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How Carbon Capture and Storage Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always is
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Speaker 1: the lovely Chuck Bryant staring at our new jute rug
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Speaker 1: hanging from our new wall. What's up, Chuck? We must
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Speaker 1: be like going places. We have a jute rug hanging
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Speaker 1: from the wall. I feel silly because they called it Berber.
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Speaker 1: That's okay, I'm over here feeling stupid. They're both from
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Speaker 1: the same area. That's the world that they better be
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Speaker 1: because if you start getting the cool thing is is
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Speaker 1: when we're corrected though we are literally corrected. I'm sorry,
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Speaker 1: we're corrected by literal experts. Have you noticed. Yeah? True,
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Speaker 1: yea many times, like it would be like a jute
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Speaker 1: rug manufacturer or somebody with a PhD and jute rug
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Speaker 1: studies who will email us about or Henry Jute himself, right,
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Speaker 1: the father of jute ruggery. Yeah, so other than the
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Speaker 1: whole Berber jute thing. How are you feeling? Oh, I'm good.
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Speaker 1: A little tired, but I'm fine. Are you tired? Chuck,
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Speaker 1: you should look into energy drinks. I just drank one
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Speaker 1: and I'm like, yeah, I'm not a fan. I like
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Speaker 1: the taste. No, no, good enough? Do you want to
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Speaker 1: move on? Sure, let's do that. What's funny is is
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Speaker 1: that came out is like seven seconds and it really
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Speaker 1: lasted what like four minutes? Yeah, if people only knew
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Speaker 1: thanks to the wonder of YERI. Yeah, So, Chuck, um
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Speaker 1: you may have noticed, and I know you did because
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Speaker 1: that person we used to relay information to us between
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Speaker 1: the two of us because we can't stand one another really,
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Speaker 1: Uh told me that you told her that you already
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Speaker 1: knew this. Are you following me so far? No? I
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Speaker 1: don't think anyone else is either. Okay, we already did
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Speaker 1: this one. Yeah, we should go ahead and say that, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: this is about carbon capture and storage. And uh, it
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Speaker 1: seemed oddly familiar when I was researching, and that's because
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Speaker 1: we did, in fact do this last lie. But it
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Speaker 1: was one of our little baby podcasts when we first started,
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Speaker 1: and it was like five seven minutes long something like that,
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Speaker 1: and it just really didn't do this topic justice. And
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Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, hot dog, carbon capture and storage
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Speaker 1: is cool enough and important enough to do twice. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and don't worry, folks, We're not gonna start rehashing things.
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Speaker 1: We have plenty of topics weeks or you have to cover.
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Speaker 1: But we just want to do this because we're in
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Speaker 1: a little green sweet kick exactly. Yeah. And plus you know,
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Speaker 1: the first one just didn't quite do it. Usually when
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Speaker 1: we do a podcast, it stays done, right. This one
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Speaker 1: didn't quite stay done and it was still squirming. We
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Speaker 1: hadn't put the nail into the back of the head yet.
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Speaker 1: We're gonna do that here. Yeah, So, Chuck, this one
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Speaker 1: is laden with stats. As I was reading this article,
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Speaker 1: I thought, Chuck is going to go crazy for this one.
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Speaker 1: Give me the first stat buddy. Let's talk about c
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Speaker 1: O two in the greenhouse effect, right, let's do Okay,
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Speaker 1: So we do have this layer of carbon dioxide that
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Speaker 1: allows sunlight to pass through and some to stay. It
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Speaker 1: keeps bouncing back and forth, which we need to degree
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Speaker 1: or else trees wouldn't grow, children wouldn't skip and play
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Speaker 1: supported for photosynthesis, right, so we do need it. What
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Speaker 1: would happen if we didn't have this, uh, this greenhouse
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Speaker 1: layer surrounding the earth like a warm blanket, Josh, if
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Speaker 1: we had no greenhouse effect, our planet would be about
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Speaker 1: minus twenty two degrees fahrenheit, which is minus thirty degrees
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Speaker 1: celsius for our friends who don't use the Imperial system.
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Speaker 1: So it would be a frozen planet basically, yeah, oh yeah,
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Speaker 1: we wouldn't be around, I'll tell you that. So we
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Speaker 1: want the greenhouse effect. We want this stuff to come
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Speaker 1: through and to warm our Earth. The problem is is
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Speaker 1: when enough of it doesn't get bounced back into outer space,
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Speaker 1: then it gets a little too warm because the other
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Speaker 1: the other direction. We don't have a stat on that,
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Speaker 1: but as you can tell, summers are getting a little hotter,
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Speaker 1: and uh, I'm sweating a lot more. We do have
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Speaker 1: a stat on that as far as it getting hotter.
