Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always is the lovely Chuck Bryant staring at our new jute rug hanging from our new wall. What's up, Chuck? We must be like going places. We have a jute rug hanging from the wall. I feel silly because they called it Berber. That's okay, I'm over here feeling stupid. They're both from the same area. That's the world that they better be because if you start getting the cool thing is is when we're corrected though we are literally corrected. I'm sorry, we're corrected by literal experts. Have you noticed. Yeah? True, yea many times, like it would be like a jute rug manufacturer or somebody with a PhD and jute rug studies who will email us about or Henry Jute himself, right, the father of jute ruggery. Yeah, so other than the whole Berber jute thing. How are you feeling? Oh, I'm good. A little tired, but I'm fine. Are you tired? Chuck, you should look into energy drinks. I just drank one and I'm like, yeah, I'm not a fan. I like the taste. No, no, good enough? Do you want to move on? Sure, let's do that. What's funny is is that came out is like seven seconds and it really lasted what like four minutes? Yeah, if people only knew thanks to the wonder of YERI. Yeah, So, Chuck, um you may have noticed, and I know you did because that person we used to relay information to us between the two of us because we can't stand one another really, Uh told me that you told her that you already knew this. Are you following me so far? No? I don't think anyone else is either. Okay, we already did this one. Yeah, we should go ahead and say that, Yeah, this is about carbon capture and storage. And uh, it seemed oddly familiar when I was researching, and that's because we did, in fact do this last lie. But it was one of our little baby podcasts when we first started, and it was like five seven minutes long something like that, and it just really didn't do this topic justice. And I gotta tell you, hot dog, carbon capture and storage is cool enough and important enough to do twice. Yeah, and don't worry, folks, We're not gonna start rehashing things. We have plenty of topics weeks or you have to cover. But we just want to do this because we're in a little green sweet kick exactly. Yeah. And plus you know, the first one just didn't quite do it. Usually when we do a podcast, it stays done, right. This one didn't quite stay done and it was still squirming. We hadn't put the nail into the back of the head yet. We're gonna do that here. Yeah, So, Chuck, this one is laden with stats. As I was reading this article, I thought, Chuck is going to go crazy for this one. Give me the first stat buddy. Let's talk about c O two in the greenhouse effect, right, let's do Okay, So we do have this layer of carbon dioxide that allows sunlight to pass through and some to stay. It keeps bouncing back and forth, which we need to degree or else trees wouldn't grow, children wouldn't skip and play supported for photosynthesis, right, so we do need it. What would happen if we didn't have this, uh, this greenhouse layer surrounding the earth like a warm blanket, Josh, if we had no greenhouse effect, our planet would be about minus twenty two degrees fahrenheit, which is minus thirty degrees celsius for our friends who don't use the Imperial system. So it would be a frozen planet basically, yeah, oh yeah, we wouldn't be around, I'll tell you that. So we want the greenhouse effect. We want this stuff to come through and to warm our Earth. The problem is is when enough of it doesn't get bounced back into outer space, then it gets a little too warm because the other the other direction. We don't have a stat on that, but as you can tell, summers are getting a little hotter, and uh, I'm sweating a lot more. We do have a stat on that as far as it getting hotter. Uh well, emissions, I'm sorry, emissions increasing. I kind of bent that one little bit. But from nineteen seventy two thousand four, the greenhouse gas emissions have increased over that thirty four year period, right and there there's actually plenty of different greenhouse gases You've got, like nitrous oxide, methane, um, even water vapor is technically a greenhouse gas up there. Um, So all this stuff kind of combining traps in the sun's heat. Um. But worst among them as far as what we're doing to contribute, which is called anthropogenic contribution, uh, is carbon dioxide. Because between that same period, would you say, it's nineteen seventy two thousand four, our carbon dioxide emissions grew. That's that's significant. Yeah, close to doubling. That's that's a lot. Right. Then you remember the chloro hydrofluorocarbons I think is what they were called, the CFCs yet chlorofluora carbons, uh, And then they were in aerosol sprays and like everybody's like, oh god, you know, it's everything's going to end, and the we just got rid of aerosaults. Kind of we need to figure out a way to do that with carbon dioxide emissions too. Well, we kind of are yeah, and what is it? Well, that's what we're talking about again, which is a carbon capture and more importantly storage, because capturing carbon, I mean, none of it's easy, but what you do with it is what's important. Sure, yeah, I mean we can't yeah put in the backyard, sure right, you can put it very deep in the backyard. You could not get to that nice for shadowing so let's talk about trapping carbon dioxide. First. They capture