StoppingClimateChange.com                                                                                                                                                                            Harvesting CO2
Front Page    Contents    Definitions    Prolog    About
INTRODUCTION:  Attacking Climate Change From Both Ends   A Biomass Allam Cycle Power Plant   The Electricity & Hydrogen Nuke Next Door   Harvesting CO2   CO2 Disposal Wells   Water   Geoengineering
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

                 
                    Climate Changing Air Contaminants           KEEPING YOUR EYES ON THE PRIZE           Storing The CO2 Everywhere Underground Forever

(Previous literature focuses primarily on carbon dioxide removal, but methane removal may be an important complement to future efforts.
Methane removal has at least two key benefits: reducing temperature more rapidly than carbon dioxide removal and improving air quality by reducing surface ozone concentration. 1.906.01)

These are currently commercialized prototype technologies for removing the legacy 500 Billion Tons of CO2 from the air that's causing the Climate Change you are feeling today.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A New, More Promising, Direct Air Capturing of CO2 Using Magnesium Carbonate Mineral Pebbles for
the Farming and Harvesting of Air's Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
https://www.heirloomcarbon.com/#product-intro

This website discusses the SCALING UP of a scientific paper proposal that has the potential of restoring Planet Earth's original 280 ppm CO2 Level Quickly
(DISCLAIMER NOTE: While this website has absolutely nothing to do with any of the other people involved with weathering of magnesium oxide technology, all rights to detail changes from the original published paper appearing on this website belong to the original authors. - JPH) 

The Scientific Paper: "Ambient weathering of magnesium oxide for CO2 removal from air".  Link:  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16510-3
 (The above paper goes into detail about the basic ideas and chemistry studies related to this idea. Please Visit and Download your own free pdf Creative Commons copy of this paper for your personal understanding and reference.)

This Website's Major Direct Air CO2 Capturing Farm constraints include:
1, Building near a large source of cheap magnesium oxide.
2, Building over geostrata acceptable for massive CO2 disposal via Class VI disposal wells.
3, Building where it almost never snows.
4, Building on flat waste land that does not compete for human food. 

To capture and sequester all the CO2 mankind is dumping into the air in near real-time, we could be talking a total of 90,000 square miles (about the area of Minnesota) covered with a 4 inch thick layer of magnesite, perhaps divided into 11 to 1,000 CO2 capture farms in bad lands spread around the world.

"We show this process could cost approximately $46–159 tCO₂⁻¹ net removed from the atmosphere, considering grid and solar electricity without post-processing costs*. This technology may achieve lower costs than projections for more extensively engineered Direct Air Capture methods. It has the scalable potential to remove at least 2–3 GtCO₂ year⁻¹, [per installation] and may make a meaningful contribution to mitigating climate change,"

*(This approach does not drain energy from biomass or any other renewable energy source. Remote installations could easily and inexpensively be powered by carbon captured natural gas generators or micro nuclear reactors.)
(This website's suggested 11 - 3 Giga-tonne CO2 capture (DAC) farms project scales up the cited published study of a 1 to 3 Gt CO2 capture station. This will enable the world to sequester an amount of CO2 equal to almost ALL fresh fossil CO2 emissions being made everywhere in the world.)
(As current fossil CO2 emissions disappear or are rendered carbon-neutral thru this decarbonization project, the spare capacity of these project sites will begin to capture and sequester the world's remaining legacy 500 billion ton cloud of CO2, eventually taking the world from it's current 420 ppm of CO2 back to it's original 280 ppm of CO2 over a period of perhaps 50 years.)
 

youtube talks by paper co-author Jennifer Wilcox:
https://www.ted.com/talks/jennifer_wilcox_a_new_way_to_remove_co2_from_the_atmosphere       
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXNT5E6AvSM Jen Wilcox

Direct Air CO2 Capturing (DAC) Pebble Farms have the potential to restore the world to it's original 280 ppm CO2 level.
It is possible for Planet Earth to have hundreds of small Direct Air CO2 Capture farms all over the world that, along with decarbonization, could completely halt Climate Change.  (Click to Enlarge.)

Climate-Changing CO2 can be captured from the air (see below), liquefied, mixed with 'CarbFix', then pumped into permanent underground storage strata all over the world to become limestone.

"To meet our climate goals, 10 billion metric tons (referred to as tonnes from herein) per year (GtCO2yr−1 ) must be removed globally by 2050. After 2050 and thereafter, 20 GtCO2 yr−1 must be removed [2]. These reductions do not include emissions avoided by decarbonization, rather CO2 directly removed from the atmosphere." - Noah McQueen, "A review of direct air capture (DAC): scaling up commercial technologies and innovating for the future". 16 April 2021.

The above is Climate Change mitigation orthodoxy. What follows is what might be possible if the IPCC followed a path of maintaining the climate's health that resembled what the medical world does for human health - isolation and containment.

What is being proposed below are sewage-like CO2 treatment plants for the air for removing and isolating the excessive amounts of the toxic air contaminant carbon dioxide in the air. Carbon dioxide emitted into the air from anywhere on Earth wafts around the planet, so the gas can be captured and disposed of wherever it’s convenient. Wind-circulated gas diffusion will quickly sweep excess amounts of CO2 created anywhere in the world's air to any location on the surface of the earth that is causing reduced diffused carbon dioxide gas pressure by removing local carbon dioxide from the air - i.e., a virtual CO2 'funnel'.  U.S. 'Class VI' CO2 disposal wells (or equals) at that location, in combination with the liquefied CO2 additive "CarbFix", will safely turn this CO2 that has been injected deep into the earth into limestone. This will lock the air's captured CO2 very deep underground forever.