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Speaker 1: Uh well, emissions, I'm sorry, emissions increasing. I kind of
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Speaker 1: bent that one little bit. But from nineteen seventy two
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Speaker 1: thousand four, the greenhouse gas emissions have increased over that
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Speaker 1: thirty four year period, right and there there's actually plenty
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Speaker 1: of different greenhouse gases You've got, like nitrous oxide, methane, um,
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Speaker 1: even water vapor is technically a greenhouse gas up there. Um,
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Speaker 1: So all this stuff kind of combining traps in the
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Speaker 1: sun's heat. Um. But worst among them as far as
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Speaker 1: what we're doing to contribute, which is called anthropogenic contribution, uh,
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Speaker 1: is carbon dioxide. Because between that same period, would you say,
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Speaker 1: it's nineteen seventy two thousand four, our carbon dioxide emissions grew.
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Speaker 1: That's that's significant. Yeah, close to doubling. That's that's a lot. Right.
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Speaker 1: Then you remember the chloro hydrofluorocarbons I think is what
4:50
Speaker 1: they were called, the CFCs yet chlorofluora carbons, uh, And
4:54
Speaker 1: then they were in aerosol sprays and like everybody's like,
4:57
Speaker 1: oh god, you know, it's everything's going to end, and
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Speaker 1: the we just got rid of aerosaults. Kind of we
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Speaker 1: need to figure out a way to do that with
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Speaker 1: carbon dioxide emissions too. Well, we kind of are yeah,
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Speaker 1: and what is it? Well, that's what we're talking about again,
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Speaker 1: which is a carbon capture and more importantly storage, because
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Speaker 1: capturing carbon, I mean, none of it's easy, but what
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Speaker 1: you do with it is what's important. Sure, yeah, I
5:20
Speaker 1: mean we can't yeah put in the backyard, sure right,
5:23
Speaker 1: you can put it very deep in the backyard. You
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Speaker 1: could not get to that nice for shadowing so let's
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Speaker 1: talk about trapping carbon dioxide. First. They capture part of
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Speaker 1: carbon capture and storage, which, if you want to look
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Speaker 1: green savvy in front of your friends, just toss out
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Speaker 1: ccs and they will be wowed. Yeah, we've actually been
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Speaker 1: doing this for a while, Josh, what you and I
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Speaker 1: year at least ye know capturing carbon. Oh, yeah, we've
5:46
Speaker 1: been doing that for a while because the oil and
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Speaker 1: gas industries do that. They they've been doing that for
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Speaker 1: decades to enhance oil and gas recovery. Right, because you know,
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Speaker 1: when when you tap in uh oil reserve all the
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Speaker 1: deposit in the earth, it's actually there's a ton of
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Speaker 1: gases holding it down. It's pressurized actually, so the stuff
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Speaker 1: is it comes out really easily. But as the gases
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Speaker 1: that are holding this, they're pressurizing this underground cavern, escape
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Speaker 1: into the atmosphere, um, it becomes harder and harder to
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Speaker 1: get the oil out. So they figured out that if
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Speaker 1: you pump CEO two into these half depleted deposits, it
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Speaker 1: repressurizes it and it makes the oil easier to to
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Speaker 1: get out. Right, So out of that becomes a more
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Speaker 1: environmentally friendly use, which is capturing carbon from Mother Earth. Right,
6:31
Speaker 1: and even more so since we're already or since the
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Speaker 1: oil companies are already using sea pressurized c O two
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Speaker 1: uh to to for enhanced store recovery. There's already a network,
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Speaker 1: a system of pipelines and stuff in in in our
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Speaker 1: infrastructure structure. Wow, I love that word infrastructure. But that's
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Speaker 1: I do too. It's very comforting, it is. Yeah, it
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Speaker 1: sounds like somebody's in charge, so we're I'm getting ahead
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Speaker 1: of myself. That's the that's part of the storage. Right,
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Speaker 1: Let's keep talking about capture, Josh. There are three main
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Speaker 1: steps to CCS, and that is the trapping of the
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Speaker 1: carbon uh the separating of the CEO two from other gases,
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Speaker 1: and then transporting it to a place where you can
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Speaker 1: store it away from the atmosphere. Right. And actually, strangely enough,
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Speaker 1: there's three methods that we've come up with for doing this. Right.
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Speaker 1: So you've got you love that, dun't you. You've got
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Speaker 1: post combustion, pre combustion, and oxyfuel combustion right down. Okay,
7:30
Speaker 1: well I'll break down post combustion. It's exactly what it
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Speaker 1: sounds like. Say you've got a coal fire power plant.
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Speaker 1: Coal is super dirty, even clean coal is very dirty. Uh.