part of carbon capture and storage, which, if you want to look green savvy in front of your friends, just toss out ccs and they will be wowed. Yeah, we've actually been doing this for a while, Josh, what you and I year at least ye know capturing carbon. Oh, yeah, we've been doing that for a while because the oil and gas industries do that. They they've been doing that for decades to enhance oil and gas recovery. Right, because you know, when when you tap in uh oil reserve all the deposit in the earth, it's actually there's a ton of gases holding it down. It's pressurized actually, so the stuff is it comes out really easily. But as the gases that are holding this, they're pressurizing this underground cavern, escape into the atmosphere, um, it becomes harder and harder to get the oil out. So they figured out that if you pump CEO two into these half depleted deposits, it repressurizes it and it makes the oil easier to to get out. Right, So out of that becomes a more environmentally friendly use, which is capturing carbon from Mother Earth. Right, and even more so since we're already or since the oil companies are already using sea pressurized c O two uh to to for enhanced store recovery. There's already a network, a system of pipelines and stuff in in in our infrastructure structure. Wow, I love that word infrastructure. But that's I do too. It's very comforting, it is. Yeah, it sounds like somebody's in charge, so we're I'm getting ahead of myself. That's the that's part of the storage. Right, Let's keep talking about capture, Josh. There are three main steps to CCS, and that is the trapping of the carbon uh the separating of the CEO two from other gases, and then transporting it to a place where you can store it away from the atmosphere. Right. And actually, strangely enough, there's three methods that we've come up with for doing this. Right. So you've got you love that, dun't you. You've got post combustion, pre combustion, and oxyfuel combustion right down. Okay, well I'll break down post combustion. It's exactly what it sounds like. Say you've got a coal fire power plant. Coal is super dirty, even clean coal is very dirty. Uh. If you can figure out a way to trap that CEO two that's escaping from the fluid, Uh, then all of a sudden you've just captured carbon. Right. And one way to do that is to introduce some sort of like gel or compound. Uh. There's some I know Georgia text working on one called hyper branched you know, silica. Wow, look at you. Thanks? You weren't even reading that. No, it wasn't very impressive. Oh, it's not even in this article, pal, And my brain is musters no. Um. And actually I guess it's because it's so hyper branched. Um. It traps carbon dioxide molecules and it actually locks into them. So it's a silica. It's kind of sandy. So it works as a filter. It does. But you know, so some flu gases get out, but the carbon dioxide doesn't. And the cool thing is it's like it just sits there, just traps it until it's heated again. And if you heat it in the under the right circumstances, you can capture just the c O two and compress it and get rid of it. That's one example of post combustion. The key to post combustion is you're already burning the fospil fuels and you're capturing as much CO two as you can before it escapes into the atmosphere out of smoke stack. Right. One thing I noticed in that where you said once you heat it again, it leaves behind the concentrated uh CEO two, but it releases water vapor. Is I wonder if that water vapor is part of the problem as well, though it seems get water vapor is again it's a greenhouse gas, but it's also a flu gas, which is a mixture of a whole bunch of stuff that that that comes out of burning fossil fuels. But again we're after the CEO two, but it seems like getting the CEO two separated from the water vapor is a problem as well. Yeah, so you want to do precombustion. Yeah, uh, this is when carbon is carbon is trapped I'm sorry, carbon dioxide, I guess I should say is trapped before the fossil fuel is burned, so before it's diluted with other flu gasses. Um is when you when you capture it, so precombustion, before it's burned and apparently chuck what you do is you actually heat whatever fossil fuel you're using, uh, in the presence of pure oxygen, and you get this other, this brand, this completely different thing, carbon monoxide and hydrogen, right. And then you run into a catalytic converter and it produces more hydrogen, which is good because you can actually reuse that for energy to maybe even power this whole process, right uh. And then you get car and dioxide as well, right uh. And then you put them in a flask with a chemical called aimine, and the aiming actually holds the CEO two down on top of it. Right, and then eventually you can extract the aiming and the hydrogen, reuse the aiming and trap the CEO two. It sounds like kind of a lot, it does. I wonder if we're gonna get get any cool sound effects like our distillery. That would be very cool. That would be super cool. And if we did, Yeah, didn't you just hear it. Yeah, Jerry's ignoring us right now, so that might not happen. Um. So the it is a lot pre combustion. Is it's a big process. Yeah, it's already in use actually for natural gas. They've already been using this. It is the thing is is it's in use in a brand new power plant. The good thing about post combustion is you can run around the country