Day: February 23, 2022

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Carbon removal factory

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/02/23/1044972/carbon-removal-factory-climate-change/

In September, Climeworks flipped the switch on Orca, the largest plant to date that is designed to remove carbon dioxide from the air. 

The facility, outside Reykjavik, Iceland, can capture 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide every year. Large fans suck air through a filter, where materials bind with CO2 molecules. The company’s partner, Carbfix, then mixes the carbon dioxide with water and pumps it underground, where it reacts with basalt rock and eventually turns into stone. The facility runs entirely on carbon-free electricity, mainly from a nearby geothermal power plant. 

workers at the orca plant
Each module at Orca is made up of a dozen carbon removal units. Air passes through grates and over a filter that traps carbon dioxide with adsorbent chemicals. When the filters are full, grates close across the front of the unit and pipes pump heat into the enclosed space, releasing CO2 from the filters.The carbon dioxide is then pumped to an area where it’s prepared for storage before the gates open again to restart the process.
KRISTJáN MAACK

To be sure, 4,000 tons isn’t that much. It’s less than the annual emissions of 900 cars. And it’s a tiny fraction of the billions of tons of carbon dioxide the world will likely need to pull out of the atmosphere to prevent global warming from soaring past 2 °C over preindustrial levels, according to a variety of studies.

orca module
 Orca is made of modules that can be combined in different ways, making the plant easier to replicate around the world. Climeworks put its first plant in Iceland in part to take advantage of the country’s abundant geothermal power, so the facility can minimize the emissions it generates in the process of capturing carbon dioxide.
material covering fans at orca plant
On the back of each module, fans blow filtered air back into the atmosphere. Flexible covers on the fans ensure that loose bits from the filters aren’t blown away by the strong Icelandic winds. These covers will likely be needed just for the first year, while the units are tested.
Carbfix employee holds basalt rock
After being captured, carbon dioxide is transformed into solid carbonate minerals, seen here as light spots in a matrix of dark basalt rock.

Far larger facilities are in the works as well. Carbon Engineering, based in Squamish, British Columbia, plans to start construction this year on a plant in the US Southwest with the capacity to remove 1 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. With various partners, it’s also begun engineering or design work on plants in Scotland and Norway that would capture 500,000 to 1 million tons per year.

pipes across landscape in Iceland
Carbon dioxide is pressurized and mixed with water before being transferred through massive pipes to Carbfix, the company that pumps it underground to be stored.
KRISTJáN MAACK
Injection wells operated by Carbfix pump carbon dioxide 1,000 meters underground, where it reacts with basalt rock and is locked into mineral form within two years.
KRISTJáN MAACK

The hope is that building more and larger plants to capture carbon from the air will help companies figure out how to optimize operations, drive down the costs, and realize economies of scale. Climeworks estimates it will reduce costs between $600 and $800 per ton of carbon, to around $100 to $150, by the late 2030s. 

A growing number of individuals and companies, including Microsoft, Stripe, and Square, are already paying today’s high costs to suck carbon out of the air as they strive to cancel out their emissions. That’s providing crucial early revenue.

via Technology Review Feed – Tech Review Top Stories https://ift.tt/D8c4dti

February 23, 2022 at 04:05AM

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Scientists create cube robots that can shapeshift in space

https://www.engadget.com/shapeshifting-robots-space-exploration-mit-csail-electrovoxels-140026431.html?src=rss

Scientists from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the University of Calgary have developed a modular robot system that can morph into different shapes. ElectroVoxels don’t have any motors or moving parts. Instead, they use electromagnets to shift around each other.

Each edge of an ElectroVoxel cube is an electromagnetic ferrite core wrapped with copper wire. The length of each ElectroVoxel side is around 60 millimeters. The total cost is just 60 cents.

When the polarity of a magnet is changed, the edges either attract or repel each other. That causes the cubes to shift into a different orientation. Printed circuit boards and electronics inside each cube control the direction of each electromagnet’s current.

The robots have two basic types of movement. They can pivot around the edge of another cube, or traverse from one ElectroVoxel to the next. A software planner can be used to program reconfigurations. A user can highlight specific magnets, control the speed of cube’s movements and ensure they won’t collide with each other.

The researchers say possible to control up to 1,000 ElectroVoxels with the software. Users can tell the blocks to shift into different shapes, such as turning from a chair into a couch. They can decide which cube should move in which direction, and the software will determine the electromagnetic assignments needed to carry out the task.

The scientists tested ElectroVoxels in microgravity on a parabolic flight. They found the robots can operate in low-gravity environments. As such, the researchers say ElectroVoxels could be used to alter and create structures in outer space.

ElectroVoxels on a parabolic flight.
MIT CSAIL

They suggest the robots could change the inertia properties of a spacecraft, which might mitigate the need for extra fuel for reconfiguration. That, the scientists say, remedies many challenges linked with launch mass and volume. They hope the system will eventually enable a range of space-related use cases, such as augmenting and replacing structures over a series of launches, and building temporary structures to assist astronauts and help with spacecraft inspections.

A future version of ElectroVoxels could allow the creation of self-sorting storage containers. However, to allow the robots to more easily reconfigure in Earth’s gravity, the researchers say more detailed modeling and optimization would be required.

"While the potential benefits in space are particularly great, the paradox is that the favorable dynamics provided by microgravity mean some of those problems are actually also easier to solve — in space, even tiny forces can make big things move," said Martin Nisser, a PhD student at CSAIL and lead author on a paper on ElectroVoxels. "By applying this technology to solve real near-term problems in space, we can hopefully incubate the technology for future use on Earth too."

via Engadget http://www.engadget.com

February 23, 2022 at 08:09AM

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Bethesda Ditching Its Stupid Launcher, Returning To Steam

https://kotaku.com/bethesda-launcher-microsoft-pc-valve-steam-skyrim-doom-1848578696


Easily one of the worst trends to hit PC gaming in the last decade has been major publishers’ obsession with creating their own launchers and digital marketplaces. These are moves that have done little for the user, but make booting up a game fiddlier and more tedious.

You can see why they’ve done so from their points of view: the shopfronts give them a chance to sell things directly, rather than give a cut to Valve or Epic. The proprietary nature of the launcher means they get to have you log in to a specific account, and entangle yourself in all kinds of other locked-in stuff like digital rights management.

For us, though? It’s a huge pain in the ass. Especially when you buy and launch a game from Steam, and it then has to load a publisher’s launcher on top of that. In just the last few months I’ve been locked out of Madden 22 because EA’s Desktop App couldn’t verify my purchase, had Far Cry 6 launches held up because Ubisoft’s launcher wouldn’t let me login or sync properly, and wished for a quick death every time I’ve had to do anything with Rockstar’s launcher.

Mercifully, one publisher has now seen the light and will be ditching this approach entirely. Bethesda announced earlier today that they are “sunsetting” the Bethesda Launcher and marketplace in April, having launched them in 2016, and “migrating to Steam.”

Bethesda games have of course always been available on Steam, even when the launcher was active, but this move means that the publisher is now moving everything back to Steam. Even if you bought games directly from Bethesda, they’ll soon be transferred back to Valve’s service, in some cases (though not all) with your saved games included. There’s a FAQ under the blog if you need to know anything more.

Given Bethesda is now a Microsoft company, this is potentially exciting news for anyone who is also annoyed by the recently-purchased Activision Blizzard’s own Battle.net launcher.

via Kotaku https://kotaku.com

February 22, 2022 at 04:36PM