I think you have a point. It could be difficult to justify the cost of carbon capture based on sequestration alone. One of the reasons I think this might still work is that captured carbon can be used to create platform chemicals (various hydrocarbons) using the fischer tropsch process. Electrofuels are using direct air capture to generate fossil replacements.
Only requirement is energy and there too it isn't all that expensive to pull air in from the atmosphere or to seperate CO2 from adsorbent via low grade heat (70-100c)
So far into the future this method could allow us to continue produce critical hydrocarbon materials (used everywhere from plastics to pharamaceuticals) without having to depend upon concentrated and contested oil supplies.
More than energy efficiency its volumetric efficiency that's the issue. At the moment (to the best of my knowledge) kg of capturing materials capture tens of grams of CO2. Pulling it from air is not that energy intensive but finding materials that can actually filter out CO2 from that air is difficult. If breakthroughs are made in this area it will have industrial applications. Then it won't be just sequestering.
Of course the easier solution is to plant more trees and grasses but they grow very slowly and require valuable land. Still this approach is feasible in some uncultivable lands. Crops like cottongrass[1] can grow even in tundra climate and can be valuable source of both technically imp carbon via cellulose and a means to capture CO2. We don't have to make a choice. We can do both simultaneously.
I wonder what the economics could look like for using this with remote solar for production instead of considering it for global removal/sequestration. If you build a solar farm in a desert and use this to pull raw materials from the air to create something actually worth money, what levels of efficiency do you need to make that profitable? How close is something like that in reality?
Giant miscanthus can grow on land that's not viable for farming food (other than grazing grasses), has a lot of properties that ready it for becoming charcoal (high tonnage per acre, self drying, minimal inputs needed). Without a price for carbon, it's hard to make it work, though.
I find it a bit funny. Robert Stirling invented the Stirling engine because steam engines were dangerous (at that time) and could explode.
Malone(and others apparently) took Stirling engines and filled it with compressed water as a working fluid with some decent efficiency!
The advantage, based on what I could gather from limited info available, was that these liquid engines could be run at lower temp differential making them great for low grade heat recovery.
A few years ago I took his course on thermoelectricity and really liked his way of teaching. The videos were short and to the point and yet gave me all that I needed to know about the topic.
Rousseau was famous for saying that man is born free and is everywhere in chains. He advocated for self rule and formulation of laws by the people. Yet after 100s of years of democracy (thousands really) the corrupting influence of social norms has not really been remedied.
Inequalities still exist,corruption still happens and social institutions that were once liberating become oppressive over time.
His ideal of self governance has not been realised as most nation states have adopted a representative democracy. People don't really make the rules. They just handover the power to someone else who makes them on their behalf.
It's certainly right that Franklin believed in practicing virtue. He famously kept a log of his good and bad actions.
Yet there is another great philosopher that has had tremendous impact on American society whom the author has not mentioned. Emerson believed in transcending societal definition of virtue and vice and follow one's own inclinations. His ideas of self reliance resonated with American people and brought about a change in their thinking when they started to believe in themselves rather than looking to Europe for intellectual guidance.
I find it difficult to accept either Franklin's or Rousseau's view as they were more politically motivated—Rousseau wanted his social contract,Franklin worshiped Socrates but when it came to governence he kicked him aside to chose democracy,an idea that was popular at the time due to thinkers like Locke.
Emerson gave people true agency over their lives and inspired them to think critically and not sheepishly believe a thing to be good or bad. He was more revolutionary than Franklin (Self reliance was released around the time of civil war) and gave people courage to question institutional authority and he eventually became more impactful than Rousseau's collectivism.
I don't know. Content matters more to me. Many of the articles that I read have so little information density that I find it hard to justify spending time on them.I often use AI to summarise text for me and then lookup particular topics in detail if I like.
Skimming was pretty common before AI too. People used to read and share notes instead of entire texts. AI has just made it easier.
Reading long texts is not a problem for me if its engaging. But often I find they just go on and on without getting to the point. Especially news articles.They are the worst.
I have a Garmin with a sapphire screen. I've worn it every day for over 5 years, working on cars, in the garden, snorkelling on coral reefs.
In short, I my watch has NOT had an easy life. I've made no attempt to protect it or taken it off for anything except charging. There is barely a mark on the screen. A sapphire screen will be a hard requirement for my next watch.
I wear mine while rock climbing. The watch has been put through a lot of beating against all kinds of rock. I've already chewed through 3 straps on this watch. The titanium case is lightly scratched, but the screen is absolutely pristine!
This is my second sapphire Garmin, and it's absolutely worth the premium.
I think what they have grown diamond on the transistor which then bonds to the substrate through a SIC interlayer.
From what I understand their idea seems to be that since most heating occurs at channels they act like hotspots and therefore it would be much better to drain away heat from them directly.
This is different from creating transistors on a diamond substrate.
Only requirement is energy and there too it isn't all that expensive to pull air in from the atmosphere or to seperate CO2 from adsorbent via low grade heat (70-100c)
So far into the future this method could allow us to continue produce critical hydrocarbon materials (used everywhere from plastics to pharamaceuticals) without having to depend upon concentrated and contested oil supplies.
More than energy efficiency its volumetric efficiency that's the issue. At the moment (to the best of my knowledge) kg of capturing materials capture tens of grams of CO2. Pulling it from air is not that energy intensive but finding materials that can actually filter out CO2 from that air is difficult. If breakthroughs are made in this area it will have industrial applications. Then it won't be just sequestering.
Of course the easier solution is to plant more trees and grasses but they grow very slowly and require valuable land. Still this approach is feasible in some uncultivable lands. Crops like cottongrass[1] can grow even in tundra climate and can be valuable source of both technically imp carbon via cellulose and a means to capture CO2. We don't have to make a choice. We can do both simultaneously.
[1] https://www.fs.usda.gov/database/feis/plants/graminoid/eriva...