and retrofit old power plant to capture carbon dioxide. Pre combustion you pretty much have to build that in as you're building a new power plant. And it's also super expense. Well, this has a lot of energy. What precombustion Yeah, oh yeah, No, I thought it was lower in cost, is it. Well, the process is lower in cost, but I think it's more expensive because it's not a retrofit, right. But it also it's it's higher in the cost of energy that it uses to this process. From what I understand, I was talking about dollars. Buddy, Hey dude, you still for energy somehow, pay an hour, pay later, right, right. And then the last one is oxyfuel, right, oxyfuel combustion, Yeah, that's uh. The power plant burns fossil fuel and oxygen and this results in a gas mixture comprised of steam and carbon dioxide. So the steam and c O two are separated when you cool it and compress the gas, uh stream Right, So there you have it. There you have, and all three of these captured between eighty and the carbon dioxide that's escaping. I think oxy fuels the most oxy feels topping out at nine um. So those are pretty much the three competing ways to UH capture carbon dioxide and use right now. And it seems like we're talking about power plants a lot. Those are definitely the focus of carbon capture right now. You know, they're huge emitters of carbon diox So, like there's a I think a Southern Company plant in Juliette, Georgia, and it emits more carbon DIOXI than the entire power infrastructure of Brazil, which seems a little lopsided because you just blogged about Brazil recently on a sugarcane biofuels, right, and they're very, very energy independent thanks to the cellulistic ethanol that they make from sugarcane. So it's a lopside in comparison. But still one power plant shouldn't be putting out, you know, more CEO two than any country. Sure you would think, right, but that's less that country is tiny, Like maybe Vatican City Is that a country, dude? I I walked around Vatican City one time by accident. Well it was my friend Brett and I kind of well we were on the wrong side of of where we needed to be, and we thought, well, we'll just skirt around this wall here, and I think it'll be quicker. And I didn't realize that we're walking around the country. Did you come face to face with the pope and they're just like But it took forever. It was much a much longer walk than I anticipated. And now that I realized it's a country that kind of all makes sense. Does it make sense? It does cool place though I've heard moving on. Yes. So now, Josh, what we have is captured carbon. We got a whole lot of carbon dioxide. What do we do with the chuck? Well, you need to transport at first before you can store it? How through a pipeline? Oh yeah, I already talked about that. Right. That's a good thing is that infrastructure is in place. And uh, I think here's another stat there's more than fift miles of CEO two pipelines already in place here. And it sounds like technically it's not like consider the then oil pipelines and that kind of thing, and that actually I was talking about a lopside of figure with the Southern Company plant in Brazil. Um, you know CEO two pipeline safe. Uh as far as fatalities and accidents go, it's really low compared to like natural gas and in hazardous materials pipeline. I think to the tune of um, I've got stats, I can't now. These are death Okay, that's uh, we're talking. These are death. We're talking Between nine six and two thousand six, there's only been twelve CEO two pipeline leaks with no injuries and none yeah none zip and over the same period more than five thousand accidents within a hundred and seven fatalities with liquid um petroleum pipelines. So whoop whoop. It sounds like CEO two pipelines are way safer, but there's a lot fury. Yeah. Uh. And your friend Debbie Ranka thinks that these things, that these accidents will probably increases the UM CEO two pipeline infrastructure increases in in breadth. Right, and we should say Debbie wrote this, we didn't just chat about this and Debbie throughout her opinion, Debbie wrote this awesome formal trains and pediatrics, Right, Debbie a freak girl dot com? Is that her? Huh nice good girl? Oh, you're just plug happy, aren't you. You know, I think just for old times sake, you should plug our audio book I mean, you know, uh spoken word album. Yeah, well, I'm never going to get that right there in the front of my head. They will never be the first thing I call that. So now we have it in a pipeline and we are transporting it where it needs to go, which it depends on where you pick it up and where it needs to be for where it needs to travel, I mean, is pretty simple, right, but we're also we should probably say that there's different You could transport CEO two three different ways, right, gas, liquid, and solid, right, and the most efficient is is uh is gas? Right? Yeah? Yeah, of course? Um solid CEO two actually is dry eyes did you Yeah, yeah, I didn't. And it's not very cost effective to transport as a solid obviously, um, and gas is easier because you can compress it with these uh you know, these compressors kind of push it through the pipeline every so often they have these compressors. And where are you shooting it too, though, shooting into the storage area chuck there? Yeah, Which that depends on what storage you're gonna use, what kind of storage you're gonna use. Well, what kind do