I fail to see where those bricks are “LEGO like” in any way. They are rough bricks, not even sufficiently molded to appear regular.
Good point. Where are the studs? How is the clutch power? Are the tolerances on par with existing Lego bricks?
From the picture I’d say that you won’t need a caliper to see that their tolerances are nearly as large as the bricks themselves…
Yeah, I am skeptical. What would be the energy expenditure of actually storing CO2 into those blocks and what about transporting them? I have a feeling this is like carbon capture plants, great for the headlines, but not really a practical solution.
AKA a tree
Yes but it’s wood that you are not allowed to burn or let rot, or the CO₂ gets released again. Basically, cut down trees and store them in oxygen-free water, salt mines, deserts or permafrost areas (or peat bogs, as nature did it over millions of years) where no bacteria/insects will feed on the wood and no humans come to scalp it. There is no way this can be economical, even with today’s carbon credits. Trees are “free” solar carbon capture devices but slow and inefficient, and need to be logged-and-stored continuously to work at all, as there is only a very limited space that we can cover in new forests in the next few decades.
I know they just want to find the best use for waste wood but I think there is too little of it in the first place.
taking plant waste from timber companies and farmers, drying it, compressing it, and wrapping it “into Lego-like bricks,” and storing it 10 feet underground.
So it’s effectively the astronaut ice cream version permafrost?
Immediately I wonder how much the process of transport -> drying -> compressing, wrapping, transporting, and storing + storage site prep and maintenance eats into savings.
the astronaut ice cream version permafrost?
Yeah, that’s what it sounds like. I do wonder if 10 feet is deep enough to prevent decomposition in the long term. I seems like converting the plant material to biochar would be a more stable form to trap the carbon in.
transport -> drying -> compressing, wrapping, transporting, and storing + storage site prep and maintenance
I think the key aspect here is that all of these steps are easier to decarbonize than the aviation (difficult) and cement production (almost impossible) processes these bricks are intended to offset.
I want to eat them. Capture all the pollution in the blocks and I’ll eat them. Call me jesus or whatever but really I’m just doing it to prove a point
If you metabolize all the plant matter into carbon dioxide, that would kind of defeat the purpose…
I don’t think I will metabolize anything after eating tons of co2. Just put me in a big glass jar and let me celebrate my victory until I’m inevitably taken down.
Is this like nuclear waste that has to be stored in caves? Or can you actually do something constructive with these bricks?
According to the article, this isn’t even recapturing CO2. It’s grabbing plant/decomposable waste before it rots, turning it into these dense bricks, and burying it under ground. Like, collecting corn husks from farmers. This feels stupid to me and like a big gimmick.
i imagined that would be the case when i read that its a bill gates thing
Their first customer is American Airlines. The airline is paying Graphyte to capture 10,000 tons of CO2 to offset emissions from its planes.
Ah yes, the “We’ll pay someone else to be green for us without meaningfully improving our environmental policy” move.
Toss some money away, get a nice tax write-off, and don’t bother following up to make sure these supposed CO2 offset numbers are actually what they are advertised to be.
The frustrating part is that the whole idea is great on its face: pay to capture the co2 you generate where they can do so at scale, but this just… clearly doesn’t do that.
