New discovery reveals how diatoms capture CO2 so effectively(unibas.ch)
unibas.ch
New discovery reveals how diatoms capture CO2 so effectively
https://www.unibas.ch/en/News-Events/News/Uni-Research/New-discovery-reveals-how-diatoms-capture-CO2-so-effectively-.html
37 comments
"The discovery of the PyShell could also open promising avenues for biotechnological research aimed at combatting climate change ..." I wonder. Given that the oceans are already full of these diatoms, and the numbers must be gigantic, would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?
You have made a subtle misalignment of figures here. Yes, these existing diatoms fix 20% of the Earth's CO2 and are present throughout the entire ocean. However, we don't need to compete with that volume. We don't have to do the same order of magnitude to meaningfully impact the carbon cycle.
The Earth's carbon cycle manages about 750 gigatons of CO2/year and humans are emitting ~30 excess gigatons a year on top. The diatoms in the ocean are happily out there processing 150 gigatons of CO2/year, but what we need to engineer is only 30 gigatons (to completely eradicate human emissions).
If we engineered diatoms to fix, say, 0.3 gigatons/year, we'd eradicate a whole integer percent of our emissions.
Heck, if we got it in the 0.03 gigatons (30 megatons/year), we've probably built something scalable and created a useful entry in our portfolio to capture carbon, sinking about 0.1% of our carbon/year.
So, don't despair, we don't have to compete with the ocean! We only need to compete with ourselves! Or maybe do despair? Because we have to compete with ourselves... fundamentally, climate change isn't a technology problem, it's a political problem.
The Earth's carbon cycle manages about 750 gigatons of CO2/year and humans are emitting ~30 excess gigatons a year on top. The diatoms in the ocean are happily out there processing 150 gigatons of CO2/year, but what we need to engineer is only 30 gigatons (to completely eradicate human emissions).
If we engineered diatoms to fix, say, 0.3 gigatons/year, we'd eradicate a whole integer percent of our emissions.
Heck, if we got it in the 0.03 gigatons (30 megatons/year), we've probably built something scalable and created a useful entry in our portfolio to capture carbon, sinking about 0.1% of our carbon/year.
So, don't despair, we don't have to compete with the ocean! We only need to compete with ourselves! Or maybe do despair? Because we have to compete with ourselves... fundamentally, climate change isn't a technology problem, it's a political problem.
I was looking into the numbers and what I could find was that is more like 350 than 750. Source: https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-carbon-dioxide-does.... Still interesting fact not often cited.
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Here are a few reality checks that might unfortunately put a damper on your enthusiasm.
Our yearly emissions are 36GT and ever growing modulo a reprieve in COVID. It was only about 20 just 17 years ago. That means you need to sequester more and more every year just to keep a constant percentage of sequestration. If you include deforestation and wildfires, this number goes up to 41GT which means there’s a compound effect since current models suggest that’s part of a negative feedback loop (ie worse due to our actions and global warming).
Perhaps more importantly, the 750GT number you cited (whatever the real number happens to be) is 1.5x larger than before we started burning fossil fuels at scale. So to get the world back to where it was, not only do we need to overcome our yearly expenditure, we’d have to pay back a lot of CO2 emissions debt we’ve spent building our economy and even 10 GT/year won’t pay back nearly three centuries worth of exponentially increasing emissions on any meaningful time frame once the world is at net 0.
All of this is ignoring the practical realities of scaling carbon sequestration up in a way that’s net positive and even mildly profitable or at least not expensive enough that it doesn’t become a collective action problem.
I’d be the first to celebrate if this were an actual solution, but unfortunately I think carbon sequestration won’t be a meaningful effort to even think about in practical terms until we’re meaningfully on our way to net 0 and we’re well off from that with politicians thinking about maybe banning fossil fuel car sales in 2035 which means it’ll take until 2050 or so for a meaningful percentage of fossil fuel cars to start leaving the road. And ignoring the manufacturing challenges about producing so many batteries (which I think we will probably solve), we’re nowhere close to solving decarbonization of shipping and aviation and don’t have line of sight on the big whale of the energy grid which is responsible for >70% of all emissions (yes yes solar - but worldwide emissions from the energy grid keep going up and we haven’t even made a dent in the second order derivative and maybe just in the third order if you’re optimistic with every indication that we’d actually need nuclear to change the calculus in the short term).
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/152519/emissions-fr...
Our yearly emissions are 36GT and ever growing modulo a reprieve in COVID. It was only about 20 just 17 years ago. That means you need to sequester more and more every year just to keep a constant percentage of sequestration. If you include deforestation and wildfires, this number goes up to 41GT which means there’s a compound effect since current models suggest that’s part of a negative feedback loop (ie worse due to our actions and global warming).