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Speaker 1: If you can figure out a way to trap that
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Speaker 1: CEO two that's escaping from the fluid, Uh, then all
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Speaker 1: of a sudden you've just captured carbon. Right. And one
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Speaker 1: way to do that is to introduce some sort of
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Speaker 1: like gel or compound. Uh. There's some I know Georgia
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Speaker 1: text working on one called hyper branched you know, silica. Wow,
8:01
Speaker 1: look at you. Thanks? You weren't even reading that. No,
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Speaker 1: it wasn't very impressive. Oh, it's not even in this article, pal,
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Speaker 1: And my brain is musters no. Um. And actually I
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Speaker 1: guess it's because it's so hyper branched. Um. It traps
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Speaker 1: carbon dioxide molecules and it actually locks into them. So
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Speaker 1: it's a silica. It's kind of sandy. So it works
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Speaker 1: as a filter. It does. But you know, so some
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Speaker 1: flu gases get out, but the carbon dioxide doesn't. And
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Speaker 1: the cool thing is it's like it just sits there,
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Speaker 1: just traps it until it's heated again. And if you
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Speaker 1: heat it in the under the right circumstances, you can
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Speaker 1: capture just the c O two and compress it and
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Speaker 1: get rid of it. That's one example of post combustion.
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Speaker 1: The key to post combustion is you're already burning the
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Speaker 1: fospil fuels and you're capturing as much CO two as
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Speaker 1: you can before it escapes into the atmosphere out of
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Speaker 1: smoke stack. Right. One thing I noticed in that where
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Speaker 1: you said once you heat it again, it leaves behind
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Speaker 1: the concentrated uh CEO two, but it releases water vapor.
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Speaker 1: Is I wonder if that water vapor is part of
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Speaker 1: the problem as well, though it seems get water vapor
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Speaker 1: is again it's a greenhouse gas, but it's also a
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Speaker 1: flu gas, which is a mixture of a whole bunch
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Speaker 1: of stuff that that that comes out of burning fossil fuels.
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Speaker 1: But again we're after the CEO two, but it seems
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Speaker 1: like getting the CEO two separated from the water vapor
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Speaker 1: is a problem as well. Yeah, so you want to
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Speaker 1: do precombustion. Yeah, uh, this is when carbon is carbon
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Speaker 1: is trapped I'm sorry, carbon dioxide, I guess I should
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Speaker 1: say is trapped before the fossil fuel is burned, so
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Speaker 1: before it's diluted with other flu gasses. Um is when
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Speaker 1: you when you capture it, so precombustion, before it's burned
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Speaker 1: and apparently chuck what you do is you actually heat
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Speaker 1: whatever fossil fuel you're using, uh, in the presence of
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Speaker 1: pure oxygen, and you get this other, this brand, this
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Speaker 1: completely different thing, carbon monoxide and hydrogen, right. And then
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Speaker 1: you run into a catalytic converter and it produces more hydrogen,
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Speaker 1: which is good because you can actually reuse that for
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Speaker 1: energy to maybe even power this whole process, right uh.
9:59
Speaker 1: And then you get car and dioxide as well, right uh.
10:02
Speaker 1: And then you put them in a flask with a
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Speaker 1: chemical called aimine, and the aiming actually holds the CEO
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Speaker 1: two down on top of it. Right, and then eventually
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Speaker 1: you can extract the aiming and the hydrogen, reuse the
10:17
Speaker 1: aiming and trap the CEO two. It sounds like kind
10:21
Speaker 1: of a lot, it does. I wonder if we're gonna
10:22
Speaker 1: get get any cool sound effects like our distillery. That
10:25
Speaker 1: would be very cool. That would be super cool. And
10:28
Speaker 1: if we did, Yeah, didn't you just hear it. Yeah,
10:30
Speaker 1: Jerry's ignoring us right now, so that might not happen. Um.
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Speaker 1: So the it is a lot pre combustion. Is it's
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Speaker 1: a big process. Yeah, it's already in use actually for
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Speaker 1: natural gas. They've already been using this. It is the
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Speaker 1: thing is is it's in use in a brand new
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Speaker 1: power plant. The good thing about post combustion is you
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Speaker 1: can run around the country and retrofit old power plant
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Speaker 1: to capture carbon dioxide. Pre combustion you pretty much have
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Speaker 1: to build that in as you're building a new power plant.
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Speaker 1: And it's also super expense. Well, this has a lot
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Speaker 1: of energy. What precombustion Yeah, oh yeah, No, I thought
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Speaker 1: it was lower in cost, is it. Well, the process
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Speaker 1: is lower in cost, but I think it's more expensive
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Speaker 1: because it's not a retrofit, right. But it also it's
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Speaker 1: it's higher in the cost of energy that it uses
11:15
Speaker 1: to this process. From what I understand, I was talking
11:17
Speaker 1: about dollars. Buddy, Hey dude, you still for energy somehow,
11:21
Speaker 1: pay an hour, pay later, right, right. And then the
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Speaker 1: last one is oxyfuel, right, oxyfuel combustion, Yeah, that's uh.
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Speaker 1: The power plant burns fossil fuel and oxygen and this
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Speaker 1: results in a gas mixture comprised of steam and carbon dioxide.