Roughly speaking, the above 12 billion tons of available magnesite limits the world to extracting 12 billion tons or so of Non-Biomass carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere each year.
Possibly a more frequent harvesting interval is possible, say, 3 times per year to yield 36 billion tons of CO2 per year?
Also, since magnesite deposits and CO2 disposal strata are spread around the world in many different countries in varying amounts, breaking apart the Direct Air CO2 Capture industry to reflect these circumstances might prove more efficient.
Most importantly, once the task of reversing Climate Change has been achieved, the world will still face the task of also removing that invisible cloud of about 500 billion tons of CO2 still hanging over us before Planet Earth becomes cool again.

https://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/critical-metals-investing/magnesium-investing/top-magnesite-producing-countries/ 

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Scientific Paper's Basic Concept Sketch

A Calciner is an air-tight oven.

The Basic Concepts Sketch (above) With Additional Processing Machinery Added

Above: The site's author added some engineering details to show what might be done to/with the magnesite if it were used in the context of this website.

How Large Might Global Direct Air CO2 Capturing Farms Have To Be?

Thousands of Direct Air CO2 Capture farms and Class VI CO2 Disposal Wells all over the world.
            

One very rough estimate indicated 16,500 19-mile-square plots (about 6 million square miles, 4 inch thick), with each plot harvested at the rate of 1 square mile per day, 365 days per year, would be needed to stop climate change in it's tracks. 
This was an estimate made to determine the pebble mass dwell of a 100 foot wide harvester. (Recall: Today's airplanes don't look much like the first airplanes.)  Check back for both revisions and corrections.  (1.050.01)

          
Global Positioning System Controlled Self-Driving Harvester COMBINE
 does a combination of harvesting tasks at one time - such as cutting, shelling the corn, putting it in a hopper, disposing of the stalk stover.

This page was inspired by the Modern Marvels video: Harvesting Technology Feeds the World (S11, E49) | Full Episode | History   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KebnHpNXV0k 

 The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a U.S.-owned utility that provides users with positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) services. This system consists of three segments: the space segment, the control segment, and the user segment.
(The above images of common off-the-shelf farm combine harvesting equipment are "standing in" for future images of yet-to-be-engineered perhaps 100 foot wide Climate Change combine harvesting machinery. They would never travel on roads. Located only in dry deserts, they would be supported by tanker trucks during the inactive night hours. Tracked vehicles steer by doing maneuvers called "Skid-Steer or Neutral Steer" and could be parked overnight in sheds the size of small airplane hangars.)

How about a stiff plastic screen laying on basket-ball sized rocks as a surface for CO2-loaded magnesium carbonate pebbles to weather and to support a broad-tracked CO2 harvester?
When weathered, the pebbles would be vacuumed up into a mobile calciner, their CO2 extracted, and, after cooling, the resulting magnesium oxide pebbles would then be returned to the plastic screen covered rocks?

A 100 foot-wide mobile calciner might resemble one of today's GPS-guided swing-arm corn or wheat harvesters and be able to precisely process 100 foot wide swaths of magnesium carbonate pebbles at a walking pace. This is how wheat farmers tackle Minnesota-size wheat harvests.  It would have to be able to harvest 1 square mile in a 10 hour day.

Check out this sweeper demo idea as a way to corral and vacuum up weathered magnesite pebbles for calciner reprocessing:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEXxtVRzXxg       (Please Visit)

Warning! When fresh, these CO2-capturing pebbles are caustic magnesium.    Once they have absorbed their fill of air's CO2, they are no longer caustic.    Airtight combine cabs may be needed.

Block Diagram of A Suggested CO2 Harvesting Combine to Remove Climate Change CO2 From the Air

Farming and Harvesting Carbon Dioxide From The Air As A Cash Crop

What Will the Pebble Handling, Tilling, and Harvesting Machinery Look Like?
This sweeper demo idea to recover weathered magnesite pebbles for calciner reprocessing:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEXxtVRzXxg       (Please Visit)
It would certainly be much more efficient for mobile harvesting machinery to go to the CO2 rather than hauling a 90 mile square of loose pebbles to a central processing plant.
Many smaller harvesting machines going over smaller fields of pebbles.
Asian farm machinery builders are likely to come up with the best early field machinery designs for this application.
A large powered magnesium carbonate harvester might be smaller than a semi trailer and it could do a linear sweep. Gasoline-sized tank trucks could bring fuels and liquid oxygen and carry away the liquefied CO2.
Or perhaps a chemical processing site on a 100 foot wide 1/4 mile long bridge mounted on railroad tracks or a huge crawler like that machine used at Cape Canaveral to haul large rockets from the assembly building to the major Launch Pads.
Many smaller scale iterations of the machinery will need to be made at first to find the most efficient designs and construction techniques. 
Recall the enormous bursts of construction that has occurred in times of vigorous economic expansion such as the massive economic competition between Capitalism and Communism that occurred after World War II?