Is There a Quick Fix for Ocean Acidification?
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- Опубліковано 28 тра 2024
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The ocean is getting more and more acidic. Can we solve it by emptying a giant bottle of antacid into the ocean? No… but the idea of lowering the ocean’s acidity in order to decrease global carbon dioxide levels isn’t all bad. Let’s dive into the science behind ocean alkalinization, and how it could be one part of a larger solution to our global climate crisis.
Correction:
4:29 We've raised atmospheric concentrations to roughly 420 ppm, we haven't added that much entirely by ourselves. Blame the backwards whale sweater for this mistake, it just threw everything off.
Credits:
Executive Producer:
Matthew Radcliff
Producers:
Andrew Sobey
Elaine Seward
Darren Weaver
Writer:
Alex Dainis
Host:
Alex Dainis
Scientific Consultants:
Leila Duman, Ph.D.
Michelle Boucher, Ph.D.
Katie Lebling
Executive in Charge for PBS: Maribel Lopez
Director of Programming for PBS: Gabrielle Ewing
Assistant Director of Programming for PBS: John Campbell
Reactions is a production of the American Chemical Society.
© 2024 American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.
Sources:
www.science.org/content/artic...
timescavengers.blog/climate-c...
chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelv...
www.necan.org/overview
www.annualreviews.org/doi/ful...
www.soest.hawaii.edu/oceanogr...
www.geoengineering.ox.ac.uk/w...
www.forbes.com/sites/nilsrokk....
science.howstuffworks.com/env....
www.science.org/content/artic...
www.whoi.edu/know-your-ocean/...
www.planetarytech.com/wp-cont...
www.reef2reef.com/threads/som...
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
findresearcher.sdu.dk/ws/port...
bg.copernicus.org/articles/20....
www.reuters.com/sustainabilit...
www2.oceanvisions.org/roadmap...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NB...
samueli.ucla.edu/ucla-institu...
www.sciencedaily.com/releases...
www.geoengineeringmonitor.org... - Наука та технологія
Okay fellow chemistry nerds: can you find the whiteboard error that Alex is kicking herself over…[SPOILER] it’s the arrows. Of course it’s the arrows. Equilibrium arrows mean something different than resonance arrows but let’s all pretend we didn’t see that, okay?
Lol, yeah, saw it right away and was wondering.. Thanks for the correction
That's the first time I've seen the UA-cam corrections feature, and even better that it's a correction on the kind of thing that lesser outlets and so much of the print/text media get wrong all the time. Nice work.
Where/when does it happen? I haven't seen it in the video yet but, like, I miss UA-cam Annotations for corrections so I hope this is a much better method.
a path through the ocean would be a "moses", of course
I often visit a corral reef in Costa Rica. A lot of the corral cannot be identified because it is covered in plant and other matter. On a recent trip I was horrified to see about a third of the reef looking like a skeleton. That happened over a few months.
This is the best discussion of geo-engineering I’ve seen so far: great work! Also I really appreciate your self correction and use of the UA-cam correction feature.
Question.
The hydrogen produced by electrolysis comes from the splitting of water molecules, not from the liberation of H+ ions in solution.
So how would splitting water to make hydrogen gas help drive the equation back towards equilibrium?
I too would like an answer to this question.
@@bossybug RIGHT! How can the production of H+ ions, and then the removal of those same ions, shift the equation???
Look, I am all for using excess solar and wind energy to make hydrogen fuel to replace fossil fuel use, but this electrolysis company claiming that doing so will raise ocean pH is just smoke and mirrors.
Adding H+ ions would make it more acidic, not less.
Electrolysis is thought of as these two reactions:
H2O -> H+ + OH-
and
2 H2O -> 2 H2 + O2
That second equation is actually a simplification: it is the first equation plus OH- splitting again for free oxygen.
Neither free hydrogen nor free oxygen like to remain free, and so will immediately form H2 and O2 respectively, as per the second equation.
What we want is the first equation, but for the OH- to remain in solution while the H+ ions pair up to form H2 and are captured (we do not want to be releasing tons of H2 into the atmosphere). I'm guessing here, but splitting OH- into O- and H takes more energy than splitting H2O to H+ and OH-, so I'm guessing they just lower the voltage used.
EDIT: the minus signs are being interpreted as cross-out - I'm trying to fix that.