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Speaker 1: So the steam and c O two are separated when
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Speaker 1: you cool it and compress the gas, uh stream Right,
11:44
Speaker 1: So there you have it. There you have, and all
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Speaker 1: three of these captured between eighty and the carbon dioxide
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Speaker 1: that's escaping. I think oxy fuels the most oxy feels
11:55
Speaker 1: topping out at nine um. So those are pretty much
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Speaker 1: the three competing ways to UH capture carbon dioxide and
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Speaker 1: use right now. And it seems like we're talking about
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Speaker 1: power plants a lot. Those are definitely the focus of
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Speaker 1: carbon capture right now. You know, they're huge emitters of
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Speaker 1: carbon diox So, like there's a I think a Southern
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Speaker 1: Company plant in Juliette, Georgia, and it emits more carbon
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Speaker 1: DIOXI than the entire power infrastructure of Brazil, which seems
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Speaker 1: a little lopsided because you just blogged about Brazil recently
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Speaker 1: on a sugarcane biofuels, right, and they're very, very energy
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Speaker 1: independent thanks to the cellulistic ethanol that they make from sugarcane.
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Speaker 1: So it's a lopside in comparison. But still one power
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Speaker 1: plant shouldn't be putting out, you know, more CEO two
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Speaker 1: than any country. Sure you would think, right, but that's
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Speaker 1: less that country is tiny, Like maybe Vatican City Is
12:50
Speaker 1: that a country, dude? I I walked around Vatican City
12:53
Speaker 1: one time by accident. Well it was my friend Brett
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Speaker 1: and I kind of well we were on the wrong
13:01
Speaker 1: side of of where we needed to be, and we thought, well,
13:03
Speaker 1: we'll just skirt around this wall here, and I think
13:05
Speaker 1: it'll be quicker. And I didn't realize that we're walking
13:08
Speaker 1: around the country. Did you come face to face with
13:10
Speaker 1: the pope and they're just like But it took forever.
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Speaker 1: It was much a much longer walk than I anticipated.
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Speaker 1: And now that I realized it's a country that kind
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Speaker 1: of all makes sense. Does it make sense? It does
13:20
Speaker 1: cool place though I've heard moving on. Yes. So now, Josh,
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Speaker 1: what we have is captured carbon. We got a whole
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Speaker 1: lot of carbon dioxide. What do we do with the chuck? Well,
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Speaker 1: you need to transport at first before you can store it?
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Speaker 1: How through a pipeline? Oh yeah, I already talked about that. Right.
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Speaker 1: That's a good thing is that infrastructure is in place.
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Speaker 1: And uh, I think here's another stat there's more than
13:41
Speaker 1: fift miles of CEO two pipelines already in place here.
13:46
Speaker 1: And it sounds like technically it's not like consider the
13:49
Speaker 1: then oil pipelines and that kind of thing, and that
13:52
Speaker 1: actually I was talking about a lopside of figure with
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Speaker 1: the Southern Company plant in Brazil. Um, you know CEO
13:58
Speaker 1: two pipeline safe. Uh as far as fatalities and accidents go,
14:03
Speaker 1: it's really low compared to like natural gas and in
14:06
Speaker 1: hazardous materials pipeline. I think to the tune of um,
14:09
Speaker 1: I've got stats, I can't now. These are death Okay,
14:16
Speaker 1: that's uh, we're talking. These are death. We're talking Between
14:20
Speaker 1: nine six and two thousand six, there's only been twelve
14:22
Speaker 1: CEO two pipeline leaks with no injuries and none yeah
14:26
Speaker 1: none zip and over the same period more than five
14:29
Speaker 1: thousand accidents within a hundred and seven fatalities with liquid
14:35
Speaker 1: um petroleum pipelines. So whoop whoop. It sounds like CEO
14:38
Speaker 1: two pipelines are way safer, but there's a lot fury. Yeah. Uh.
14:43
Speaker 1: And your friend Debbie Ranka thinks that these things, that
14:46
Speaker 1: these accidents will probably increases the UM CEO two pipeline
14:50
Speaker 1: infrastructure increases in in breadth. Right, and we should say
14:54
Speaker 1: Debbie wrote this, we didn't just chat about this and
14:56
Speaker 1: Debbie throughout her opinion, Debbie wrote this awesome formal trains
15:00
Speaker 1: and pediatrics, Right, Debbie a freak girl dot com? Is
15:03
Speaker 1: that her? Huh nice good girl? Oh, you're just plug happy,
15:06
Speaker 1: aren't you. You know, I think just for old times sake,
15:09
Speaker 1: you should plug our audio book I mean, you know,
15:12
Speaker 1: uh spoken word album. Yeah, well, I'm never going to
15:15
Speaker 1: get that right there in the front of my head.
15:16
Speaker 1: They will never be the first thing I call that.