you want to use? I mean, there's only two underground and underwater, right right? What kind do I want to use? What kind do you want to use? If you're Chuck King of the World and somebody says, what, let's see something about CCS, you say, I decree that we're going to store it underground, underground? Alright? Nice? The ocean thing worries me a little bit. They both worried me a little bit, actually, but yeah, let's start with underground. Okay, let's do underground. Um, well, Josh, there are some estimates. If you want another stat you're right, this is chuck full of stats. Um, the planet can store up to ten trillion tons of CEO two underground, which is a hundred years of storage of all human anthropogenic carbon contributions, which sounds good, but that's really not very long d years. No, but consider this. I was actually um when I wrote the article can we bury our CEO two problem under the ocean? I think is what it was called. There's no telling what kind of technology we're going to have. We could conceivably take that trap carbon dioxide and and exert tons of force and and make synthetic petroleum out of it. Yeah point yeah, So a hundred years is a really long time with the kind of technological advances we've been we've been undertaking in the last hundred years, right yeah, I mean think about nineteen odd nine and what it was like then. I don't like to compare to now that's a syphilis yeah yeah sure. So yeah, that's underground. Um. You know, it's pressurized when it's at deep underground, and it behaves more like a liquid than a gas when it's at fronder ground because it like seeps into other little cracks and porous rocks, which is a good thing, right. And actually there there's a specific rock that they found um works really well for carbon storage, and that is basalt, which is volcanic rock, right yeah, yeah, and they just inject us what is it? Do they inject gaseous gasified CEO two? I think so? Yeah, they injected directly into the rock. And actually the rock transforms from base all into limestone. Pretty cool. It converts it into rock. So basically like it's like a hyper accelerated, uh geological process that's going on. But when I read that, I thought, wow, that's great, what a great idea, we just need to run around injecting all the base all in the world with c O two and will be set. It will just have a big limestone planet. And then again I thought, we really don't know what we're tinkering with here, Like what happens if we have like too much limestone on the planet. We we can't say we don't know. Like this, I can't tell almost I hate to admit this, but I can't tell if this kind of tinkering may actually result in much more catastrophic consequences than just going the way we're going and trying to go with biofuels. I don't you know, a lot of the End of the World movies where it shows like the future, how mankind was wiped out, the little thing they'll use to to turn the story was we were trying to do something great and discovered something we thought was great, but it turned out to be some irrevocable change that lead to our demands. You're talking about soil and Green, of course, Well yeah, and just a lot of movies like that. But that's a great point. Actually, Slowly Green is a great example. I think we're doing something really good and that might lend lead to our undoing water World. Greatest movie ever made? Definitely? Maybe? Really? Yeah, what did that have to do with this? It's highly post apocalyptic. Okay, let's just see that one. I thought it was you haven't seen it. I thought it was a cheesy romance. No, it starts out like that and the twist at the end is mind boggling. Yeah, it's like The Road Warrior. So go ahead, Chuck. We're talking underground or are we done with that part? No, well we're almost done. What happens is they're studying all that right now, so your fears hopefully can be dismissed because they're looking to see what the result will be. Sure and as far as it goes, I think the oldest um underground uh CEO two Georage site is actually under the sea floor in Norway and it's only as old as nine and it hasn't had an accident or anything, but it's still it's only thirteen years old. Yeah, so I mean what happens in fifty years or a hundred years exactly? And that's what they're keeping their eye on. I mean they're worried about it too. I mean, we definitely have to do something, but I don't know. I'm just a little hesitant, all right, I agree, Yeah, well you wanna talk about the ocean. Yeah, let's talk about the ocean. I'm I'm with you. I'm much more trepid about the ocean storage and that, Um there's again. I wrote an article called can we bury our CEO two problem in the ocean? And in that article, um, there's this guy who came up with these the idea of having these pipelines pump liquefied not gasified, but liquefied CEO two directly into enormous bags. That's right at the abysmal plane. Yeah, not abysmal plane, the Yeah, but I imagine it's pretty abysmal down there. Yeah. Um, so yeah, down on the abysmal plane, right, And uh, it's it's a pretty good idea. The problem is, these huge, enormous bags can only store I think a day or ten worth of carbon dioxide captured. It would be a lot of bags, and they end up really quick, and if any one of them ruptured, we don't know what would happened. But apparently from a little more investigation, if we bury this stuff or dump it in the