As a "carbon industry" observer, this is pretty exciting news. I've had my eye on Terraform Industries for a while and love what they're doing; they're one of the few groups that actually seem to understand the implications of what it will take to shift to a carbon-neutral economy, and their core insight about the economics of atmospheric fuel synthesis is one of those "obvious when you hear it" ideas: solar electricity is trending ever-cheaper, so rather than trying to maximize efficiency in an expensive piece of kit you can make cheap 'inefficient' equipment and get lower overall costs, which in turn unlocks scale.
I wish their headline was "natural gas from solar power" 'cause many things labeled "carbon neutral" wind-up being conventional petrochemicals plus some worthless "offsets" baloney.
I really wonder about unintended consequences. It's exciting to be able to store solar as methane because we can "plug" this new synthetic methane easily into existing infrastructure. (But we have to get better at leak management!)
However, you almost always go through huge underground methane pockets when drilling for oil. So oil drilling stations vent / flare methane when they can't "off site" it, like when natural gas pipelines are at capacity. In those moments, the price of methane actually drops below zero--I've seen it at -$1.20 per MMBtu as recently as this year! Essentially you are paying someone to get rid of the stuff for you.
So... if we flood the market with new, cost-effective synthetic methane... will companies just flare more of it as we drill for oil?
It's an excellent way forward because it's not only carbon-neutral, it can also "fall back" to pure CO2 capture should we ever get a decent enough grid & storage mechanisms to afford that.
What is going on with the section numbering in that blog and infographic? Super interested in the content I can't focus when we start with section 7 then jump to 9 then 13 then back to 8.
"Why does our website look like this? At TI we believe we can change the world by displacing fossil hydrocarbon production at global scale. Like our website, our machines are simple so we can build millions of them as quickly as possible. Our website embodies our cultural commitment to allocating resources where they solve the most important problems."
> Are you an excellent recruiter? We get a lot of inbounds. To help us qualify your ability to match our needs, please send us your strongest candidate, a singular champion, as an exemplar of your talent hunting skill.
After a lifetime of doing HR software this sparks thoughts about a scoreboard/ranking system for agencies with exactly this kind of "you've got one chance - don't blow it" scenario. Maybe once you've provided 5 great candidates you're allowed a dud or two.
“Like our machines, our website looks awful on a phone.”
Someone could’ve spent literally 5 minutes making this look reasonable on the world’s most popular web browsing device form facto, whilst still retaining the site’s retro virtue signalling aesthetic, AND it wouldn’t have taken away from their ‘core mission’ or whatever.
Really exciting for Terraform to hit this mark. Hopefully true, and not an April 1st joke. Casey Handmer (founder) is a pretty interesting guy. He also helped with the initial analysis of the crackle on the Vesuvius challenge scrolls that contributed to the breakthrough of reading the first passages from the scrolls. See https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/08/05/reading-ancien...
Highly recommend checking out more articles on the Terraform Industries blog and Casey's personal blog.
How will this address methane leakage, which is a substantial source of athmospheric greenhouse gas emissions? Converting Co2 to methane is not carbon neutral if/when leaked...
One can make natural gas from CO2 captured from air and with hydrogen electrolysed form water. But then one has to ask: why not just use hydrogen directly and skip the inefficiency and cost of direct air capture of CO2 and of making methane? If one is dead set on making a carbon-containing synfuel, why methane and not something more storable, like methanol or higher hydrocarbons? Or, why not use the hydrogen to deoxygenate biomass (including waste biomass like paper) instead of laboriously collecting completely oxidized CO2 from air?
> why not just use hydrogen directly and skip the inefficiency and cost of direct air capture of CO2 and of making methane?
Broadly speaking, one key reason is that we've already got the infrastructure in place for using methane (and other hydrocarbons) whereas we do not have this for hydrogen.
Another point is that this really isn't an either-or proposition: if people want hydrogen, then the Terraform electrolyzer can in principle provide it.
