Recent desalination plant proposals have drawn furious opposition in Los Angeles and Corpus Christi, Texas.īut a new startup called Capture6 claims it can solve desalination’s controversial brine problem with another controversial climate technology: carbon capture. These plants can create water for thousands of households by extracting the salt from ocean water, but they have also drawn harsh criticism from many environmental groups: Desalinating water requires a huge amount of energy, and it also produces a toxic brine that many plants discharge right back into the ocean, damaging marine life. Sequestration of biochar in cropland provides multiple environmental and economic benefits.As the world grapples with rising water use and climate-fueled drought, countries from the United States to Israel to Australia are building huge desalination plants to bolster their water supplies. ![]() The system is of modular design, which allows construction of small plants suitably sized for distributed biomass resources.They produce bio-oil as a co-product, which makes the process more economical than simply producing biochar as a carbon sequestration agent.The pyrolyzer is operated auto-thermally, eliminating the need for fossil fuels to heat it while simplifying and intensifying the production of biochar.Over the course of a single year, the team’s demonstration project will sequester as much as 4600 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in the form of recalcitrant biochar that is projected to be stable in agricultural soils for hundreds of years or longer.Īlthough many others advocate for biochar as an approach to carbon removal from the atmosphere, this specific project has several novel features: The amount of carbon that can be sequestered in this manner depends on the type of biomass and the kind of pyrolysis process employed. This new form of carbon may be able to sequester nearly as much biogenic gas from the atmosphere while being less volatile- meaning it will stay stored up in soil rather then escaping into the air. However, rather than sequester this carbon as standing biomass as occurs in forests, we can use wood to create biochar, which is more durable than regular charcoal and lasts for centuries. The Bioeconomy Institute Carbon Removal Team / Iowa State Universityīased at Iowa State University, the Bioeconomy Institute Carbon Removal Team’s approach to carbon removal harnesses the natural power of photosynthesis and plants, utilizing their ability as a producer of oxygen. The initial megaton project will capture and sequester 12 million metric tons per year, 1 million tons in polymer products and 11 million tons in rainforest regrowth. Second, the rainforest regrowth will capture carbon dioxide and store it in both above ground and below ground biomass.First, the algae cultivation directly captures carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and a portion of the algal oil is converted into polymer products for long-term sequestration of the carbon.The project sequesters carbon dioxide in two ways. ![]() ![]() The algae farm offers an opportunity not just provide food but also generate cash flow while simultaneously tackle global issues like climate change – all without damaging the environment or sacrificing any wildlife. With a 6-fold increase of revenue coming into the community due to their renewable, sustainable source that generates both oil and protein this project will create higher paying jobs. The particular Global Algae project includes buying land in South America currently used for protein production, allowing the rainforest to regrow on most of the land, and growing algae on a small portion such that the total protein production is the same as could be produced from all of the land with conventional crops. Each acre of algae can produce protein equivalent to 17 acres of soy and vegetable oil equivalent to 8 acres of palm, so 25 times less land is required for production of these important commodities.
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