Graphyte is a company that buys biomass byproducts and compresses them into bricks which are then buried. This prevents the carbon in the biomass from being released into the atmosphere. On its website it says:
Graphyte is focused on working with partners responsibly to ensure our solution is not used as a replacement for direct emissions reduction strategies.
Today Graphyte signed its first commercial contract. It's with American Airlines, which plans to buy carbon credits from Graphyte instead of reducing emissions. Ahem.
But this isn't what drew my attention initially. To make its bricks Graphyte collects biomass leftovers like forestry waste, crop residue, and garbage. But isn't that stuff already being used by companies that convert it into renewable fuel? And how much of it is around, anyway?
According to the Department of Energy, the answers are (1) yes and (2) about 250 million tons per year. At one-third of a ton of capturable CO2 per ton of biomass waste, this represents roughly 1.4% of the six billion tons of CO2 the US currently emits each year.
The Energy Department also estimates that biomass waste could increase to about 800 million tons by 2040. If every gram of this were used for carbon sequestration it would still amount to only about 4% of all US carbon emissions.
So color me skeptical on the scalability front. Obviously not every gram of biomass produced is available for Graphyte's use. At a guess, the plausible amount available in the US would amount to maybe 0.1% of carbon emissions today and 0.5% by 2040. Every little bit counts, but this just isn't much.
POSTSCRIPT: Of course, Graphyte can be a global business. At a rough guess, its max potential for carbon capture worldwide is probably on the order of 1% of CO2 emissions today and 5% in 2040.
All that carbon-rich "biomass" can be used productively as fertilizer, compost, mulch, at the very least. So their business model is to compress and bury beyond all retrieval the good stuff? Seriously?
That's on a par with manufacturing "clean-burning hydrogen" from ... wait for it ... natural gas. The energy-losing conversion being powered by burning petroleum, of course.
this company is more interested in greenwashing and converting corporate PR dollars into management salaries
Yeah, I have to agree.
Assuming they're even doing what they say they are (I want to know who is auditing them, for starters), this just looks like a goofy arbitrage play about trash prices.
Even if it is "legit", expect it to last exactly as long as it takes for the pricing to change.
The "biomass" they're crushing and burying is from the past century or so at the latest, while natural gas and coal and oil release carbon captured over millennia. That's the real problem, not that we're not capturing enough of what's produced today but that we're releasing what was captured before the invention of the wheel.
If these folks buried every piece of biomass they're saving a century of capture, but by burning coal and oil and natural gas we're releasing centuries of capture. Seems our money could be better spent on finding alternative, safe fuels and energy production rather than reducing feed and compost.
I don't think the sequestration percentage needs to be 100 percent or even close to that to have an impact. I mean, some of that carbon in the atmosphere grabbed by plants and exchanged for oxygen.
I'm not all that familiar with these numbers, and yes, I'd like to see something more effective than bricks (which one day will turn into coal and/or oil, right?)
It might help a little for the next few decades, anyway. I don't think anyone is going to worry much about the bricks turning to to fossil fuels in the ground tens of thousands of years in the future. Humankind might find better much climate conservation and energy systems, given all that time to work them out.
What the commenters are missing is that fighting climate change requires many, many different innovations. Of course, Graphyte's scheme is not going to solve the problem by itself. And the reliance on voluntary private carbon credits may not hold up. But it does amount to some million tons of carbon removal, which is good if they can make it work as a business, so why take potshots at it? We need hundreds of such innovations to add up to meaningful reductions. And the airlines are pushing hard to replace conventional jet fuel with SAF (sustainable aviation fuel), which -- I can hear the howls of "greenwashing" already -- is a genuine climate change reduction method, at least for the 4 or 5% of our emissions that come from aircraft. It pains me to see how hard researchers and engineers work to develop things like this, only to have to endure the mockery of activists who think we can solve climate change by throwing food at paintings.
Would I invest in Graphyte? Probably not because I think the cash flow prospects are too fragile. But I applaud their effort to do something new and innovative. If we can get 50 such innovations to each remove 1% of our emissions, my calculator says that would be 50%. That's a hell of a lot better than 0%, which is what most critics are achieving.
