Proposed CO2 Capture System Could Reduce Truck Emissions By 90 Percent 83
Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Lausanne (EPFL) have come up with a new concept for capturing CO2 from truck exhausts which could reduce emissions by up to 90 percent. Engadget reports: In a paper published in the journal Frontiers in Energy Research, the researchers propose capturing carbon dioxide from a truck's exhaust pipe and turning it liquid, which is stored in a tank on the vehicle's roof. This liquid carbon dioxide can then be delivered to a service station where it can be reused in various ways, including being turned into conventional fuel.
The carbon dioxide capture works by first cooling the gases which are emitted from the exhaust pipe. Special absorbent materials developed at EPFL could separate the carbon dioxide from other gases like nitrogen and oxygen. When it is full, the absorbent material is then heated to extract the carbon dioxide, and heat from the vehicle's engine is used to compress the carbon dioxide and turn it into liquid. That liquid can then be stored in a box attached to the vehicle's roof until it can be deposited at a service station when the truck refuels. The system is more appropriate for large vehicles like trucks or buses than for cars as it is rather bulky, requiring a 2-meter-long capsule and weighing 7 percent of the total payload of a truck. However, the researchers calculate that 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions could be recycled in this way.
The carbon dioxide capture works by first cooling the gases which are emitted from the exhaust pipe. Special absorbent materials developed at EPFL could separate the carbon dioxide from other gases like nitrogen and oxygen. When it is full, the absorbent material is then heated to extract the carbon dioxide, and heat from the vehicle's engine is used to compress the carbon dioxide and turn it into liquid. That liquid can then be stored in a box attached to the vehicle's roof until it can be deposited at a service station when the truck refuels. The system is more appropriate for large vehicles like trucks or buses than for cars as it is rather bulky, requiring a 2-meter-long capsule and weighing 7 percent of the total payload of a truck. However, the researchers calculate that 90 percent of carbon dioxide emissions could be recycled in this way.
7% total payload (Score:4, Interesting)
I can hear the logistics companies readying their lobbyists already.
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I just googled "railway co2 emissions" and you seem to be wrong about this:
Worldwide, road users account for about 71% of transport CO2 emissions, with railway companies making up less than 1.8%, next to 12.3% for aviation and 14.3% for shipping, according to the International Energy Agency and International Union of Railways.Jul 25, 2013
Then again, it says "according to the International Energy Agency and International Union of Railways" so you may take it with a grain of salt but still, even if you multiply it by ten (18%), trunks still don't compete.
Railways are one of the most efficient thing to move things around.
Re:7% total payload (Score:4, Interesting)
As far i know, those electric diesel trains just operate the motor at peak efficiency the whole time and regulate speed/torque etc on the electric side.
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They can be and are adjusted for efficiency, but they still sometimes have to provide more power to move, which are less efficient. The diesel engines provide input to electric generator (for DC) or alternator (for AC), which drive the traction motors that drive the wheels. Electric can provide efficient torque over a wide range of power outputs compared to internal combustion which has only narrow torque bands that are fuel efficient. When underway, the diesels can be set to optimum efficiency, but when st
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Yeah, I've ridden from Felton to Santa Cruz in the cab of a diesel locomotive owned by Roaring Camp, and the RPMs definitely change when they speed up or slow down. You could build a locomotive with multiple independent generator sets that would always run them at peak RPM and stop them when they weren't needed, but that would increase complexity. By the time that would seem like a good idea, the diesel locomotive will probably be gone.
And the load of the compressor? (Score:1)
Re: 7% total payload (Score:5, Insightful)
The system is totally impractical. It will increase fuel consumption by 7% and basically add on about 2 tons of weight during the consumption of a fuel tank (most of the weight in CO2 comes from the oxygen in the air) in a small truck. Then youâ(TM)ll have to store and transport on your average fuel station basically every 30 minutes about an 18-wheeler worth of this stuff where the CO2 will be cracked somehow, which requires a LOT of fuel in and of itself.
Re: 7% total payload (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, that 3:1 ratio can be a bit surprising, but it makes sense if you think about it - hydrocarbons are almost pure carbon by weight since hydrogen weighs almost nothing. Meanwhile, CO2 attaches two oxygens to every carbon, and oxygen is slightly heavier than carbon (the increase almost perfectly balancing the loss from hydrogen in long-chain hydrocarbons)
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Thermodynamics (Score:3)
To liquify CO2 you have to cool it a lot. Where do you get the energy to do that?
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Either that or compress it (as mentioned in the summery, five words to the left of where it says "liquify")
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To eight megapascals. That's not even a great deal of pressure. Either way though, significant energy use.