15:19
Speaker 1: So now we have it in a pipeline and we
15:22
Speaker 1: are transporting it where it needs to go, which it
15:24
Speaker 1: depends on where you pick it up and where it
15:26
Speaker 1: needs to be for where it needs to travel, I mean,
15:28
Speaker 1: is pretty simple, right, but we're also we should probably
15:30
Speaker 1: say that there's different You could transport CEO two three
15:34
Speaker 1: different ways, right, gas, liquid, and solid, right, and the
15:36
Speaker 1: most efficient is is uh is gas? Right? Yeah? Yeah,
15:40
Speaker 1: of course? Um solid CEO two actually is dry eyes
15:43
Speaker 1: did you Yeah, yeah, I didn't. And it's not very
15:47
Speaker 1: cost effective to transport as a solid obviously, um, and
15:51
Speaker 1: gas is easier because you can compress it with these
15:53
Speaker 1: uh you know, these compressors kind of push it through
15:55
Speaker 1: the pipeline every so often they have these compressors. And
15:58
Speaker 1: where are you shooting it too, though, shooting into the
16:01
Speaker 1: storage area chuck there? Yeah, Which that depends on what
16:05
Speaker 1: storage you're gonna use, what kind of storage you're gonna use. Well,
16:07
Speaker 1: what kind do you want to use? I mean, there's
16:08
Speaker 1: only two underground and underwater, right right? What kind do
16:11
Speaker 1: I want to use? What kind do you want to use?
16:13
Speaker 1: If you're Chuck King of the World and somebody says, what,
16:16
Speaker 1: let's see something about CCS, you say, I decree that
16:19
Speaker 1: we're going to store it underground, underground? Alright? Nice? The
16:24
Speaker 1: ocean thing worries me a little bit. They both worried
16:26
Speaker 1: me a little bit, actually, but yeah, let's start with underground. Okay,
16:29
Speaker 1: let's do underground. Um, well, Josh, there are some estimates.
16:33
Speaker 1: If you want another stat you're right, this is chuck
16:35
Speaker 1: full of stats. Um, the planet can store up to
16:38
Speaker 1: ten trillion tons of CEO two underground, which is a
16:42
Speaker 1: hundred years of storage of all human anthropogenic carbon contributions,
16:47
Speaker 1: which sounds good, but that's really not very long d years. No,
16:49
Speaker 1: but consider this. I was actually um when I wrote
16:52
Speaker 1: the article can we bury our CEO two problem under
16:56
Speaker 1: the ocean? I think is what it was called. There's
16:59
Speaker 1: no telling what kind of technology we're going to have.
17:01
Speaker 1: We could conceivably take that trap carbon dioxide and and
17:05
Speaker 1: exert tons of force and and make synthetic petroleum out
17:10
Speaker 1: of it. Yeah point yeah, So a hundred years is
17:13
Speaker 1: a really long time with the kind of technological advances
17:16
Speaker 1: we've been we've been undertaking in the last hundred years,
17:20
Speaker 1: right yeah, I mean think about nineteen odd nine and
17:23
Speaker 1: what it was like then. I don't like to compare
17:25
Speaker 1: to now that's a syphilis yeah yeah sure. So yeah,
17:31
Speaker 1: that's underground. Um. You know, it's pressurized when it's at
17:34
Speaker 1: deep underground, and it behaves more like a liquid than
17:37
Speaker 1: a gas when it's at fronder ground because it like
17:39
Speaker 1: seeps into other little cracks and porous rocks, which is
17:42
Speaker 1: a good thing, right. And actually there there's a specific
17:45
Speaker 1: rock that they found um works really well for carbon storage,
17:50
Speaker 1: and that is basalt, which is volcanic rock, right yeah, yeah,
17:53
Speaker 1: and they just inject us what is it? Do they
17:55
Speaker 1: inject gaseous gasified CEO two? I think so? Yeah, they
18:01
Speaker 1: injected directly into the rock. And actually the rock transforms
18:04
Speaker 1: from base all into limestone. Pretty cool. It converts it
18:07
Speaker 1: into rock. So basically like it's like a hyper accelerated,
18:13
Speaker 1: uh geological process that's going on. But when I read that,
18:16
Speaker 1: I thought, wow, that's great, what a great idea, we
18:18
Speaker 1: just need to run around injecting all the base all
18:20
Speaker 1: in the world with c O two and will be set.
