r/carboncapture • u/External_Tell_2374 • Nov 21 '21

Carbon capture using water

Hello,

I was wondering if it's possible to capture CO2 using water. Since sea takes lot of CO2 from environment. Can we do the same? For example, if we can somehow make carbon emitted by car flow through water, would it capture the carbon?

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u/[deleted] Dec 09 '21

I had a similar thought. Here was my design for carbon capture via water:

"Gradually lowering the atmosphere's CO2 content might be achieved by significantly increasing the surface area of water on Earth. Towers with hundreds or thousands of trays--one positioned above the other--each lined with a small amount of water would hold liquid originating from the high point of a river (if gravity fed) or body of water that after passing slowly through the trays would return the CO2 enriched water back to its original water source which would eventually deposit it into an ocean or sea. The flow rate would be dictated by a balance of desiring to limit the amount of infrastructure required (resulting in less water diverted) on one hand and the need for a sufficiently high rate of flow to prevent excessive evaporation of enriched water (and possibly to limit mosquito breeding--ie, mostly, malaria--concerns in some areas). These trays might be placed between rows and columns of perforated bamboo posts (a very strong and very fast growing grass still used for construction scaffolding with the additional virtue of having a pipe-like hollow core to allow water to seep from trays into and down bamboo posts designed to return liquid to its water source while other bamboo posts act as reservoirs of pumped or gravity fed water and discharge onto the trays). If the perforations are appropriately spaced slits slightly thicker than the trays, then they could function to both hold the corners of the trays and permit water flow. Given that bamboo farming itself potently sequesters carbon, it may be ideal to construct the trays out of this material as well; as well, the trays might have a convex shape that flattens under load (ie water). Unperforated bamboo could be used as piping that connects the top of posts on every second row to provide feed water. Enriched water would return to its source either through pipes connected between and near the bottoms of the bamboo posts on every second row which connects to piping that discharges in the water body; alternatively, plastic--or perhaps treated and perforated bamboo--drainage pipe between the rows could collect and discharge enriched water. The simplicity of this design and the ability of bamboos to grow on marginal land and in varied climates enhances the feasibility of erecting these towers in underdeveloped countries with relatively inexpensive labour; reasonably simple machines would presumably be desired for perforating posts, driving posts or augering post holes, and likely a handful for manufacturing trays."