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Perhaps the energy could be recovered when braking and used to compress the gas. Basically engine braking like some trucks already do but instead of compressing air and releasing it, compress the CO2 and put it in a tank. That said, this probably won't work that great on long highway routes.
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Probably easier to simply compress it on the road, and then recover the energy used when emptying the tank.
Re: Thermodynamics (Score:2)
It's about 1200psi. About 10x the average pneumatic system. Air compressors that put out that kind of pressure are do it at low volume, they are uncommon, expensive and high maintenance. And now you're asking it to suck up diesel exhaust, which presents another set of problems. No matter how well filtered the exhaust gas is you're going to get diesel and motor oil soot, which is sticky and loves to plug up small passages, and is abrasive to the sort of seals likely to be used in a compressor.
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It's also about 1/2 to 1/3 of the average pressure of a scuba tank, and scuba compressors are both common and widespread. It is true that these are lower volume than what's being proposed here, by about 2 orders of magnitude off the top of my head. They also are expensive, but scuba compressors have requirements for cleanliness (don't poison the divers with compressed fumes) that go beyond what I expect would be required here.
Can't comment on soot, as I don't know how easy or hard that'd be to deal with.
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T=pV / nR
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Whacky Inventions club (Score:2)
Re:Whacky Inventions club (Score:5, Informative)
Someone beat you to it.
http://www.picshag.com/pics/052011/solar-powered-tanning-salon-big.jpg [picshag.com]
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i suspect solar powered *light* however would make sense, because visible light is only part of what a solar panel can convert to electricity
why trucks? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:why trucks? (Score:5, Informative)
Global CO2 emissions of all the vehicles is insignificant
Trucks are about 6% of global CO2 emissions. That is significant.
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...I'd like to see some boring electric trucks with a full length bed that can be used for work. I'd need about 100 mile range....
The Tesla Semi should fit the bill, with a promise of between 300 - 500 mile range, 4 motors and 2 kWh/mi.
And you know Elon Musk, that Semi looks fantastic.
Tesla keeps pushing its production date back. I think it's 2020 right now - you know Elon.
https://www.tesla.com/semi [tesla.com]
Re: why trucks? (Score:4, Informative)
The VW emissions weren't about CO2 it was good old fashioned lung destroying toxic pollutants.
Because they give the most bang for the buck (Score:3, Interesting)
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I think it is infeasible to substantially optimize truck emissions without also notably increasing costs of shipped goods. I think shipping by rail and increasingly electrifying rail lines is what should be done - but suc
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Ironically, the best place to put a hybrid drivetrain (to yield the greatest reduction in fuel consumption) was in SUVs. Except the environmentalists mocked car companies when they tried to do that in the early 2000s, and got hybrid SUVs killed for a decade.
lol no. The first production hybrid SUV was a Dodge Durango that cost $85k+ depending on options. The cost killed hybrid SUVs for a decade. Batteries are much cheaper now.
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Because trucks drive in cities (Score:2)
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...Why would these intrepid inventors suggest applying their innovation to trucks, instead of coal power plants...
Could be because:
1 There already is technology to recover carbon dioxide from coal power plants https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876610209001726 [sciencedirect.com].
Humble guess, but this tech should work on any factory with a flue emitting enough carbon dioxide to make it worthwhile.
2 The article has a link that references data showing carbon dioxide from road transportation was significantly higher than anything else in Europe, with cars taking over 60% of the dirty glory, and trucks about 40%. It
Or that 7 percent of payload can carry a battery. (Score:2)
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Tesla semi has a range of 800 km. Volvo is apparently releasing one at about the same time with a 300 km range. And Cummins is preparing one with a 450 km range.
These are first generation products. With some more time and a drop in battery prices, almost all trucks will go electric purely for the cost savings. And it will probably take less time for this to happen then it will take to get CO2 collection devices working and installed onto trucks. But CO2 collection could work quite well on ferries an
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Re: Or that 7 percent of payload can carry a batte (Score:5, Interesting)
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It's also far more likely that we'll see electric used more for local distribution as opposed to long haul trucking.
That also removes all those point sources from congested urban areas.
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While you are basically correct, especially around a solo driver with a shifting 14hr window, although even that can be somewhat mitigated, your incorrect about teams.
I drove team for nearly ten years. A good team that trusts each other get plenty of sleep and generally run around ten hrs per shift (after all, you don't want to run down to the end of the eleven hours and have to change out or stop somewhere at the side of a road, true even for a solo driver) With proper scheduling and some foresight, you ra
Re:Or that 7 percent of payload can carry a batter (Score:5, Insightful)
(Most) trucks are already range-limited by their drivers. You do not have to produce an electric truck that competes with ICE trucks on range, you just have to produce one that is less limited than the driver. That can be done.