ocean deep enough which is to the tune of about eleven ft um. Then we can just let it go and hope for the best that the the incredibly low pressure uh and temperatures will basically globify it, compress it, it it ull be floating around. Sounds like that terrible, terrible idea to me, with any kind of cloud that I may have as a human being and a podcaster, I would like to hear now say that I think just dumping our captured carbon diode die oxide into the ocean is one of the worst ideas I've heard this year. Yeah, I know, Green Pieces and wild about the idea, and they said it's not even feasible until at least the year so you know, I mean, I have two camps. It's good that we're exploring things like this, but you know, it would be much better if we had electric cars powered by solar energy rather than just thinking of different ways to keep using fossil fuels over and over and over right now, And and that's a good point. I noticed Green Pieces kind of not too hip on this either, and I agree with them as well. I think that we basically have to stuff like this really distracts us from making hard decisions and hard choices. So this is easy. We get to like our lives don't change at all. It's just the power companies need to go retrofit their old their old flus with you know, scrubbers of some sort. Uh. And but for us to have electric cars or to have bio fuels, we're gonna have to pay more gallon kind of thing. So it does affect us. So people aren't paying that much attention to it. That's how to say. This is pielos Y technology, though, you know, I mean, it's very viable and it's going on now still right, Hopefully works are going to be done on a lot of fronts and there will be multiple solutions. You know what my favorite idea was, But did you read it that little sidebar about the company's sky Mine. Okay, So sky Mine has figured out a way where they just take um sequestered carbon dioxide and they inject it with salt and water sodium hydroxide, right, and it creates a chemical reaction that forms baking soda. That's it kind of baking. So it's good for everything, it is everything. I just think that's the greatest idea ever. The problem is we'd have massive baking soda stores and the baking soda market in which I'm heavily invested with just bottom out. So I mean, I like it as an idea, but financially it would suck for me. Right, No fridge would ever stink again, though, No, we can probably make fridges out of baking soda with that muchly, you know, if they can make a suitcase out of cocaine, they can probably make a refrigerator out of baking soda. The operative word is they. But getting back to the water real quick. You were talking about leaking CEO two from the ocean, remember our Little Exploding Lake podcast. Yeah, that's a great example of the coming up through the water. So that could happen lakes. And we should also probably mention carbon sink, yeah, which is a phenomenon the The ocean actually does absorb CEO two from the atmosphere already, and what happens now is it's sinking to the bottom ideally, but some oceans, like the Southern Ocean, have soaked up so much that it's not soaking it down to the bottom anymore. It's not sinking, it's kind of staying on top. And that makes the water very acidic, which is not good for fishies. No, which is again like nives. We have no idea what happened in the marine life, probably because they were exploded into trillions of pieces. That's toughs account. So yeah, a little troublesome. I mean capturing carbon this is this is a good thing. Storing it a little more dodgy, yeah, I mean, we'll see what happens. We're gonna script this planet one way or another. Might as well make it quick, like in just a huge massive eruption of c O two into the atmosphere that chokes us all the death. That sounds encouraging. Sure, well, it'll get filtered out eventually in some strange new life form will eventually take over and screw it up later on. So, oh you're a bright one today. It's just a shining light. Yeah, so Chuck, I'm glad we did this again, buddy, This one, this one's done until next time, until that carbon dioxide exploit. Let's agree right now, we don't do carbon capture and storage again until that massive eruption takes place, All right, okay? Deal Part three that you have it coming not too soon, so you know what time it's for then it's time for Chuck to plug our spoken word album. Go ahead. Wow, it's been so long. Um it was on economics, if I remember correctly, The Stuff you Should Know a super Stuff out of the Economy. Yeah, you can buy it in your iTunes store for what was planal price four bucks something like that, something like that. Nice and and again we got really good feedback on it. We did. Yeah, and that was a good experience. So yeah, there's Chuck plugging our audio book, The Stuff you Should Know super Stuff Guide to the Economy. I can't believe I remember the name. And it's just World Time Safe and that means that it is listener mail time. All right, Chuck, what do you have for us, baby compass head Catcher's mit. I have something I'm just gonna call shocking listener mail. We have a lot of that lately. Yeah. We had a fan that wrote in that UM was struck by lightning. Yeah, but not just the fan, but her dog too. Yeah, And she just kind of off handedly mentioned it because she was talking about she read that spontaneous human combustion could be caused by lightning, and I