"What the commenters are missing is that fighting climate change requires many, many different innovations"
But this isn't an innovation that fights climate change--it's thermodynamic ignorance. Ask yourself: how much energy does it take to collect, transport, compress, and bury 250 million tons of compressed carbon per year (keeping in mind you have to dig up a roughly equivalent amount of heavy stone in order to do the burying). That energy production either emits carbon, in which case maybe you break even, or it's zero-emission, in which case that energy would have been put to better use displacing carbon-emitting energy rather than engaging in this goofy rube goldberg process.
^^This^^. I can't see how this nets out as carbon negative.
You do not have to dig up an equal amount of dense stone.
While I have doubts about their ability to make and store the bricks, your straw-man argument is not helpful.
I did say "roughly equivalent amount"; given that "carbon bricks" are likely somewhere between peat and coal in density, so about 1 or 1.5 grams per cubic centimeter, and that density of dirt and rock is about 1-2 grams per cm3, I stand by my statement.
Now, if you have some way of burying carbon bricks that doesn't involve digging a hole to put them in or covering them up with fill material (or both), that could reduce at least that *portion* of the ridiculous energy needs such a scheme would involve.
Maybe we dump the bricks in a cave or something. But it would need to be a colosal cave/system of caves (because we're talking hundreds to thousands of megatons of material annually here), and probably *dry* caves, too, since an wet environment would just let all sorts of living things eat the bricks and turn them back into CO2 or worse methane, so transport energy costs would likely increase to get the bricks to these special locations.
The energy expended, and the destruction of ecosystems and ground water, likely far outweigh the carbon sequestration benefits.
i'd be more impressed if the airlines committed to building solar, wind, or even nukes equivalent to 5% of co2 emissions
it scales, and the cost/benefit ratios are well known, but actually solving the problem is a lot more expensive than just pretending to
The question I have is "How much is Graphyte getting in Biden climate deal tax credits or other incentives that could have been better spent on technologies like wind, solar, pumped storage, grid improvements, etc that actually directly reduce greenhouse gas production?". I honestly don't know, but I suspect the answer is that producing less greenhouse gases in the first place is wildly more cost effective.
If carbon emission were to fall drastically, such a solution would obviously look better, no? And the real scalability would involve cultivating biomass uniquely to sequester its carbon.
Perhaps it’s all a scam, but humanity had better start placing plenty of bets such as this one in the hope that some combination helps us get a handle on global warming.
Basically their plan is to bury peat. I would think that it would be obvious that recycling biological carbon is way better than landfilling it. The only think worse is those stupid mail us your kitchen waste scams.
My question is if we go whole hog on the carbon capture front and overshoot our CO2 target, will we end up starting an ice age?
Got a long way to get there, but maybe the bricks would work because you could pull then out of the ground if you wanted to add CO2 back into the atmosphere.
"My question is if we go whole hog on the carbon capture front and overshoot our CO2 target, will we end up starting an ice age?"
Well, there was no ice age in the 18th century, so we'd have to remove the 50% increase in atmospheric CO2 that we've added since then. Which is a bit more than a thousand gigatons. Assuming that Kevin has calculated the theoretical max annual carbon removal potential of this approach, that would take us about five centuries (5% of current ~40 gigatons per year = 2 gigatons removal per year) once we achieve a net zero carbon economy.
So, the risks of overshooting are extremely small.
And it would be so very easy to find stuff to burn to get plenty of CO2 back.
"The little ice age had 3 particularly cold intervals, One began about 1650, another in 1770 and the last in 1850." -- Wikipedia article for Little Ice Age.
So, we did have an ice age in the 18th century.
There's a theory that the little Ice Age came from North American forests regrowing after the Native Americans were decimated by introduced European diseases. So, the people living in North American kept the forests at bay so they had open clearings for their crops and homes, but after so many of them died of smallpox and other new diseases, the forests regrew.
This massive increase in photosynthesis pulled CO2 out of the atmosphere, and the Thames River froze.
I think what we need to do is undo a portion of the desertification humans have wrought with agriculture (have you looked at the "fertile crescent" lately?). We could pull a lot of carbon out of the air with projects like the Loess Plateau project in China.
Oh hey ... you brought this up before me. I put it in my post down below without seeing it here. Good summary.
