Researchers are developing a living material that actively extracts carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Photosynthetic cyanobacteria grow inside it, forming biomass and solid minerals and thus binding CO2 in two different manners.
  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zipEnglish
    16·
    9 days ago

    Hydrogel and algae.

    I wonder about the upkeep, fungus, infections, if you use this in buildings?

    is alive, grows and actively removes carbon from the air.

    And gives the carbon back after it dies.

  • JasonDJ@lemmy.zipEnglish
    14·
    8 days ago

    Where does the CO2 go when it dies?

    Look…man…the whole thing about carbon is the carbon cycle, right?

    Well we are breaking that cycle by digging up long-sequestered carbon (in the form of long-chain hydrocarbons aka “fossil fuels”) and burning them up in alarming quantities.

    At absolute best, this material will be carbon neutral.

    We need more phytoplankton…when that consumes CO2 and dies, most of it sinks to the ocean depths forever, instead of coming up to the atmosphere.

    • prettybunnys@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      I’d heard a fairly novel idea about farming trees and burying them as pulp in old mines, I’m sure it’s just ASKING for some kind of wild underground mine fire but … similar concept

      • JasonDJ@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        I think that wouldn’t work unless the mine is perfectly sealed.

        The pulp would still get eaten and digested microorganisms and carbon released to air.

        Plus there would be a ton of wasted carbon on harvest, pulpifying, transport…unless those are all done with green energy.

        The reason why we have fossil fuels is because of the carbon that didn’t get released to the atmosphere. It got trapped in a hypoxic water/swamps where bacteria and microorganisms couldn’t decompose it.

        We could build hypoxic lakes for disposal of large chunks of “organic” (as in alive) carbon to be sequestered…but it couldn’t be done at a scale to even begin to touch what we’ve released. Maybe if we gmod some bacteria or plankton to chew it up and poop it up real fast. And put all the carbon we can find into the pit.