Perhaps more importantly, the 750GT number you cited (whatever the real number happens to be) is 1.5x larger than before we started burning fossil fuels at scale. So to get the world back to where it was, not only do we need to overcome our yearly expenditure, we’d have to pay back a lot of CO2 emissions debt we’ve spent building our economy and even 10 GT/year won’t pay back nearly three centuries worth of exponentially increasing emissions on any meaningful time frame once the world is at net 0.
All of this is ignoring the practical realities of scaling carbon sequestration up in a way that’s net positive and even mildly profitable or at least not expensive enough that it doesn’t become a collective action problem.
I’d be the first to celebrate if this were an actual solution, but unfortunately I think carbon sequestration won’t be a meaningful effort to even think about in practical terms until we’re meaningfully on our way to net 0 and we’re well off from that with politicians thinking about maybe banning fossil fuel car sales in 2035 which means it’ll take until 2050 or so for a meaningful percentage of fossil fuel cars to start leaving the road. And ignoring the manufacturing challenges about producing so many batteries (which I think we will probably solve), we’re nowhere close to solving decarbonization of shipping and aviation and don’t have line of sight on the big whale of the energy grid which is responsible for >70% of all emissions (yes yes solar - but worldwide emissions from the energy grid keep going up and we haven’t even made a dent in the second order derivative and maybe just in the third order if you’re optimistic with every indication that we’d actually need nuclear to change the calculus in the short term).
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/152519/emissions-fr...
Is it possible even in theory to make carbon sequestration profitable? You're going to use a ton of energy to make something that's readily available and for which there isn't much use other than burning (which obviously can't be a use for this).
Maybe we can do things that aren't profitable because we believe they are the right thing to do?
But carbon can produce biochar and and just be pumped directly back into the ground. Getting it out of the atmosphere is the use.
But carbon can produce biochar and and just be pumped directly back into the ground. Getting it out of the atmosphere is the use.
When looking into the physics of infrared-absorption of CO2, I found papers about that quite interesting. Maybe climate change is not a political problem and not a technology problem - maybe it's a mental issue.
Around my place people burned witches for 400 years - to fight lightning strikes.
Removing gigatons of CO2 is maybe on the same level - only more stupid - and bad for plants. Arguments against witch burning didn't have much data to process. For CO2 there's quite some number crunching out there available...
Emotions, despair, anger, ... these are a lot of emotional arguments in the media out there. People should be more cool and only care about the physic and mathematics... And actually read some papers - not this emotional science fluff from the media.
Around my place people burned witches for 400 years - to fight lightning strikes.
Removing gigatons of CO2 is maybe on the same level - only more stupid - and bad for plants. Arguments against witch burning didn't have much data to process. For CO2 there's quite some number crunching out there available...
Emotions, despair, anger, ... these are a lot of emotional arguments in the media out there. People should be more cool and only care about the physic and mathematics... And actually read some papers - not this emotional science fluff from the media.
> When looking into the physics of infrared-absorption of CO2, I found papers about that quite interesting.
>Maybe climate change is not a political problem and not a technology problem - maybe it's a mental issue.
Care to connect these two thoughts for us?
>Maybe climate change is not a political problem and not a technology problem - maybe it's a mental issue.
Care to connect these two thoughts for us?
> Emotions, despair, anger, ... these are a lot of emotional arguments in the media out there. People should be more cool and only care about the physic and mathematics... And actually read some papers - not this emotional science fluff from the media.
No need to be flippant. I can read your comment. That's in fact why I asked a question, it wasn't clear how "the physics of infrared-absorption of CO2" being interesting to you led to the idea that "Maybe climate change is not a political problem".
Repeating that you believe it's valuable to focus on data over emotion doesn't answer the question.
Repeating that you believe it's valuable to focus on data over emotion doesn't answer the question.
> "...would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?"
Good question. Answering questions is called 'research'. ;-)
I'm skeptical for the same reasons as you, too. Let's see... the ocean covers 361km^2. If we could engineer a material with "cells" that were 1000x as effective at carbon capture as diatoms, and the manufactured material was 1000x more densely packed together than diatoms are on the ocean surface, then you'd need 361 square kilometers of the magic material. Which is not out of the realm of possibility, though I have no idea what the density of diatoms is and I have a sneaking suspicion that we'd be looking at more of the 3x-4x range of efficiency improvement. And of course, you need to turn the CO2 into something and deposit it somewhere, and maybe move it around lot. Which would use energy that would produce more CO2, offsetting the gains. Oh, and manufacture the stuff.