18:22
Speaker 1: It will just have a big limestone planet. And then
18:25
Speaker 1: again I thought, we really don't know what we're tinkering
18:29
Speaker 1: with here, Like what happens if we have like too
18:32
Speaker 1: much limestone on the planet. We we can't say we
18:35
Speaker 1: don't know. Like this, I can't tell almost I hate
18:40
Speaker 1: to admit this, but I can't tell if this kind
18:42
Speaker 1: of tinkering may actually result in much more catastrophic consequences
18:46
Speaker 1: than just going the way we're going and trying to
18:49
Speaker 1: go with biofuels. I don't you know, a lot of
18:53
Speaker 1: the End of the World movies where it shows like
18:55
Speaker 1: the future, how mankind was wiped out, the little thing
18:58
Speaker 1: they'll use to to turn the story was we were
19:01
Speaker 1: trying to do something great and discovered something we thought
19:03
Speaker 1: was great, but it turned out to be some irrevocable
19:06
Speaker 1: change that lead to our demands. You're talking about soil
19:10
Speaker 1: and Green, of course, Well yeah, and just a lot
19:12
Speaker 1: of movies like that. But that's a great point. Actually,
19:13
Speaker 1: Slowly Green is a great example. I think we're doing
19:17
Speaker 1: something really good and that might lend lead to our
19:19
Speaker 1: undoing water World. Greatest movie ever made? Definitely? Maybe? Really? Yeah,
19:27
Speaker 1: what did that have to do with this? It's highly
19:29
Speaker 1: post apocalyptic. Okay, let's just see that one. I thought
19:33
Speaker 1: it was you haven't seen it. I thought it was
19:34
Speaker 1: a cheesy romance. No, it starts out like that and
19:36
Speaker 1: the twist at the end is mind boggling. Yeah, it's
19:39
Speaker 1: like The Road Warrior. So go ahead, Chuck. We're talking
19:41
Speaker 1: underground or are we done with that part? No, well
19:44
Speaker 1: we're almost done. What happens is they're studying all that
19:47
Speaker 1: right now, so your fears hopefully can be dismissed because
19:51
Speaker 1: they're looking to see what the result will be. Sure
19:53
Speaker 1: and as far as it goes, I think the oldest
19:56
Speaker 1: um underground uh CEO two Georage site is actually under
20:02
Speaker 1: the sea floor in Norway and it's only as old
20:05
Speaker 1: as nine and it hasn't had an accident or anything,
20:09
Speaker 1: but it's still it's only thirteen years old. Yeah, so
20:12
Speaker 1: I mean what happens in fifty years or a hundred
20:14
Speaker 1: years exactly? And that's what they're keeping their eye on.
20:16
Speaker 1: I mean they're worried about it too. I mean, we
20:18
Speaker 1: definitely have to do something, but I don't know. I'm
20:22
Speaker 1: just a little hesitant, all right, I agree, Yeah, well
20:25
Speaker 1: you wanna talk about the ocean. Yeah, let's talk about
20:27
Speaker 1: the ocean. I'm I'm with you. I'm much more trepid
20:29
Speaker 1: about the ocean storage and that, Um there's again. I
20:33
Speaker 1: wrote an article called can we bury our CEO two
20:35
Speaker 1: problem in the ocean? And in that article, um, there's
20:38
Speaker 1: this guy who came up with these the idea of
20:40
Speaker 1: having these pipelines pump liquefied not gasified, but liquefied CEO
20:45
Speaker 1: two directly into enormous bags. That's right at the abysmal plane. Yeah,
20:51
Speaker 1: not abysmal plane, the Yeah, but I imagine it's pretty
20:56
Speaker 1: abysmal down there. Yeah. Um, so yeah, down on the
20:59
Speaker 1: abysmal plane, right, And uh, it's it's a pretty good idea.
21:02
Speaker 1: The problem is, these huge, enormous bags can only store
21:05
Speaker 1: I think a day or ten worth of carbon dioxide captured.
21:11
Speaker 1: It would be a lot of bags, and they end
21:13
Speaker 1: up really quick, and if any one of them ruptured,
21:15
Speaker 1: we don't know what would happened. But apparently from a
21:18
Speaker 1: little more investigation, if we bury this stuff or dump
21:22
Speaker 1: it in the ocean deep enough which is to the
21:26
Speaker 1: tune of about eleven ft um. Then we can just
21:31
Speaker 1: let it go and hope for the best that the
21:33
Speaker 1: the incredibly low pressure uh and temperatures will basically globify it,
21:40
Speaker 1: compress it, it it ull be floating around. Sounds like that terrible,
21:44
Speaker 1: terrible idea to me, with any kind of cloud that
21:49
Speaker 1: I may have as a human being and a podcaster,
21:52
Speaker 1: I would like to hear now say that I think
21:56
Speaker 1: just dumping our captured carbon diode die oxide into the
22:00
Speaker 1: ocean is one of the worst ideas I've heard this year. Yeah,
22:05
Speaker 1: I know, Green Pieces and wild about the idea, and
22:07
Speaker 1: they said it's not even feasible until at least the
22:11
Speaker 1: year so you know, I mean, I have two camps.
22:16
Speaker 1: It's good that we're exploring things like this, but you know,
22:19
Speaker 1: it would be much better if we had electric cars
22:22
Speaker 1: powered by solar energy rather than just thinking of different
22:25
Speaker 1: ways to keep using fossil fuels over and over and
22:27
Speaker 1: over right now, And and that's a good point. I
22:29
Speaker 1: noticed Green Pieces kind of not too hip on this either,
22:32
Speaker 1: and I agree with them as well. I think that
22:34
Speaker 1: we basically have to stuff like this really distracts us
22:39
Speaker 1: from making hard decisions and hard choices. So this is easy.
22:44
Speaker 1: We get to like our lives don't change at all.