Because the economics of storing and transporting hydrogen are just not great. You need a lot of energy and infrastructure to do it. And while the density per kg is great. The density by volume is absolutely terrible because hydrogen is the smallest and lightest molecule. In liquid and gas form it's nearly 3x the volume of methane (for the same amount of energy). If you are transporting it in compressed gas form (like is common to supply hydrogen vehicles), it's about 18x the volume of diesel. Needless to say, this doesn't scale for things like supplying fuel stations. In liquid form, it's better but we're still talking 3x that of methane and 4-5x that of diesel. And to keep hydrogen liquid, you typically boil some of it off continuously: it doesn't keep for very long. Methane has the same problem except the temperatures and pressures are such that it's not an enormous amount. Liquid hydrogen has to be chilled to a few degrees Kelvin. If you ship it around, you'll lose some non trivial amounts over the whole journey.
Most hydrogen produced today is used onsite to produce something else for this reason. Moving it around just adds cost and complexity.
Terraform seems to have made some progress with hydrolizers. But before people start popping champagne bottles, their synthetic gas still is an order of magnitude more expensive than natural gas. So, the value proposition of replacing one of the cheapest (but dirty) fuels with a clean alternative that is much more expensive is limited. And of course the process of using the captured carbon, releases all of it back to the atmosphere. For most use cases, switching to synthetic gas would push those use cases into the deeply unprofitable region. I.e. you'd be considering many other alternatives before committing to that.
Green hydrogen at the price levels they are citing is ballpark getting to a stage where it could replace grey hydrogen and be worth the extra cost just to clean up existing uses of hydrogen. So, things like fertilizer production and other chemical processes. It's still more expensive but the difference could be bridged with subsidies and incentives.
Another point others haven't made, which Terraform Industries points out: that using solar to make Natural Gas is going to be the cheapest form of natural gas production.
You can effectively short circuit the existing fossil fuel industry and pull the hydrocarbons from the air instead of the ground to stay carbon neutral. No need to re-invent industry.
Other commenters have pointed out that hydrogen may not be feasible, but the other direction -- methanol or higher hydrocarbons, seems way more interesting. Storage and density are orders of magnitude easier, and since we're synthesizing it from atmospheric component we don't have to be concerned with contaminants, especially sulfur compounds, that plague higher hydrocarbon use.
Even better in a lot of ways would be to move to amorphous carbon; generating coal from atmospheric CO2 would be a huge win in transportability especially around safety and reliability dimensions.
What are some applications where its worth taking the highest grade energy (electricity) and turning it into a lower grade (eg liquid fuels), rather than electrifying the application?
Electricity to motion is significantly more efficient per input energy than burning fuel->heat-> gaseous expansion->drive a piston->convert to rotation chain.
While this is impressive to some degree I just today watched Climate Town’s “Natural Gas is Scamming America” (https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw) and the entire natural gas industry is tainted beyond belief for me now. It’s not like they were a positive thing in my view before, but on the whole natural gas seems to be just as if not more detrimental than coal for climate change mainly due to how much is leaked out but also how much energy it takes to ship natural gas to other countries. The idea of creating carbon neutral natural gas seems great, but can we maybe avoid holding energy in one of the most climate-change inducing gases out there?
> but also how much energy it takes to ship natural gas to other countries.
Something like this would reduce the need to transport it to other countries, since you can manufacture it anywhere you want. Right now we're limited to where we can pull fossil fuels out of the ground, which means that it has to be transported from one place to another. That's not the case with atmospheric extraction.
I feel the same vibe too about this. If methane leak is an issue, H2 leakage will be a bigger issue. It's far more prone to leakage and far more corrosive.
Indeed, and they claim it is "easily transportable": it seems to be the two are mutually exclusive, if you are going to shove it into the existing systems that leak methane habitually, it's horrific for climate change.
Green hydrogen and other "e-fuels" are an attempt to keep the gas industries infrastructure alive and relevant. If you see someone break down the math it makes zero sense, it just sounds nice.
I see this, and I like how it sounds on the surface. But I can't help but raise an eyebrow when I see "carbon neutral". Got me wondering how they'll be delivering the gas, if they won't be using trucks or building other infra that uses fossil fuel-consuming equipment. If they actually have resolved this end-to-end, super great! But otherwise, I feel like they're still ignoring crucial externalities.