I'm thinking releasing less of the stuff and stopping forest destruction might be much more effective for a long time here...
Good question. Answering questions is called 'research'. ;-)
I'm skeptical for the same reasons as you, too. Let's see... the ocean covers 361km^2. If we could engineer a material with "cells" that were 1000x as effective at carbon capture as diatoms, and the manufactured material was 1000x more densely packed together than diatoms are on the ocean surface, then you'd need 361 square kilometers of the magic material. Which is not out of the realm of possibility, though I have no idea what the density of diatoms is and I have a sneaking suspicion that we'd be looking at more of the 3x-4x range of efficiency improvement. And of course, you need to turn the CO2 into something and deposit it somewhere, and maybe move it around lot. Which would use energy that would produce more CO2, offsetting the gains. Oh, and manufacture the stuff.
I'm thinking releasing less of the stuff and stopping forest destruction might be much more effective for a long time here...
> the ocean covers 361km^2
That should of course be 361 million km^2.
That should of course be 361 million km^2.
I’m skeptical that the entities that created this problem - first world countries, industries, politicians all supported by scientific advances can/will solve the problem they created.
The industry will look for a profit motive to solve this. The scientists will look for a publication and fame motive. The politicians will try to grab more power. The poor animals and other third world country people who had nothing to do with this will bear the brunt. Only time will tell.
The industry will look for a profit motive to solve this. The scientists will look for a publication and fame motive. The politicians will try to grab more power. The poor animals and other third world country people who had nothing to do with this will bear the brunt. Only time will tell.
Hmm... If we are removing CO2 at that rate from some place, then the concentration of CO2 in local atmosphere will drop. It will create a gradient so CO2 will start moving toward us, but what the maximum rate of CO2 diffusion? Wouldn't it impair our ability to miniaturize the ocean filled with diatoms as a CO2 absorber?
Though probably one can try to create an artificial wind, blowing CO2-free air away so CO2 could move quickly into the freed space.
Though probably one can try to create an artificial wind, blowing CO2-free air away so CO2 could move quickly into the freed space.
There are a lot of prevailing winds around the world. You'd have to go out of your way to find somewhere still enough that local concentration could drop, rather than just creating a very slight CO2 "shadow" downwind.
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Extracting CO2 from the air likely requires some energy, and seafloor organisms are almost certainly energy-constrained. We could beat the seafloor simply by providing more energy, if we get within the ballpark of their efficiency. We have plenty of deserts and solar panels.
> if we get within the ballpark of their efficiency
In all likelihood, we can get ~10x better efficiency without trying very hard.
Living beings don't focus much on growing. They are usually less than 1% efficient on that, with more complex life being on the order of 0.1% efficient.
In all likelihood, we can get ~10x better efficiency without trying very hard.
Living beings don't focus much on growing. They are usually less than 1% efficient on that, with more complex life being on the order of 0.1% efficient.
That's a standard line included in almost all photosynthesis research these days because of the global concern about fossil-fueled global warming, as a justification for continuance of one's research group funding, even if the relationship is rather minor.
The key point of this paper with respect to synthetic industrial photosynthesis:
> "Reaction-diffusion modeling of C. reinhardtii suggests that all pyrenoid-based CCMs require the following essential features: (1) aggregation of most of the chloroplast’s Rubisco enzymes, (2) a local source of high CO2 concentration at the center of this Rubisco aggregate, and (3) a diffusion barrier at the aggregate border to prevent CO2 leakage. Our data indicate that the PyShell contributes to the first two essential pyrenoid features (Figure 5A), and we wonder whether the PyShell may directly perform the third (Figure 5B)."
A big difference between oceanic diatoms and land plants is that the former's carbon source is bicarbonate, and diatoms convert bicarbonate (HCO3-) to CO2 which is utilized by Rubisco to fix CO2 onto a five carbon sugar which then splits into two 3-carbon species that are fed into carbon metabolism to generate lipids, amino acids, carbohydrates, etc. Increasing CO2 concentration around Rubisco makes the process more efficient (as this keeps out the O2, and avoids futile cycles where the O2 gets added to the target sugar). Some land plants (grasses, cacti) use alternative concentration systems not involving bicarbonate (bundle sheath and CAM).
The real takeaway for industrial-scale synthetic photosynthesis efforts is that it's always more efficient to preconcentrate CO2 into a 100% CO2 stream before feeding it into a reaction process with suitable robust catalysts in which O2 is removed and H2 is added to generate methanol or methane (somewhat analogous to ammonia synthesis) which (if you want to do real long-term storage) can be converted to materials like carbon fiber or diamond.