@@wh44 Sure, I get all that. But if the goal is to lower the amount of dissolved H+ (to increase the pH) then using electrolysis to split H2O would not achieve that goal. Sure, H2 would be released (not a big deal for the environment BTW) but it would be H+ from water molecules, not the H+ that is making the oceans more acidic.
@@mafarmerga If you do the low-voltage electrolysis there will be a lot of left over OH- (as I wrote). That OH- isn't going to hang around long in an acid - it's going to grab the next best H+ ion to form water.
There are also alkaline minerals (silicates) which dissolves slowly capturing CO2, releasing silicates- check "geo engineering with olivine" in your favourite search engine- no need for large energy use like in making Lime and no CO2 released in the process.
Yes, we had an entire section of this video about olivine that we had to cut for length, but it's another interesting option. There's some debate as to its effect on local ecosystems, though.
@@ACSReactions That calls for part 2😀. There are no other methods of permanently sequestering GigaTons of CO2 per year that I know. Forestation has its limits and it is controversial (forests burn, there is always some root- perhaps releasing methane etc). Crushing certain minerals and spreading them is low tech, scalable like no other thing(?).
Weathering is part of normal/natural CO2 cycle (~1GigaTon CO2/year scale), reactions are kinetics limited so could be enhanced by just grinding and proper distribution. What could be simpler (negative consequences surely exist, but i think manageable)? I have talked about this topic in local "climate cafe" and interestingly out of 15-20 people attending (who are surely more interested about science than average) not one really heard about that Geology-Chemistry processes and that there is potential for making them significant.
Why not do some crazier stuff with the silicates to drive the reaction forward quickly? IIRC it's exothermic to go from silicate to carbonate. So wouldn't you be able to use it as a "fuel" in theory?
@@fehzorz This is actually indeed possible- check publications of Olaf Schuiling. if concentrated slurry of olivine would be used with concentrated CO2 then it could be made as reactor producing useful heat- maybe even electricity. This would loose the "simplicity aspect" of enhanced weathering- but why not in some cases?
Once I heard about enhanced weathering I couldn't forget about the idea- it is to good to be true but indeed mostly true(chemistry checks out, resources to).
Good video as always. Thank you for discussing all the pros and cons giving a balanced view.
This was a great video with a well balanced thought process. I’m watching with my high school student for chemistry class. This was well done! Thank you.
9:45 electrolysis on sea water has a rather big chemistry problem: you're producing chlorine gas! you'd have to desalinate first which leads to even more energy use!
Excellent video! ❤🎉😊
Great video, keep up the good work! :)
Path through the ocean? Lane?
I've pondered a mechanism that (mostly) passively degasses ocean water using pipes and the sun.
If you flood a U shaped pipe with ocean water by submerging it and raise the bent bit out above the waves the drop in pressure would degas the water presumably some of that would be CO₂ which would collect at the top of the bend. This could then be sucked out and processed somehow. If one arm is painted black and the other shaded then water would rise up the warm side and sink on the cool side in a continuous flow. The only power required would be to suck out the collected gas. That's about as much pondering I have put into this ponder so no idea how effective this would be at all. :-)
Weird question: Instead of extracting the lime from the limestone, what would be the effect of just adding the limestone directly at places where the ocean acidification is the worst? Reactions would obviously be slower, but would they still happen? (I’m not suggesting this would be any kind of a solution, as any reactions would be too slow to help address the immediate, gigantic, looming climate crisis, I’m just curious.)
To produce lime you have to take calcium out of its salt. Where anion of that salt goes to? Overall acidity remains the same.
The best way to sequester CO2 is to produce polymers. Whether it's cellulose in plants or polyethylene doesn't really matter. It takes carbon out of loop for a long, long time.
Artificial polymers are more useful though.
Awesome video! Wished you showed the chemistry of the electrolysis method because my knowledge only goes as far as it produces neutral hydrogen and oxygen molecules from water molecules. Curious how it affects hydrogen ions in the water
Wait until you look into how Snowpiercer makes Wonka a trilogy.
Maybe we can genetically modify puffer fish into buffer fish.
your other pun was good but this one's a little basic
Ooh, this is great. I've been researching ocean alkalinization as a plot-important background activity in what I hope will become my first novel (sci-fi, about 50 years into the future, vaguely solarpunk/ecopunk). I'd mostly been thinking in terms of finding ways to dig up crustal peridotite deposits, since that's the natural course of the geological carbon cycle, but as you point out there's no such thing as an ecologically neutral mining operation, and olivine and other peridotites near the surface have for the most part already been serpentized beyond usefulness. Electrolysis powered by renewable electricity sources, OTOH, would have far fewer problems in terms of obtaining the source materials, and I wasn't really thinking hard about it as a possibility because I was stuck on the fact that freshwater electrolysis is pH-neutral. But electrolysis of a halide-salt brine like the ocean releases halogen gases and/or halogenic acid vapors, which can be captured and removed, leaving behind hydroxides. The only question left for closing the loop is what to do with the captured halogens.
