Want to win a million dollar prize from Elon Musk? Carbon capture (CC) is a hugely popular topic these days. Dozens of new companies are working on removing excess CO 2 from the atmosphere in order to stabilize the climate.
I myself am not an expert on CU, but I am periodically asked questions on this topic. Therefore, I am offering you this article to help organize our thoughts and refine our strategy for developing and evaluating a wide range of carbon capture systems (CCS).
Is our CU technology worth anything? Let's examine our hypothetical VU machine from two perspectives: physical and economic.
Physics
Isn't our car a hidden perpetual motion machine?
In a past life, I spent several years designing maglev systems, and often came across concepts from other designers whose performance was too ideal for the real world. If the resistance of the system is negative, it is a perpetual motion machine .
If the system spends less energy on the concentration of CO 2 than on releasing it into the air, it is a perpetual motion machine. If our machine compresses the flow of gas without consuming energy or generating parasitic heat, it violates the laws of thermodynamics. Perpetual motion machines obviously don't exist - so check the math!
What do we know that everyone else does not know?
What is this non-obvious contradictory fact? How does our system use it?
How much energy does our system actually consume?
FCS sometimes use temperature alternation in sorbent beds or electrochemical separation to increase the CO 2 concentration from the usual 420 ppm (0.042 vol.%) To nearly 100%. Does our system require a lot of electrical or thermal energy to operate? Where does it come from?
If it is an electrochemical system, does it use more or less energy per mole of CO 2 compared to smelting aluminum (1500 kJ / mol)? Is there a large low voltage current used there? Do we have a unipolar generator on hand? How much copper does the system require? If at cell voltage Y we need X electrons per CO 2 molecule , it turns out X * Y * 95 kJ / mol. How close are we to this limitation?
Does our system reduce the total amount of CO 2 in the air?
If our CO 2 recovery system releases calcium oxide (quicklime) from thermal calcination and natural gas combustion, it will emit more CO 2 than it will ever capture . Oops.
A more general question: how many years does it have to run in order to exceed the amount of CO 2 released during operation?
How do we approach the assessment of theoretical constraints?
The Gibbs entropy of dissolution of CO 2 in the atmosphere is approximately 19.4 kJ / mol. This is a small value - therefore, no one is involved in the generation of energy using the osmotic gradient of concentrated CO 2 in the atmosphere. Is our system approaching this parameter in any way noticeably? Does she need it? Can she get close to him? If we use electrochemical separation, how do we deal with ohmic heating and viscosity?
Is electrical efficiency one of the main limitations of our system? Does it need to be efficient, and what are the opportunity costs of increasing efficiency by 1%? If electricity becomes cheaper by 1% per year, will this be equivalent to a virtual increase in its efficiency by 1%?
Does our car really concentrate CO 2 in the atmosphere ?
Our unit blinks with lights, and CO 2 with a concentration of 100% comes out of the pipe . So, everything is fine? Not really. Does it conserve carbon? Are we accidentally burning parts of our car? Exactly?
I think that in this case, the ideal standard would be the zero radiocarbon age of CO 2 obtained by concentration from the atmosphere - while the CO 2 obtained, for example, as a result of accidental electrolysis of carbonate extracted from the earth, will be very old and not radioactive. A mass spectrometer is required to test carbon-14. There are plenty of laboratories in the United States that will perform such a test for several hundred dollars, although usually the sample will first need to be turned into graphite.
However, carbon dating is not without its drawbacks - organic carbon sources, such as vegetable oils, wood, or coal, are young in terms of radiocarbon dating. So if our machine uses, say, confectionery fat for lubrication, we need to thoroughly check the math and also think about what we are doing.
Can we confirm our results?
Do we understand our testing system? Have we quantified every aspect of the machine? Will the video confuse the investors with the presentation of her work? Are the key milestones clear? Will the person who watched the video be able to build such a machine himself and carry out the same test? Is the test information and results well described for an independent reviewer? Do we have a good understanding of what a well-documented experiment should look and feel like, or should we go read a paper or two on biology?
There are a lot of poorly understood people in the field of CU, and we need to set a high level of documentation standards. We do not plan to publish the secrets of our developments, but one can hardly expect that investors will part with their money in exchange for promises and hopes.
Can our project be scaled?
Are there any fundamental physical constraints on project implementation? If we are going to collect 10 Gt of CO 2 a year from planting trees, how much water will it take to water them? Can photosynthesis compete with fossil mining? What are the fundamental limitations on scaling our project? Is there access to capital? Return on investment? Do you need rare reagents? Does the company have suspicious co-founders? Is there access to power grids of sufficient capacity? What is the legal status of carbon taxes?
Is our control system ready to leave the laboratory?
The engine power system used by Tesla in its early days was extremely unreliable. It used dozens of analog operational amplifiers to drive an asynchronous AC motor. History is full of projects that couldn't pay off because they weren't old enough to go into production.
Do we have some kind of laboratory model that can be shown to people? Does it work? Is it clear which parts of it were hastily made and which ones have real meaning? Is it safe to be in the same room with her?
Is the technology ready for production? Can we give a prototype to the average engineer recently graduated from college and say “make us 10,000 of these,” and be confident enough that you get working, reliable, and reasonably efficient instruments? Have we sorted out all the mistakes before looking for large investments, or is the machine at the level of a scientific experiment?
Finance
How much does our CO 2 cost ?
Can we produce CO 2 at $ 1000 per ton, at $ 100 or at $ 10? How much does our CO 2 cost ? How much do we want it to be worth? And how much does it take to make it cost? How do we compare to our competitors? How much can we trust our plans to improve the car?
How expensive is our SUU?
What is the structure of capital expenditures? How many tons of CO 2 does the machine have to capture to pay for itself minus operating costs, financing costs, depreciation and amortization? How long will it take?
