Right.. 1MT of methane leads to 0.75MT of carbon nanotubes valued at $225,000 -- an implicit price of $300,000/MT for CNTs.. EPA estimates that energy production releases about 8.1 million metric tons of methane annually, so if we convert 1% of the methane to CNTs, we'd have about 61,000 metric tons of carbon nanotubes to dispose of. What happens to the price if you dump 60,000 tons of a previously rare product on the market? What happens if you up the requirement to 10% and you have 600,000MT of nanotubes?
But where would the market go when carbon nanotubes and fibers move from exotic and expensive materials to "cheaper than aluminum". It could displace a lot of aluminum and steel.
Interesting possibilities, right? Imagine automobiles, bridges, buildings all built with carbon frames at a cost potentially far lower than current aluminum or steel, and also consuming a fraction of the energy to produce?
they would be used to reinforce concrete, plastics and whatever you could think of. as long as they're bound into the material in a way that's not easily released into the air or ground we should be fine.
The big problem, as I commented further down, is that the volumes of CO2 we need to capture absolutely dwarf the production volumes of essentially any product.
I just crunched the numbers, and if everything sold on Amazon was made from 100% captured CO2, it would still account for significantly less than 1% of what we need to capture, transport and store.
I don't think "sold on amazon" is a good benchmark when it comes to bulk mass. Construction materials might be a better choice. Concrete production is measured in Gt/a.
And of course we also need to reduce carbon emissions, capture is not a singular solution, but it may help during the transition to renewables where we still need gas plants.
Well concrete already uses lime, which is calcium carbonate (the original carbon sink). Maybe skip the carbon fiber use case all together and figure out a way to effectively produce artificial calcium carbonate.