BTW ... Loess Plateau in China:
https://youtu.be/YBLZmwlPa8A?si=J4jWD97SmZesjJLl
Doesn't compression use energy and storing cause methane production?
Seems a bit unwieldy, if you ask me. I would be surprised their balance sheet was net negative.
That said, saying something is a small part of our emissions is a terrible argument because everything is a small part of emissions. We need to do lots of different things. But the all need to actually work.
The enterprise seems very tricky to evaluate as regards energy. For instance, if they did their compression in Wenatchee, WA using electricity, that energy would be almost completely hydroelectric, and thus have very little associated carbon emissions (but not zero, of course).
The devil is in the details. It also strikes me that as our electrical grid continues to convert to non-carbon-emitting power generation, the equation will look better and better.
The methane production, on the other hand, I don't really know anything about.
They say they are 10% the energy vs other carbon removal (scrubbing?) but that doesn't address the question of the carbon expended : sequester ratio.
They do wrap their bricks in something (probably plastic) that keeps water out ... no water, no decomposition, no methane.
But still a boondoggle.
"For instance, if they did their compression in Wenatchee, WA using electricity, that energy would be almost completely hydroelectric, and thus have very little associated carbon emissions"
Bubbles under wallpaper! If we divert nearly-zero-carbon electricity from the hydro dams, then the good people of WA just need to import more electricity from somewhere else, which will likely be higher carbon. We need to convert our electric grid to zero-carbon and then electrify everything, not waste energy on idiotic brick-burying exercises.
another question
burying biomass isn't just burying carbon
stuff like copper, zinc, molybdenum, manganese, phosphorus, etc., would also be removed
not sure burying that stuff is environmentally benign in the long run
From Department of Energy @
https://netl.doe.gov/coal/carbon-capture/compression
"CO2 Compression
Carbon dioxide (CO2) captured from coal flue gas or synthesis gas must be compressed (to a pressure between 1,500 and 2,200 psi) to transport it via pipeline for geologic storage, enhanced oil recovery, or CO2 utilization.
Compression of CO2 is challenging because it represents a potentially large auxiliary power load on the overall power plant system. For example, in an August 2007 study conducted for NETL, CO2 compression was accomplished using a six-stage centrifugal compressor with interstage cooling that required an auxiliary load of approximately 7.5 percent of the gross power output of a subcritical pressure, coal-fired power plant."
Lots more on carbon management from the DOE
https://www.netl.doe.gov/carbon-management
This whole thing is just so engineer vs soil scientist. Its clearly financial engineering, but the idea that we can grab carbon, put it somewhere and say "Fixed it" is just so wrong. Its important to see carbon as an essential ingredient in biological systems, and can be considered a beneficial multiplier instead of a waste product.
Consider : What if we took all of that waste material and composted it, and put it back onto fields and forests? Engineers look at this as a waste product that needs disposal and assume that it will decompose into CO2 and methane - but that's not what happens. PROPERLY composted (that's key) there is some loss of carbon as CO2 but no methane. Put the compost on the fields and back in forests - you are building the microbiology in the soil and that biology doesn't necessarily sequester carbon (its not inert) but it is held in the biological processes. Good soil also has benefits for crops, water retention, and general climate resiliency - which means that working the carbon into the ground allows nature to grab MORE carbon from the air as plants grow.
I'm doing this on the farm and forest I manage. Its a real thing.
Look on YouTube for Gabe Brown and Elaine Ingham:
https://youtu.be/TLwsn8snsMc?si=Llpex4goqdpBUEZb
https://youtu.be/ECHYChDUfhQ?si=G12spqhCAYFDHXA9
thank you....biowaste really should go to building soils...
Also note: the world tried using renewables for fuel--i.e. we burned wood. There's not enough wood around to do that now. Biofuels for limited items that are not amenable to electrification, e.g. airplanes, should be ok.
Airplanes use a lot of fuel. Smaller and typically older regional jets use a lot of fuel per passenger. So take a train for bus....except....Larger modern planes packed to the gills have carbon per mile traveled that are not hugely higher than taking a train--and typically travel fewer miles, sometimes a lot fewer. The net result is that flying might be a better choice. If the rail section being used is electrified, then rail can easily win the low carbon race. If it's diesel-electric, then maybe not.
