954]

Has Carbon Engineering been raised already? They're the Direct Air Capture leaders AFAIK. But there are also lots of research approaches, like this one, that are been mooted as solving the problem of cost-effective extraction from the air, or this one that uses micropore methods to trap the CO2.

Also, technically, these examples generate 'carbon' as an output, often as a fuel but for the last example, as polyurethane.

I do wonder if any CO2 atmospheric extraction method is going to be economic, perhaps unless a high carbon tax is applied that provides a profit mechanism for the method.