This sounds like it could be the basis for a respirator-like breathing apparatus, not requiring tanks, for entering and staying in enclosed spaces where the concentration of CO2 is high. (Provided there is enough oxygen.)
And the "device" is called a 'rebreather.' https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebreather
Just think about it, you have a decorative box in your office that absorbs CO2, would it slow the inevitable cognitive decline that happens when you close your door in your poorly ventilated room?
The outdoor level has absolutely risen, it's just not the important factor here.
You're very lucky that you can keep windows open so often. My climate makes that impossible for much of the year; I'm looking in to getting an ERV installed asap.
A half a pound of powder as lovely as a tree. -- Joyce Kilmer
It doesn't really talk about how you would sequester the gaseous CO2 other than "put it underground."... But if you put a gas underground it will eventually leak out. Even a liquid is prone to leak out eventually due to plate techtonics, but a liquid doesn't immediately turn into gaseous CO2.
So though a crucial technology, I don't see how effective it would be in a long term solution.
Carbon is about 3/8ths of the total weight of a CO2 molecule and is solid and relatively inert at room temperature and pressure.
Of course, if there were a convenient way to simply strip carbon off of a CO2 molecule to begin with that would be the ideal system, but I'm sure that can be figured out given enough opportunity.
Plants do it, after all. It's not impossible.
The problem is that to reverse CO2 -> C + O2 you need the same amount of energy that you get burning coal C + O2 -> CO2.
But burning coal, like half of the energy is lost as unuseful heat.
The reaction of plants is different, but plants only has a 2% of efficiency. The chemical reaction of plants is more complicated, so let's be optimistic and assume this reaction has a 10% of efficiency.
If they use a coal plant to power the CO2 -> C + O2 conversion, they will release like 20 times the amount of CO2 absorbed.
If they use a renewable source, it's better to close the absortion plant and also 20 coal plants.
Until we close all the coal plants and we get very cheep carbon-free energy, it's bad for the environment to try a CO2 -> C + O2 conversion.
All of these “can’t we just unburn burnt things” forget that the reason we burnt the carbon in the first place was to get that energy.
Unburning it would need to return that energy and more because of inefficiencies.
If you have energy to spare, you don’t need to burn the carbon in the first place.
With global fossil fuel usage still rising, we clearly don’t have any to spare.
I wonder if there is a reason you couldn't just sequester the powder. Probably too expensive? Or not volume efficient?
>to leak out eventually due to plate techtonics
This might seem shortsighted, but I'm OK pushing the problem out by 50 million years or so.
The other day I was wondering how people always talk about sending undesirable material (garbage, spent radioactive fuel, etc.) on a one way trip to the sun. Why not send things to the surface of Venus? It has an ultra dense atmosphere that pulverizes anything that reaches the surface. In the case of this material, it's just more C02, which is what the atmosphere of Venus is already primarily composed of. We aren't going to ever explore the surface of Venus, or at least we won't for thousands, if not millions of years, barring we can easily convert co2 into energy, so is this a bad idea?
35 billion metric tons.
What's your back of the envelope energy figure for extracting that weight of a gas from the atmosphere, pressurising it, and lifting it to orbit and sending it to Venus?
Got a rough notion of the number of trips, fuel and resources that would need every single year?