was struck by lightning, by the way, And that was kind of it, and I wrote her back. It was like, no, no, no, no, you need to give me some details here because I would like to read this on the air. And I've never talked to anyone who I was struck by lightning. Yeah, so here we go. It turns out it was a side strike, which I never heard of. Uh, And she says a side strike is a really well phenomenon of lightning. It struck about a half a block from me. It was incredibly bright, and I was blinded for a few minutes afterward. I was not back about six feet but still landed on my feet and I couldn't hear for a good half hour afterward. It was a booming and crackling yet incredibly quiet, which I thought it was interesting. I can't totally explain the sound except to compare it to the sound you get when you skydive, which didn't help me. It's I've never been skydivan. It's kind of have you done it? No, no way, it's terrifying. Okay, I believe it the rush of wind booms around you, but it's definitely still would you agree with that? Yeah, similar sort of Oh you were all hammered when you did it? When you're talking about remember uh. In my research about lightning strikes and strike victims, I found it incredible that a side strike can occur UH up to a mile away from something and you can still receive the electrical charge. I saw the lightning strike, but I didn't feel any pain, so I assumed I wasn't hit. It wasn't n till later in the day when Burnmark showed up. I don't think I lost consciousness, but I was totally routed on the spot where I was standing. Rooted is r O U T. I'm not sure. If it wasn't for my dog, I probably would have continued to stand there for a while. Yeah, I guess she was rooted. That makes sense. My dog was so frightened that she just took off running. I was holding onto the leason couldn't let go, so I sort of ran blindly after her to her house. I was an emotional blur for a decent while afterwards. Consequently, my dog's black fur is now very speckled with white hair. And let me see actually coincides with another of our podcast. Oh yeah, and she had singes across her fingers and toes, little burn blisters and as far as long term damage. And you see she has affected her balance sum and messes with her inner ear at her frontal lobe is fine, and she's taking neurological exams in psychological testing and she is fine and normal and considers herself very lucky. I consider her very lucky too. That is doll. That is Hannah of Tennessee. And we're very glad that you and your little girl Pucci are all Okay, Hannah, I would strongly recommend that you play the lotto as often as you can. Yeah. So yeah, If you want to tell us any amazing true stories about lightning, shark attacks, far fights, whatever, you can send us an email. That's what they call in these stags, right, chuck electronic men. You can send that to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot Com brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camra. It's ready, are you

Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me as always is the lovely Chuck Bryant staring at our new jute rug hanging from our new wall. What's up, Chuck? We must be like going places. We have a jute rug hanging from the wall. I feel silly because they called it Berber. That's okay, I'm over here feeling stupid. They're both from the same area. That's the world that they better be because if you start getting the cool thing is is when we're corrected though we are literally corrected. I'm sorry, we're corrected by literal experts. Have you noticed. Yeah? True, yea many times, like it would be like a jute rug manufacturer or somebody with a PhD and jute rug studies who will email us about or Henry Jute himself, right, the father of jute ruggery. Yeah, so other than the whole Berber jute thing. How are you feeling? Oh, I'm good. A little tired, but I'm fine. Are you tired? Chuck, you should look into energy drinks. I just drank one and I'm like, yeah, I'm not a fan. I like the taste. No, no, good enough? Do you want to move on? Sure, let's do that. What's funny is is that came out is like seven seconds and it really lasted what like four minutes? Yeah, if people only knew thanks to the wonder of YERI. Yeah, So, Chuck, um you may have noticed, and I know you did because that person we used to relay information to us between the two of us because we can't stand one another really, Uh told me that you told her that you already knew this. Are you following me so far? No? I don't think anyone else is either. Okay, we already did this one. Yeah, we should go ahead and say that, Yeah, this is about carbon capture and storage. And uh, it seemed oddly familiar when I was researching, and that's because we did, in fact do this last lie. But it was one of our little baby podcasts when we first started, and it was like five seven minutes long something like that, and it just really didn't do this topic justice. And I gotta tell you, hot dog, carbon capture and storage is cool enough and important enough to do twice. Yeah, and don't worry, folks, We're not gonna start rehashing things. We have plenty of topics weeks or you have to cover. But we just want to do this because we're in a little green sweet kick exactly. Yeah. And plus you know, the first one just didn't quite do it. Usually when we do a podcast, it stays done, right. This one didn't quite stay done and it was