One thing comes to mind: don't transport it. It's sitting right next to a solar power plant...one that shuts down at night. Why not store the gas locally and use it as a battery when the sun isn't shining?
You can run the trucks on liquified natural gas. Or run a natural gas power plant next to the Terraform module that can charge an electric truck's battery.
Couldn't these systems be built much closer to municipalities' distribution centers (compared to existing NG wells), and so require even less transportation than what currently exists?
If the CO2 concentrator could be minimized, it would make an excellent addition to HVAC systems - would minimize the need for outside fresh air if you could just capture the CO2 exhaust from human occupants and expel that. Could even have houses and offices with sub-atmospheric CO2 concentrations!
Last time I looked into this, Terraform's 1MW reactor can fill a normal LNG truck in 145 days of operation. Or if you prefer, 145 such reactors would be needed to fill one (1) LNG truck per day.
The work they're doing will help prove out DAC, moving it further down the tech adoption curve, which is good. The task of making methane from the air should be performed with multi-GW nuclear reactors, which produce full power 90% of the time they exist, and which can use heat instead of electrolysis to free hydrogen, which is more energetically efficient. The use of an extensive and intermittent power source which only produces electricity is a severe limitation here.
1) Does this require that the atmosphere forever stay at the current CO2 concentration, or will it continue to work well if we manage to clean the atmosphere properly?
2) Does this also pave the way for more permanent CO2 cleanup of the atmosphere?
3) Since they have really economical extraction of H2, could they just ramp down the CO2 extraction and instead buy in CO2 emitted from industrial processes? I'm not sure if this is an interesting suggestion or not, since the CO2 goes into the atmosphere either way, but at least we would be getting two usages out of it.
[+] [-] carbonguy|1 year ago|reply
Their recent post on "Terraformer Environmental Calculus" is a great read, if you are interested in this space: https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/2024/02/06/terrafo...
Congratulations to the team!
[+] [-] joe_the_user|1 year ago|reply
I wish their headline was "natural gas from solar power" 'cause many things labeled "carbon neutral" wind-up being conventional petrochemicals plus some worthless "offsets" baloney.
[+] [-] toddmorey|1 year ago|reply
However, you almost always go through huge underground methane pockets when drilling for oil. So oil drilling stations vent / flare methane when they can't "off site" it, like when natural gas pipelines are at capacity. In those moments, the price of methane actually drops below zero--I've seen it at -$1.20 per MMBtu as recently as this year! Essentially you are paying someone to get rid of the stuff for you.
So... if we flood the market with new, cost-effective synthetic methane... will companies just flare more of it as we drill for oil?
[+] [-] groby_b|1 year ago|reply
Really exciting work!
[+] [-] jseliger|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway_5753|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jvanderbot|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] julienchastang|1 year ago|reply
"Why does our website look like this? At TI we believe we can change the world by displacing fossil hydrocarbon production at global scale. Like our website, our machines are simple so we can build millions of them as quickly as possible. Our website embodies our cultural commitment to allocating resources where they solve the most important problems."
[+] [-] beachy|1 year ago|reply
> Are you an excellent recruiter? We get a lot of inbounds. To help us qualify your ability to match our needs, please send us your strongest candidate, a singular champion, as an exemplar of your talent hunting skill.
After a lifetime of doing HR software this sparks thoughts about a scoreboard/ranking system for agencies with exactly this kind of "you've got one chance - don't blow it" scenario. Maybe once you've provided 5 great candidates you're allowed a dud or two.
[+] [-] thesmok|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] lrem|1 year ago|reply
But you know what, http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/
They already have a style element in there. The whole thing becomes readable by just adding a width property. Much better when centered. Done.
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cqqxo4zV46cp|1 year ago|reply
Someone could’ve spent literally 5 minutes making this look reasonable on the world’s most popular web browsing device form facto, whilst still retaining the site’s retro virtue signalling aesthetic, AND it wouldn’t have taken away from their ‘core mission’ or whatever.
If you don’t care, don’t have a website at all.
[+] [-] rbliss|1 year ago|reply
Highly recommend checking out more articles on the Terraform Industries blog and Casey's personal blog.