If our machine captures a kilogram of CO 2per day at a cost of $ 100 per ton, it will earn $ 36.5 per year. If the cost of building our car was $ 500, then it would take 15 years to recoup that cost alone. Spending $ 500 for parts and labor is somewhere in the range from a large cake to a simple dishwasher in terms of the scale and complexity of the project. Any more or less skillful technician should collect heels of these machines a day, that is, we should produce about 1,500 cars a year. And all the same, the profit will be only $ 50,000, which is not enough even to study at the institute [in the USA / approx. per.].
If capital expenditures are amortized over 10-30 years of operation, how to estimate capital expenditures? Are we counting on government loans with low interest rates? Will we be an underwriter for our clients buying devices from us? How to diversify risks in this area, given their strong correlation (in both technological and regulatory areas)?
Or will we be able to recoup costs in a few months or years, and rely on a short-term loan or even our own funds?
How quickly does a car wear out? Doesn't it depreciate faster than it pays off?
What is the cost of running a control system?
What are our operating expenses? Do you need workers for service? What consumables does the car have - reagents, valves, fittings, pumps, electrodes, software?
How does the operating expense fit into the capital expenditure amortization schedule? Does the car spend more on work than on depreciation? Is the complexity of the design justified in order to reduce running costs? Or is the machine so reliable that it can be turned on and forgotten - and NASA can use it to work with the atmosphere on the Moon?
Are we deploying the car in our yard or somewhere in the desert? How will we reach customers and support equipment in remote or hard-to-reach locations?
Back to energy
Is the cost of energy important to the financial plan? Ten years ago, the cost of electricity made “green hydrogen” (made from water by electrolysis) too expensive compared to “blue” (made from natural gas by steam reforming). Today, solar power is 10 times cheaper during peak hours. How will our business model and system optimization change if electricity becomes more expensive or cheaper during the life of our machine?
Is our process energy intensive? Is it comparable to refrigeration or magnesium electro-purification? Will we attract the attention of the authorities as an illegal plantation of prohibited herbs or a data center?
How fragile is our supply chain?
Does our car depend on rare materials? What can't we buy from Building Materials or Alibaba? Or on the Silk Way website? Is it easy for us to change suppliers, or does our project depend on the state of the business and the goodwill of a single firm somewhere in Outer Mongolia? Do we absorb CO 2 with amides, zeolites or metal-organic scaffolds? How expensive are these special materials? Do our relatives or spouse work in a laboratory capable of producing them? Can they scale production as fast as we are a business, and at what marginal cost? How much do metal-organic scaffolds cost?
Is there anything on our shopping list that is more toxic than acceptable, or that requires extra careful handling? Plutonium? Prohibited Substances? Dioxyfluoride? Piranha solution ? Do we need certified specialists? Will we pull their health insurance? Will we be interested in the Drug Enforcement Administration or the Department of Homeland Security?
Does our process depend on the availability and goodwill of one or more highly specialized PhDs? Do we have a talent retention plan? How exotic is our process?
Do we need magical materials?
Does our system only work with 99.999999% pure substances? What happens in case of contamination - no problem, will the efficiency drop, or everything can suddenly explode? Will our catalysts spoil common air pollutants - water vapor, oxygen, pad thai odor?
Are catalysts consumed in the system? Are they secret consumables? Do we have a plan for the supply, maintenance and replacement of what we did not plan to spoil? How much cobalt do we need per tonne of CO 2 ?
Do we need the magic of scaling?
Everyone knows that the relative cheapness of cars is possible due to huge and expensive industries, thanks to which hundreds of thousands of absolutely identical copies can be produced annually.
Does our SUA have the same problem that we cannot bring our capital costs down to acceptable levels until we build a fully automatic factory of a million square meters? Why can't it be assembled like LEGO? Did we build a huge automatic factory ourselves? Is this knowledge good for the cause? Maybe we are better off offering people fully automatic factories of a million square meters as a service?
Is there a critical scale at all below which our system makes no sense? Can we justify economies of scale, or are we just fantasizing that it will be more expensive to build our system than to earn in 20 years, receiving $ 1000 per ton?
Do we have an income stream?
Or do we need to rely on the coordinated action of several dozen governments to approve robust tax breaks or payments that create a market of infinite depth with zero elasticity for the sale of CO 2 ?
Where will our concentrated CO 2 go ? Will it turn into fuel? Plastic? Soot? Graphite? Cement? Will it go underground? Soda? What is the annual capacity of these markets? What percentage of it will we catch?
If we only sell our CO 2 to PepsiCo, it will return to the atmosphere very quickly. Do we have a plan for storing CO 2 more securely ?
Who will buy CO 2 from us , in what form, how much and at what price? What will our business look like if this market is saturated? Let's say if we sell 1000 tons per year at $ 100 per ton, our business income is $ 100 thousand per year. Is this enough for the team to work?
Where is value created in business?
If we make an SUU, which needs to be amortized in 20 years, we sell very expensive widgets to debt lovers, and it would be good in large quantities. What's the most expensive thing in a car? Where do we add value?
Let's say we are making a control system on swinging zeolite cells, such as those used on the ISS. Most of their value is made up of new zeolites. To reduce costs and improve quality control, we decided to integrate zeolite production into the process, improving the cost by 20%. Since zeolites accounted for about 90% of the machine's capital expenditure, more than 95% of the company's value now lies in the production of zeolites. Are we a zeolite factory in disguise now?
And if, in the long term, CO 2 capture industrial scale will be highly dependent on the mass production of exotic materials, as the computer industry depended on photolithography on insanely pure silicon crystals, does verticalizing the industry make sense? Where do we start in this value chain and where do we end up? Chemicals as a Service?