22:46
Speaker 1: It's just the power companies need to go retrofit their
22:49
Speaker 1: old their old flus with you know, scrubbers of some sort. Uh.
22:54
Speaker 1: And but for us to have electric cars or to
22:57
Speaker 1: have bio fuels, we're gonna have to pay more gallon
23:00
Speaker 1: kind of thing. So it does affect us. So people
23:02
Speaker 1: aren't paying that much attention to it. That's how to say.
23:05
Speaker 1: This is pielos Y technology, though, you know, I mean,
23:08
Speaker 1: it's very viable and it's going on now still right,
23:11
Speaker 1: Hopefully works are going to be done on a lot
23:13
Speaker 1: of fronts and there will be multiple solutions. You know
23:15
Speaker 1: what my favorite idea was, But did you read it
23:18
Speaker 1: that little sidebar about the company's sky Mine. Okay, So
23:21
Speaker 1: sky Mine has figured out a way where they just
23:23
Speaker 1: take um sequestered carbon dioxide and they inject it with
23:28
Speaker 1: salt and water sodium hydroxide, right, and it creates a
23:33
Speaker 1: chemical reaction that forms baking soda. That's it kind of baking.
23:38
Speaker 1: So it's good for everything, it is everything. I just
23:41
Speaker 1: think that's the greatest idea ever. The problem is we'd
23:43
Speaker 1: have massive baking soda stores and the baking soda market
23:47
Speaker 1: in which I'm heavily invested with just bottom out. So
23:51
Speaker 1: I mean, I like it as an idea, but financially
23:53
Speaker 1: it would suck for me. Right, No fridge would ever
23:55
Speaker 1: stink again, though, No, we can probably make fridges out
23:58
Speaker 1: of baking soda with that muchly, you know, if they
24:01
Speaker 1: can make a suitcase out of cocaine, they can probably
24:03
Speaker 1: make a refrigerator out of baking soda. The operative word
24:06
Speaker 1: is they. But getting back to the water real quick.
24:10
Speaker 1: You were talking about leaking CEO two from the ocean,
24:13
Speaker 1: remember our Little Exploding Lake podcast. Yeah, that's a great
24:17
Speaker 1: example of the coming up through the water. So that
24:20
Speaker 1: could happen lakes. And we should also probably mention carbon sink, yeah,
24:25
Speaker 1: which is a phenomenon the The ocean actually does absorb
24:29
Speaker 1: CEO two from the atmosphere already, and what happens now
24:33
Speaker 1: is it's sinking to the bottom ideally, but some oceans,
24:37
Speaker 1: like the Southern Ocean, have soaked up so much that
24:39
Speaker 1: it's not soaking it down to the bottom anymore. It's
24:41
Speaker 1: not sinking, it's kind of staying on top. And that
24:44
Speaker 1: makes the water very acidic, which is not good for fishies. No,
24:47
Speaker 1: which is again like nives. We have no idea what
24:50
Speaker 1: happened in the marine life, probably because they were exploded
24:52
Speaker 1: into trillions of pieces. That's toughs account. So yeah, a
24:58
Speaker 1: little troublesome. I mean capturing carbon this is this is
25:00
Speaker 1: a good thing. Storing it a little more dodgy, yeah,
25:04
Speaker 1: I mean, we'll see what happens. We're gonna script this
25:06
Speaker 1: planet one way or another. Might as well make it quick,
25:09
Speaker 1: like in just a huge massive eruption of c O
25:12
Speaker 1: two into the atmosphere that chokes us all the death.
25:14
Speaker 1: That sounds encouraging. Sure, well, it'll get filtered out eventually
25:17
Speaker 1: in some strange new life form will eventually take over
25:20
Speaker 1: and screw it up later on. So, oh you're a
25:23
Speaker 1: bright one today. It's just a shining light. Yeah, so Chuck,
25:27
Speaker 1: I'm glad we did this again, buddy, This one, this
25:30
Speaker 1: one's done until next time, until that carbon dioxide exploit.
25:34
Speaker 1: Let's agree right now, we don't do carbon capture and
25:37
Speaker 1: storage again until that massive eruption takes place, All right, okay?
25:41
Speaker 1: Deal Part three that you have it coming not too soon,
25:44
Speaker 1: so you know what time it's for then it's time
25:47
Speaker 1: for Chuck to plug our spoken word album. Go ahead. Wow,
25:50
Speaker 1: it's been so long. Um it was on economics, if
25:53
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, The Stuff you Should Know a super
25:56
Speaker 1: Stuff out of the Economy. Yeah, you can buy it
25:58
Speaker 1: in your iTunes store for what was planal price four
26:00
Speaker 1: bucks something like that, something like that. Nice and and
26:06
Speaker 1: again we got really good feedback on it. We did. Yeah,
26:09
Speaker 1: and that was a good experience. So yeah, there's Chuck
26:12
Speaker 1: plugging our audio book, The Stuff you Should Know super
26:15
Speaker 1: Stuff Guide to the Economy. I can't believe I remember
26:17
Speaker 1: the name. And it's just World Time Safe and that
26:20
Speaker 1: means that it is listener mail time. All right, Chuck,
26:25
Speaker 1: what do you have for us, baby compass head Catcher's mit.