[+] [-] totalhack|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] oaktowner|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mattjaynes|1 year ago|reply
Overview and tour (~20min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g
Deeper Interview (~40min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekEdq6PhC0Q
[+] [-] consumer451|1 year ago|reply
This is excellent and I highly recommend everybody watches both, starting with shorter one.
Casey, the CEO is super interesting and inspiring.
[+] [-] kartoffelmos|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pfdietz|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] carbonguy|1 year ago|reply
Broadly speaking, one key reason is that we've already got the infrastructure in place for using methane (and other hydrocarbons) whereas we do not have this for hydrogen.
Another point is that this really isn't an either-or proposition: if people want hydrogen, then the Terraform electrolyzer can in principle provide it.
[+] [-] jillesvangurp|1 year ago|reply
Most hydrogen produced today is used onsite to produce something else for this reason. Moving it around just adds cost and complexity.
Terraform seems to have made some progress with hydrolizers. But before people start popping champagne bottles, their synthetic gas still is an order of magnitude more expensive than natural gas. So, the value proposition of replacing one of the cheapest (but dirty) fuels with a clean alternative that is much more expensive is limited. And of course the process of using the captured carbon, releases all of it back to the atmosphere. For most use cases, switching to synthetic gas would push those use cases into the deeply unprofitable region. I.e. you'd be considering many other alternatives before committing to that.
Green hydrogen at the price levels they are citing is ballpark getting to a stage where it could replace grey hydrogen and be worth the extra cost just to clean up existing uses of hydrogen. So, things like fertilizer production and other chemical processes. It's still more expensive but the difference could be bridged with subsidies and incentives.
[+] [-] rbliss|1 year ago|reply
You can effectively short circuit the existing fossil fuel industry and pull the hydrocarbons from the air instead of the ground to stay carbon neutral. No need to re-invent industry.
[+] [-] andrewla|1 year ago|reply
Even better in a lot of ways would be to move to amorphous carbon; generating coal from atmospheric CO2 would be a huge win in transportability especially around safety and reliability dimensions.
[+] [-] airstrike|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] playingalong|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] maerF0x0|1 year ago|reply
Electricity to motion is significantly more efficient per input energy than burning fuel->heat-> gaseous expansion->drive a piston->convert to rotation chain.
What am I missing about this?
[+] [-] willio58|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tedivm|1 year ago|reply
Something like this would reduce the need to transport it to other countries, since you can manufacture it anywhere you want. Right now we're limited to where we can pull fossil fuels out of the ground, which means that it has to be transported from one place to another. That's not the case with atmospheric extraction.
[+] [-] logtempo|1 year ago|reply
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-021-01322-8
an interesting paper for you :)
[+] [-] gorjusborg|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Latty|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] asmor|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jefftk|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] pstrateman|1 year ago|reply
I see H2, DC power, and CO2 DAC, costs but no total.
[+] [-] skeledrew|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] r3trohack3r|1 year ago|reply
Sounds like you’ve answered your own question.
Time for you to get to work on an end-to-end natural gas powered supply chain that can run on the natural gas they’re pulling out of thin air.
Lots of fun problems for you to solve. A lifetime of fulfilling work ahead.
[+] [-] orthecreedence|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] triceratops|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] SamBam|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] leesec|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] goodguy29495|1 year ago|reply
"time to terraform" by Big Bear and the Sierra Serenaders
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] TechnoTopian|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] denysvitali|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] samatman|1 year ago|reply
The work they're doing will help prove out DAC, moving it further down the tech adoption curve, which is good. The task of making methane from the air should be performed with multi-GW nuclear reactors, which produce full power 90% of the time they exist, and which can use heat instead of electrolysis to free hydrogen, which is more energetically efficient. The use of an extensive and intermittent power source which only produces electricity is a severe limitation here.
[+] [-] garfieldnate|1 year ago|reply
2) Does this also pave the way for more permanent CO2 cleanup of the atmosphere?
3) Since they have really economical extraction of H2, could they just ramp down the CO2 extraction and instead buy in CO2 emitted from industrial processes? I'm not sure if this is an interesting suggestion or not, since the CO2 goes into the atmosphere either way, but at least we would be getting two usages out of it.
[+] [-] salynchnew|1 year ago|reply