Are there anyways to extract the carbon from CO2 in the air?

Question

As a green house gas and the global warming situation, is there anyway that we can create something or modify something to extract carbon from CO2 or "scrub" the air of mass harmful gases? Please make sure these aren't obvious answers like "Be more fuel economic" or "Conserve energy"; these are obvious ones that anyone with common sense can figure out.

Answer 1

Scrubbing the air would be a difficult and costly process, and almost anything devised to scrub the air would produce greenhouse gasses along the way, so that the NET effect is likely to be small. Plants are still the best scrubbers around, yet there are some worrying signs. Recent research in the Australian forests in NSW, VIC and ACT shows that the ability of trees to fix carbon is reduced in periods of drought, yet the drought here in Australia has increased under effects of current climate change.



And that's not even taking into account the destruction of forests around the world!



There is worry, too, about so-called "carbon sequestration" (a process by which carbon dioxide would be removed from power plant emissions and buried underground (or in oceans). The problem is carbon leaching, with the result that the underground carbon repositories are not so effective.



So, at present, the best way to help is to cut down on carbon emissions, seek alternative transport, urge political action, and promote development of alternative energy sources.



You can tell the problem is bad when Professor James Lovelock (a noted naturalist and author of The Gaia Hypothesis and Gaia 2) embraces NUCLEAR energy as the solution. Many scientists think things are not quite as bad as Lovelock envisages, but they're worried that there isn't much time left to do something.

Answer 2

Yes, we have CO2 scrubbers. You pull air through a chemical that absorbs CO2, or you put it through a filter that adsorbs it. I believe they even have a molecular sieve for it.



As indicated above, it uses a lot of energy to pull out a little CO2. CO2 is also extremely diffuse in the atmosphere - under 400 ppm right now, so it is extremely costly to get a significant amount out of the air.



We use CO2 all the time - in the oilfield, and to carbonate drinks of course, so we can get enough for that, but to actually reduce the amount in the atmosphere is an entirely different scale.



To add to the carbon sequestration comment above - the main issue is not the releasing of the carbon back to the atmosphere (loss of effectiveness). If you put massive amounts of CO2 at the bottom of the ocean, it would take thousands of years to fully return to the atmosphere. The main issue is that we could significantly change the pH of the ocean (or ground water) and cause God knows what - but probably mass death of delicate ocean species.

Answer 3

The early Earth had far more CO2 in the air than we have today. I am talking about the very, very early Earth, before the dinosaurs. Most of that CO2 was incorporated into limestone by long extinct sea creatures. There are other sea creatures living today that do the same thing, coral for example, so promoting more growth of those kinds of sea life would certainly help.

Answer 4

It would be very difficult if not impossible. CO2 is an extremely stable compound. The energy it would take to effectively remove any carbon, let alone a quantity large enough to have an effect would be disproportionate to the positive effects. Sorry, but the 'conserve energy' folks are correct.

Answer 5

It will probably use more energy to artificially remove carbon from CO2. There are lots of things in nature that remove CO2. In the process of artifically extract carbon from CO2, one may generate more CO2 in the process.

Answer 6

Plants. I know it's the "duh" answer. They take in the carbon dioxide and put out fresh oxygen. We need to stop cutting down our forests; they're our natural air filters. Also, keeping a lot of plants in your house keeps the normally stagnant indoor air very fresh and healthy. Great for the winter when the house stays closed up for months.

Answer 7

There are all sorts of fancy technologies we can discuss to handle this, but i'll offer a simple answer



Grow a plant.

Answer 8

ask a chemistry or science teacher. she explains u better than me.