26:28
Speaker 1: I have something I'm just gonna call shocking listener mail.
26:33
Speaker 1: We have a lot of that lately. Yeah. We had
26:34
Speaker 1: a fan that wrote in that UM was struck by lightning. Yeah,
26:38
Speaker 1: but not just the fan, but her dog too. Yeah,
26:41
Speaker 1: And she just kind of off handedly mentioned it because
26:43
Speaker 1: she was talking about she read that spontaneous human combustion
26:47
Speaker 1: could be caused by lightning, and I was struck by lightning,
26:50
Speaker 1: by the way, And that was kind of it, and
26:52
Speaker 1: I wrote her back. It was like, no, no, no, no,
26:53
Speaker 1: you need to give me some details here because I
26:55
Speaker 1: would like to read this on the air. And I've
26:57
Speaker 1: never talked to anyone who I was struck by lightning. Yeah,
26:59
Speaker 1: so here we go. It turns out it was a
27:01
Speaker 1: side strike, which I never heard of. Uh, And she
27:05
Speaker 1: says a side strike is a really well phenomenon of lightning.
27:08
Speaker 1: It struck about a half a block from me. It
27:10
Speaker 1: was incredibly bright, and I was blinded for a few
27:13
Speaker 1: minutes afterward. I was not back about six feet but
27:16
Speaker 1: still landed on my feet and I couldn't hear for
27:19
Speaker 1: a good half hour afterward. It was a booming and
27:22
Speaker 1: crackling yet incredibly quiet, which I thought it was interesting.
27:26
Speaker 1: I can't totally explain the sound except to compare it
27:29
Speaker 1: to the sound you get when you skydive, which didn't
27:31
Speaker 1: help me. It's I've never been skydivan. It's kind of
27:34
Speaker 1: have you done it? No, no way, it's terrifying. Okay,
27:38
Speaker 1: I believe it the rush of wind booms around you,
27:41
Speaker 1: but it's definitely still would you agree with that? Yeah,
27:45
Speaker 1: similar sort of Oh you were all hammered when you
27:47
Speaker 1: did it? When you're talking about remember uh. In my
27:51
Speaker 1: research about lightning strikes and strike victims, I found it
27:53
Speaker 1: incredible that a side strike can occur UH up to
27:57
Speaker 1: a mile away from something and you can still receive
28:00
Speaker 1: the electrical charge. I saw the lightning strike, but I
28:02
Speaker 1: didn't feel any pain, so I assumed I wasn't hit.
28:05
Speaker 1: It wasn't n till later in the day when Burnmark
28:07
Speaker 1: showed up. I don't think I lost consciousness, but I
28:09
Speaker 1: was totally routed on the spot where I was standing.
28:14
Speaker 1: Rooted is r O U T. I'm not sure. If
28:18
Speaker 1: it wasn't for my dog, I probably would have continued
28:20
Speaker 1: to stand there for a while. Yeah, I guess she
28:22
Speaker 1: was rooted. That makes sense. My dog was so frightened
28:25
Speaker 1: that she just took off running. I was holding onto
28:27
Speaker 1: the leason couldn't let go, so I sort of ran
28:30
Speaker 1: blindly after her to her house. I was an emotional
28:33
Speaker 1: blur for a decent while afterwards. Consequently, my dog's black
28:38
Speaker 1: fur is now very speckled with white hair. And let
28:42
Speaker 1: me see actually coincides with another of our podcast. Oh yeah,
28:47
Speaker 1: and she had singes across her fingers and toes, little
28:50
Speaker 1: burn blisters and as far as long term damage. And
28:54
Speaker 1: you see she has affected her balance sum and messes
28:58
Speaker 1: with her inner ear at her frontal lobe is fine,
29:01
Speaker 1: and she's taking neurological exams in psychological testing and she
29:05
Speaker 1: is fine and normal and considers herself very lucky. I
29:07
Speaker 1: consider her very lucky too. That is doll. That is
29:10
Speaker 1: Hannah of Tennessee. And we're very glad that you and
29:12
Speaker 1: your little girl Pucci are all Okay, Hannah, I would
29:15
Speaker 1: strongly recommend that you play the lotto as often as
29:18
Speaker 1: you can. Yeah. So yeah, If you want to tell
29:21
Speaker 1: us any amazing true stories about lightning, shark attacks, far fights, whatever,
29:27
Speaker 1: you can send us an email. That's what they call
29:30
Speaker 1: in these stags, right, chuck electronic men. You can send
29:33
Speaker 1: that to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com
29:43
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
29:45
Speaker 1: it how stuff works dot Com brought to you by
29:55
Speaker 1: the reinvented two thousand twelve Camra. It's ready, are you