Using green energy sources for energy will always reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide than if they're used for carbon capture which is the same thing as ocean alkalization
I would be open to reducing the acidity of the ocean in some areas in order to protect the ecosystem but there are better ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere. I'm generally open to geoengineering because of the "even if we stopped emissions today" argument; however, I turn the argument around to say once we stop emitting carbon then we should do geoengineering if the situation is bad enough to make the risk look minor. I still remember hearing the argument that we don't need to do away with coal because of this new tech that can capture and store the carbon. The people that were saying that a decade ago are now crying about how the EPA is making them capture the carbon or shut down the power plant by the mid 2030's.
I wonder if this could applied to artificial reefs in a sort of buffer or structural slow release (like zeolites but resin structures) Especially in terms of coral bleaching and reef biodiversity.
I have no opinion if this would work, but I’d like to see the data
Great video! I think it can be helpful to put things into a perspective that's easy to understand. About the CO2, one can think of the amount per person. If we emit about 5 tons of CO2e, per person, per year, any strategy to sequester meaningful amounts of CO2, for the global situation has to be able to achieve net sequestration of some meaningful part of those 5 tons per year per person, for a reasonable cost, for the average human.
Personally I think that shows any strategy to adress CO2 that's already emitted needs to have extremely low cost per amount of net sequestration it can achieve to have a chance to be meaningful. We should, in my opinion, explore potential options, that's great, but perhaps also be realistic about the potential of utilizing hydroxides to fight ocean acidification in general, and somehow sequester the CO2 anytime soon. I even think most fixes for global issues that doesn't give any local extra benefit are highly unlikely to be utilized at a meaningful scale, unless they are practically free. We can incentive things to some degree, but if there's more than negligible cost, without direct benefit, it's not likely to actually happen at meaningful scale.
An example would be the mentioned aerosols, they are supposed to be very cheap, for the cooling effect achieved. Not reducing the amount of CO2, but I don't think they are likely to be used to reduce the global temperature noticeably, even if the strategy turns out to be a very cost efficient way to reduce global temperature. But, if it turns out to be a viable way to reduce temperature during heatwaves, locally, and temporarily, people that benefit directly by slightly less extreme heatwaves might be willing to pay the cost for it, even if it also benefits the global situation slightly. I'm not saying reflecting sunlight with aerosols is a great solution, it can at best temporarily reduce the temperature.
On another subject, be careful with non-technical names, garden lime is typically [mostly] calcium carbonate.
About Snowpiercer, can anyone explain why they are on a train? I mean, if your main problem is low temperatures, you'd want to minimize surface area to lose heat through, not maximize it. Also, you'd want to remain still, ideally in an area with as little wind as possible, also to reduce heat loss. And wasting energy on constantly travelling around, at high speed, would also be the exact opposite of what you would want to do in such a situation.
Has anyone calculated how much calcium we have removed from the oceans in the form of shellfish shells and fish bones?
Step 1: Chlor alkali process
Step 2: Put the NaOH back in the ocean
Step 3: Make PVC with the chlorine
Big issue with electrolysis that wasn't discussed is chlorine production. At bench top scales it's a minimal concern, but if you're electrolyzing enough sodium chloride to produce enough sodium hydroxide to meaningfully absorb CO2, you'll create tons of chlorine gas as a byproduct
That's a non-issue. The chlorine can just be absorbed by the ocean where it can react with the carbonate ions in solution to regenerate the salt.
@@danbance5799 And that reaction releases...CO2
Instead of generating lime to dump into the oceans, wouldn't direct air capture using a closed calcination cycle (as proposed by Terraform Industries) make more sense? Instead of continually mining more material and transport it to the oceans, you'd just continually recycle the same material basically anywhere on land.
I guess the shortest path on the ocean is a great circle or geodesic. Part of the reasons the Titanic path from UK to US too it closer to North pole.
Could we capture the excess co2 from the oceans and store it or use it?
p much spend the entire vid check if your sweater was backwards or not lmao
Won't adding calcium compounds change Ca2+ concentration to unnatural levels?