In addition the skepticism already expressed, about how much carbon gets emitted gathering, transporting, and processing all this biomass into bricks? I have observations: even if all that stuff happened absolutely for free, the end product is still a thing that has to be in managed storage to not turn back into CO2. It's not really "carbon sequestration" in any meaningful sense. Projects like this might make marginal contributions to mitigating climate change, but if this is all we've got we're in trouble.
Agreed. Its a version of the Titanic's Deck Chairs.
Sure, its less energy intensive than "brand X" carbon sequestration ... but they are really asking the wrong question! Instead of "how can we hid carbon cheaply?" they should be asking "how can we use this carbon to capture more carbon?"
And to the TINAs who say it can't be done ... sadly the introduction of European diseases so thoroughly wiped out native populations on the American continent. Those natives were using a lot of management methods to keep forests at bay... and without them there was a 200 year long boom in forest growth. that pulled out CO2 ... so much that it caused a cooling/mini ice-age in Europe.
Trees can do this.
What about ag? Well, maybe we should consider that we're doing that all wrong instead of insisting that we couldn't possibly try to farm differently and that we must continue the path laid down by chemical companies after WWII.
The conservation of (carbon) mass implies that if it is buried, you're effectively removing atmospheric carbon. Whether or not it is more feasible than carbon sequestration is something you would want to talk about, because ultimately this is what our concern would be, don't you think?
The approach works under certain conditions. By the name of the company, they MAY be considering doing it right.
You have to get the material below the water table in the first place or it will oxidize - and that includes the ocean. But general buried organic waste is biologically digested and Methane is released - see Methane release by garbage dumps as well as by coal beds. Methane is a lot worse than CO2. So you need to carbonize the waste to release the bound hydrogen before you bury it - Anthracite coal doesn't release much Methane. But carbonizing the waste is pretty much going to require partial burning of it, so that reduces the carbon credit.
Dumping organic detrius to sink to the bottom and be buried by mud at the mouth of a river is not the way to do it unless the waste has been thoroughly carbonized. Otherwise you will get a massive dead zone and eventually get giant gas burps, typically of Methane, CO2, and H2S. These can be very unhealthy for everything in the sea and nearby land.
Putting ground basalt / periodite in the soil or (very finely ground) dispersing it over the ocean does a permanent removal - and is probably cheaper. It is the standard geological carbon cycle - just speeded up.
I love how many people here are piling on @citizen99 with cheap "it's so obvious this can't work" comments that they must have spent, oh, 30 or 40 seconds composing.
I tend to agree that this one doesn't sound like such a good idea, for all the reasons cited, but citizen99 is absolutely correct that there's unlikely to be one thing that solves this. It will take a lot of good few-percent ideas, and I'm not inclined to trash people who have one. Certainly not after such a tiny bit of thought. After hearing, what, a few sentence elevator speech worth of explanation?
Maybe this company is ripping off the infrastructure fund. Seems quite possible. But until we know more I can think of about 100 things that are more clearly deserving of outrage this evening. Like Israel. Or Hamas. Or Nikki Haley. James Comer. That Milei guy from Argentina.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but all the carbon capture solutions seem a long way off. Today we are basically at the prototype/demonstration stage. In 10 years, we might be sequestering on the order of 1% of global emissions. It will take another 10 to 20 years to sequester a meaningful amount of carbon.
My thought on biomass involves a few more steps than just burying it. Pyrolysis, by which vegetable waste is turned into charcoal, is an ancient technology. It produces a vapor stream that is primarily methanol (wood alcohol). Methanol is a process chemical that the world uses in very large quantities; most methanol these days is made from natural gas.
Vegetable mass can be pyrolyzed, producing charcoal, which is nearly pure carbon, and methanol, which can displace consumption of natural gas. The charcoal, ideally, should then be pressed into bricks and dumped into the ocean in subduction zones, where geological processes will fold it back into the crust and remove it from the biosphere for at least millions, possibly billions, of years, It's not a magic bullet, because there isn't one, but it might help.
You actually don't need a subduction zone. Dumping offshore of a river with a high sediment load will do fine as long as the hydrogen content of the pyrolyzed vegetation is low enough that you won't get methane generation. You will just be making carboniferous mudstone, which is quite stable on geological timeframes.