still squirming. We hadn't put the nail into the back of the head yet. We're gonna do that here. Yeah, So, Chuck, this one is laden with stats. As I was reading this article, I thought, Chuck is going to go crazy for this one. Give me the first stat buddy. Let's talk about c O two in the greenhouse effect, right, let's do Okay, So we do have this layer of carbon dioxide that allows sunlight to pass through and some to stay. It keeps bouncing back and forth, which we need to degree or else trees wouldn't grow, children wouldn't skip and play supported for photosynthesis, right, so we do need it. What would happen if we didn't have this, uh, this greenhouse layer surrounding the earth like a warm blanket, Josh, if we had no greenhouse effect, our planet would be about minus twenty two degrees fahrenheit, which is minus thirty degrees celsius for our friends who don't use the Imperial system. So it would be a frozen planet basically, yeah, oh yeah, we wouldn't be around, I'll tell you that. So we want the greenhouse effect. We want this stuff to come through and to warm our Earth. The problem is is when enough of it doesn't get bounced back into outer space, then it gets a little too warm because the other the other direction. We don't have a stat on that, but as you can tell, summers are getting a little hotter, and uh, I'm sweating a lot more. We do have a stat on that as far as it getting hotter. Uh well, emissions, I'm sorry, emissions increasing. I kind of bent that one little bit. But from nineteen seventy two thousand four, the greenhouse gas emissions have increased over that thirty four year period, right and there there's actually plenty of different greenhouse gases You've got, like nitrous oxide, methane, um, even water vapor is technically a greenhouse gas up there. Um, So all this stuff kind of combining traps in the sun's heat. Um. But worst among them as far as what we're doing to contribute, which is called anthropogenic contribution, uh, is carbon dioxide. Because between that same period, would you say, it's nineteen seventy two thousand four, our carbon dioxide emissions grew. That's that's significant. Yeah, close to doubling. That's that's a lot. Right. Then you remember the chloro hydrofluorocarbons I think is what they were called, the CFCs yet chlorofluora carbons, uh, And then they were in aerosol sprays and like everybody's like, oh god, you know, it's everything's going to end, and the we just got rid of aerosaults. Kind of we need to figure out a way to do that with carbon dioxide emissions too. Well, we kind of are yeah, and what is it? Well, that's what we're talking about again, which is a carbon capture and more importantly storage, because capturing carbon, I mean, none of it's easy, but what you do with it is what's important. Sure, yeah, I mean we can't yeah put in the backyard, sure right, you can put it very deep in the backyard. You could not get to that nice for shadowing so let's talk about trapping carbon dioxide. First. They capture part of carbon capture and storage, which, if you want to look green savvy in front of your friends, just toss out ccs and they will be wowed. Yeah, we've actually been doing this for a while, Josh, what you and I year at least ye know capturing carbon. Oh, yeah, we've been doing that for a while because the oil and gas industries do that. They they've been doing that for decades to enhance oil and gas recovery. Right, because you know, when when you tap in uh oil reserve all the deposit in the earth, it's actually there's a ton of gases holding it down. It's pressurized actually, so the stuff is it comes out really easily. But as the gases that are holding this, they're pressurizing this underground cavern, escape into the atmosphere, um, it becomes harder and harder to get the oil out. So they figured out that if you pump CEO two into these half depleted deposits, it repressurizes it and it makes the oil easier to to get out. Right, So out of that becomes a more environmentally friendly use, which is capturing carbon from Mother Earth. Right, and even more so since we're already or since the oil companies are already using sea pressurized c O two uh to to for enhanced store recovery. There's already a network, a system of pipelines and stuff in in in our infrastructure structure. Wow, I love that word infrastructure. But that's I do too. It's very comforting, it is. Yeah, it sounds like somebody's in charge, so we're I'm getting ahead of myself. That's the that's part of the storage. Right, Let's keep talking about capture, Josh. There are three main steps to CCS, and that is the trapping of the carbon uh the separating of the CEO two from other gases, and then transporting it to a place where you can store it away from the atmosphere. Right. And actually, strangely enough, there's three methods that we've come up with for doing this. Right. So you've got you love that, dun't you. You've got post combustion, pre combustion, and oxyfuel combustion right down. Okay, well I'll break down post combustion. It's exactly what it sounds like. Say you've got a coal fire power plant. Coal is super dirty, even clean coal is very dirty. Uh. If you can figure out a way to trap that CEO two that's escaping from the fluid, Uh, then all of a sudden you've just captured carbon. Right. And one way to do that is to introduce some sort of like gel or compound. Uh. There's some I