The key point of this paper with respect to synthetic industrial photosynthesis:
> "Reaction-diffusion modeling of C. reinhardtii suggests that all pyrenoid-based CCMs require the following essential features: (1) aggregation of most of the chloroplast’s Rubisco enzymes, (2) a local source of high CO2 concentration at the center of this Rubisco aggregate, and (3) a diffusion barrier at the aggregate border to prevent CO2 leakage. Our data indicate that the PyShell contributes to the first two essential pyrenoid features (Figure 5A), and we wonder whether the PyShell may directly perform the third (Figure 5B)."
A big difference between oceanic diatoms and land plants is that the former's carbon source is bicarbonate, and diatoms convert bicarbonate (HCO3-) to CO2 which is utilized by Rubisco to fix CO2 onto a five carbon sugar which then splits into two 3-carbon species that are fed into carbon metabolism to generate lipids, amino acids, carbohydrates, etc. Increasing CO2 concentration around Rubisco makes the process more efficient (as this keeps out the O2, and avoids futile cycles where the O2 gets added to the target sugar). Some land plants (grasses, cacti) use alternative concentration systems not involving bicarbonate (bundle sheath and CAM).
The real takeaway for industrial-scale synthetic photosynthesis efforts is that it's always more efficient to preconcentrate CO2 into a 100% CO2 stream before feeding it into a reaction process with suitable robust catalysts in which O2 is removed and H2 is added to generate methanol or methane (somewhat analogous to ammonia synthesis) which (if you want to do real long-term storage) can be converted to materials like carbon fiber or diamond.
Engineer a more efficient diatom. Release it into the wild. What could go wrong.
I guess there would be a silicate famine in the seas, that seems to be the limiting factor for diatom presence overall among plankton
[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatom#/media/File:Diatoms_Egg...
[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatom#/media/File:Diatoms_Egg...
Perhaps silicate is already the limiting factor and thus we simply need to add silicate to the sea in ratio with the amount of carbon we want to capture.
Similar has been tested with iron + algae and seems to work well.
Similar has been tested with iron + algae and seems to work well.
Sahara is full of silicate. Just make it green.
We'd need to be careful not to "overshoot". If the ocean were somehow made into an even more efficient carbon sink, and human CO2 emissions decline significantly in the coming decades, atmospheric CO2 might eventually find a new equilibrium below pre-industrial levels!
Does atmospheric CO2 act to moderate combustion ? Would your scenario increase (wild)fire risk ?
No, but plants need CO2 to do photosynthesis. If atmospheric CO2 concentration falls significantly below 100 ppm, all plants doing C3 photosynthesis (that's pretty much all of the most useful plants, including pretty much all trees) start dying, and only the C4 plants remain.
This would end pretty much all higher life on land.
There are theories that earth was slowly moving towards this point naturally, as across the last 2 million years, CO2 concentration successively decreased with each passing glacial period. Maybe humans inventing fire saved everything!
This would end pretty much all higher life on land.
There are theories that earth was slowly moving towards this point naturally, as across the last 2 million years, CO2 concentration successively decreased with each passing glacial period. Maybe humans inventing fire saved everything!
Fire is primarily moderated by the available oxygen. The atmosphere is about 20% oxygen, 0.04% CO2, removing CO2 won't meaningfully impact the oxygen concentration
> would humans be able to do anything in the same order of magnitude?
We can definitely try to increase wheat production by trying to make a GMO. This could be ground breaking for food production.
We can definitely try to increase wheat production by trying to make a GMO. This could be ground breaking for food production.
Think about how much plastic we produced ? When we want to do something at scale we can.
When individuals want products we're capable of incredible things
As it climate change gets worse, we will want more carbon munching things.
Am I the only one that saw this and thought, "What's a python shell got to do with it?"
https://github.com/JoelGMSec/PyShell
https://github.com/JoelGMSec/PyShell
No, you're not; however, since there weren't any comments here condemning PyShell's (lack of) speed and stating the absolute need for rewrite in another language[1], it was easy to deduce that Python-the-language really wasn't mentioned in the article.
[1] with the obvious advantage of improving performance by 2 orders of magnitude thus solving Earth's carbon cycle issues
[1] with the obvious advantage of improving performance by 2 orders of magnitude thus solving Earth's carbon cycle issues
Python seems to be embedded everywhere nowadays :D
“We have now discovered that diatom pyrenoids are encased in a lattice-like protein shell,” says Dr. Manon Demulder, author on both studies. “The PyShell not only gives the pyrenoid its shape, but it helps create a high CO2 concentration in this compartment. This enables Rubisco to efficiently fix CO2 from the ocean and convert it into nutrients.”