The right current?
looking at the wrong end of the stick , stopping is the only solution but we won't do that
A path through the ocean?
A corridor?
go science!
I wake up everyday, and wonder this.
❤❤
Yeahhh, I don't think this will help. And it can work really bad, since people will start thinking, if we can take CO2 out, then we can drop more CO2, no problem. So far, the best solution I know is to tax CO2 factories, and countries. But I doubt people will go for this path.
snowpiercer is great. Bong Joon Ho is so good at getting truly anti capitalist themes into big movies
7:33 I like big buts. Knowledge! 😁
You need Nuclear! About a cube of uranium 16m on each side would contain the energy to solve this, and provide power for the future. You need power density, clean energy, reliable ~100% of the time rather than needing battery backup, that is your answer. (The video made a mistake @4:26 - We have not put 420 ppm CO2 into the atmosphere. We put in about 420-280 = 140 ppm).
Read on for the math: That's a lot, but how much did we add? Earth's atmosphere totals about 5,000 trillion tons, of which then means *700 billion tons* of excess CO2 exists. How much energy to remove that? About 2 MWh is required to remove 1 ton CO2 (per Google), so we need 700Bx2MWh= 1.4 billion GWh. The output of Palo Verde (3 reactors) totals about 30,000 GWh per year so you need 1.4B/30k = 50,000 of those nuclear plants to clear it up in a year, or about 5,000 to clear it up in 10 years. The bigger problem though is that it is nearly pointless to talk about CO2 capture when we are still dumping it in at increasing rates. Here again, nuclear fixes this. You create a mostly nuclear-based power system, constantly expanding the output, it will eventually meet the global needs with some extra. Any extra can be put toward backing the CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Newer reactors (breeder reactors, Gen IV, etc) should be about 10x more efficient as well, as most of the uranium loaded into a typical LWR becomes part of the "waste" as unconsumed fuel (mostly U238). Breeder reactors would consume that as well, reducing the input fuel required, enrichment and waste. 1.4 billion GWh could be solved by about (at 20,000 GWh/ton) 70,000 tons of uranium, which being rather dense, equates to about 3,500 m3 of uranium, or a cube of uranium 16m (~50 ft) on each side. It's a lot, but manageable, particularly on a global scale.
Yes! 🙌 Nuclear power
You should have just flipped the sweater and not said anything about it so that people would comment about it.
Isn't it funny how unethical and controversial it is to intentionally bioengineer the environment, but when we do it haphazardly with CO2 it's okay, and science is called into question. Sorry, that's not funny at all. It's incredibly sad..
You got it wrong twice.
First, nobody sane is saying that it's okay to pour CO2 in the atmosphere and the ocean. We actually blame our unrelenting industry for it.
Second, nobody sane is putting science into question when it comes to geoengineering. Quite the contrary in fact - it's generally scientists who object that not only it could have unintended consequences, but also that it could be weaponized (typically: stealing all the rain from a neighboring country).
It's generally populist politicians who claim that geoengineering is some kind of miraculous solution. Just like they claim that fusion is the future of energy. Or that we can just blame every issue on one group of people. Some forms of geoengineering are likely part of the solution, but it won't miraculously solve every issue, and it shouldn't be some kind of crazy free-for-all. Like, we're now pretty good at fighting desertification, we should do that more. But stuff like giant panels in space to cool the Earth? Or even, letting airplane companies pay for engineers to come up with shiny fake solutions to trap CO2 in the ground so they can keep polluting with airplanes?
What's really sad is that the industrial lobbies have been hurting all efforts to reduce emissions, and now they are still hurting all efforts to come up with any kind of solution.
Could we combine the alkalization of the oceans with enhanced weathering, by means of strip-mining the Sahara Desert's major mountains, pulverizing them and dropping the fine powder into the oceans? That way, we also get a permanently green Sahara.
Uhhhhh. And how exactly would you get enough energy to power the equipment to strip mine the Sahara Desert?
There is NO practical engineering solution to this problem. We simply MUST stop increasing CO2 levels and let the Earth's natural geocycles return us to a new equilibrium. Hopefully one in which humanity can still survive.
Oh so you don't care about the plight of shellfish? Seems kinda selfish.
😂
I don't normally watch reaction channels but this one is really good
W
Okay when this popped up in the recommendations I didn't expect myself to be one of the first watching. Interesting video though!
that thumbnail makes not sense. ants have really strong acids, why would you put that in the ocean?