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So we are talking a 550-600 mile range then as that's an "average" day. Drivers are limited to 11 hours of driving a day so that's only an average of 50-55 MPH.
If one is driving out west with speed limits of 75-80 that's actually a slow average....
Re: Or that 7 percent of payload can carry a batte (Score:2)
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2... [arstechnica.com]
CAR analogy (Score:2)
It's "car analogy" not "cat analogy", but I guess this could start a new trend.
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The delusion is all yours. The study was done by an agency of the Swiss government, surely no friend of fossil fuel providers.
How does this scale (Score:1)
A 1 kg of fuel coming from the tank (containing carbon, C), reacts with another 2.3 kg of oxygen (O2) coming from the air.
The result is 3.16 kg of CO2 per each 1 kg of fuel burnt (or 2.85 kg / kg with the claimed 90% efficiency).
How do you store that?
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Carbon-sequestering on balance? (Score:2)
So if combined with a carbon-neutral fuel source (ethanol perhaps), could this be used to actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere overall? Grow corn, remove CO2 from the air. Make ethanol, giving some of the CO2 back in the process. But then when it gets burned, the CO2 doesn't just go back into the air. Even with 10% of it escaping the system, the sequestration of the other 90% just might make this a practical way to fuel long-range/high-availability vehicles and use them as a network of carbon scrubbers a
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Corn ethanol is like 10% energy-positive. It would make more sense to use algae-based green diesel, or biodiesel.
Corn ethanol also is grown continuously (without crop rotation) and destroys topsoil, so it's selling out the future for profit today.
Make it more efficient first! (Score:1)
Instead lets make it Heavier and clunkier so it will polute less!
Attacking the symptom before making it a lot better is not the the way to go. There are better aproaches: Mack jet eletric truck [newatlas.com]
There is a lot of room for deployment of simple tech like aerodynamic skirts and foils that can signigicantly improve fuel efficiency in semi-trailers on road use.
It must be economically attractive, or else.
And capturing from the air won't work? (Score:2)
Or are there existing better solutions?
And it fails at the first hurdle. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And it fails at the first hurdle. (Score:5, Interesting)
I see lots of trailers carrying spare wheels, still, though I rarely see trucks carrying them. That's one of the big drawbacks of super singles, in fact. When they blow out they usually destroy the wheel, so not only do you have to come up with another super-expensive super single, you also have to come up with another expensive wheel. So if you run them, you pretty much have to carry a spare.
Super singles supposedly reduce fuel consumption by somewhere between 2.9% and 7%. But in general they are considered to only be worth the hassle for short-haul trucking where the fleet manager can send out spares on a pickup truck.
I can however envision a future where CO2 emissions are taxed, in which case giving up 7% of the payload capacity might actually be a good trade.
It's all about your 15 minutes (Score:2)
And then? (Score:2)
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Sell it. To greenhouses and vertical farms [wikipedia.org]. CO2 and NO2 (if we could capture that) are critical inputs for plant growth. And we are going to have to do something to boost that if we want to move away from beef consumption. We only have so many Amazon rain forests to clear for the necessary soya needed to feed the world.
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Just what do you think cattle eat?
Grasses and clover. Stuff we can't eat. And stuff that doesn't require wiping out biodiversity just to plant human veggies.
Start big, then work your way down... (Score:2)
Until Coal power plants are doing recapture at scale, nothing else makes sense. They have fixed infrastructure, don't have to waste fuel just moving the result around for no good reason, and have the economy of scale. Next... ships, as they generate enormous quantities of pollution per ship, and dock at discrete locations that can be equipped to offload the co2. Far down the list will be trucks. This is just people trying to look like they are making advancement for funding. If carbon capture of coal p
Energy is power (Score:1)
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This is why I don't take global warming seriously (Score:2)
Oil lobby bollocks (Score:2)
This is yet another one of those stupid stories about unworkable CO2 capture systems that more than likely add to overall CO2 emissions than reduce them. Also, pointless because almost nobody's going to implement them even if they work. For better or worse, electric vehicles are the future now. Let's hope all that extra electricity will be generated from renewables & actually make a difference to overall CO2 emissions.
Now we can start dealing with the more pressing issue of greenhouse gas emissions from
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We also need to give proper consideration and care to the millions of refugees from the planet Mars, because their planet is no longer habitable.