It’s gasuous CO2. The process pulls in water, acidifies it to release carbon as CO2 to air in a sealed space, pumps that water to the next phase which adjusts the pH back up to normal, then the carbon poor water is pumped back into the ocean.
Meanwhile, the CO2 in the previously mentioned sealed space is concentrated up to about 98%, but it’s still a gas. While this may or may not be a more efficient extraction system, it still has the same issue all extraction systems face: what to do with the extracted gas.
Once the seawater is back in equilibrium with the atmosphere, a process that should take less than one year (Zeebe and Wolf-Gladrow, 2008), it is chemically indistinguishable from the seawater that came in.
I thought this was a reasonably quick process, but a year? How do you buffer a years supply of sea water? You either need a massive massive plant, or this does not take in that much
The water just dilutes back into the rest of the ocean, lowering its average carbon content a minuscule amount. It’ll take a year or less for it to reabsorb as much atmospheric CO2 as was removed and for any carbon compounds altered by the pH changes to revert. It’ll likely hit peak CO2 before that point. This isn’t a big deal unless it’s done at massive scale in concentrated areas.
An “easy” way to handle this is to return the water to the deep ocean, where it’s less impactful to ocean life and has a much larger area in which to dilute.
It’s gasuous CO2. The process pulls in water, acidifies it to release carbon as CO2 to air in a sealed space, pumps that water to the next phase which adjusts the pH back up to normal, then the carbon poor water is pumped back into the ocean.
Meanwhile, the CO2 in the previously mentioned sealed space is concentrated up to about 98%, but it’s still a gas. While this may or may not be a more efficient extraction system, it still has the same issue all extraction systems face: what to do with the extracted gas.
Here’s their proposal with the details.
Also, wow:
I thought this was a reasonably quick process, but a year? How do you buffer a years supply of sea water? You either need a massive massive plant, or this does not take in that much
The water just dilutes back into the rest of the ocean, lowering its average carbon content a minuscule amount. It’ll take a year or less for it to reabsorb as much atmospheric CO2 as was removed and for any carbon compounds altered by the pH changes to revert. It’ll likely hit peak CO2 before that point. This isn’t a big deal unless it’s done at massive scale in concentrated areas.
An “easy” way to handle this is to return the water to the deep ocean, where it’s less impactful to ocean life and has a much larger area in which to dilute.