know Georgia text working on one called hyper branched you know, silica. Wow, look at you. Thanks? You weren't even reading that. No, it wasn't very impressive. Oh, it's not even in this article, pal, And my brain is musters no. Um. And actually I guess it's because it's so hyper branched. Um. It traps carbon dioxide molecules and it actually locks into them. So it's a silica. It's kind of sandy. So it works as a filter. It does. But you know, so some flu gases get out, but the carbon dioxide doesn't. And the cool thing is it's like it just sits there, just traps it until it's heated again. And if you heat it in the under the right circumstances, you can capture just the c O two and compress it and get rid of it. That's one example of post combustion. The key to post combustion is you're already burning the fospil fuels and you're capturing as much CO two as you can before it escapes into the atmosphere out of smoke stack. Right. One thing I noticed in that where you said once you heat it again, it leaves behind the concentrated uh CEO two, but it releases water vapor. Is I wonder if that water vapor is part of the problem as well, though it seems get water vapor is again it's a greenhouse gas, but it's also a flu gas, which is a mixture of a whole bunch of stuff that that that comes out of burning fossil fuels. But again we're after the CEO two, but it seems like getting the CEO two separated from the water vapor is a problem as well. Yeah, so you want to do precombustion. Yeah, uh, this is when carbon is carbon is trapped I'm sorry, carbon dioxide, I guess I should say is trapped before the fossil fuel is burned, so before it's diluted with other flu gasses. Um is when you when you capture it, so precombustion, before it's burned and apparently chuck what you do is you actually heat whatever fossil fuel you're using, uh, in the presence of pure oxygen, and you get this other, this brand, this completely different thing, carbon monoxide and hydrogen, right. And then you run into a catalytic converter and it produces more hydrogen, which is good because you can actually reuse that for energy to maybe even power this whole process, right uh. And then you get car and dioxide as well, right uh. And then you put them in a flask with a chemical called aimine, and the aiming actually holds the CEO two down on top of it. Right, and then eventually you can extract the aiming and the hydrogen, reuse the aiming and trap the CEO two. It sounds like kind of a lot, it does. I wonder if we're gonna get get any cool sound effects like our distillery. That would be very cool. That would be super cool. And if we did, Yeah, didn't you just hear it. Yeah, Jerry's ignoring us right now, so that might not happen. Um. So the it is a lot pre combustion. Is it's a big process. Yeah, it's already in use actually for natural gas. They've already been using this. It is the thing is is it's in use in a brand new power plant. The good thing about post combustion is you can run around the country and retrofit old power plant to capture carbon dioxide. Pre combustion you pretty much have to build that in as you're building a new power plant. And it's also super expense. Well, this has a lot of energy. What precombustion Yeah, oh yeah, No, I thought it was lower in cost, is it. Well, the process is lower in cost, but I think it's more expensive because it's not a retrofit, right. But it also it's it's higher in the cost of energy that it uses to this process. From what I understand, I was talking about dollars. Buddy, Hey dude, you still for energy somehow, pay an hour, pay later, right, right. And then the last one is oxyfuel, right, oxyfuel combustion, Yeah, that's uh. The power plant burns fossil fuel and oxygen and this results in a gas mixture comprised of steam and carbon dioxide. So the steam and c O two are separated when you cool it and compress the gas, uh stream Right, So there you have it. There you have, and all three of these captured between eighty and the carbon dioxide that's escaping. I think oxy fuels the most oxy feels topping out at nine um. So those are pretty much the three competing ways to UH capture carbon dioxide and use right now. And it seems like we're talking about power plants a lot. Those are definitely the focus of carbon capture right now. You know, they're huge emitters of carbon diox So, like there's a I think a Southern Company plant in Juliette, Georgia, and it emits more carbon DIOXI than the entire power infrastructure of Brazil, which seems a little lopsided because you just blogged about Brazil recently on a sugarcane biofuels, right, and they're very, very energy independent thanks to the cellulistic ethanol that they make from sugarcane. So it's a lopside in comparison. But still one power plant shouldn't be putting out, you know, more CEO two than any country. Sure you would think, right, but that's less that country is tiny, Like maybe Vatican City Is that a country, dude? I I walked around Vatican City one time by accident. Well it was my friend Brett and I kind of well we were on the wrong side of of where we needed to be, and we thought, well, we'll just skirt around this wall here, and I think it'll be quicker. And I didn't realize that we're walking around the country. Did you come face to face with the pope and they're just like But it took forever. It was much a much longer walk than I anticipated. And now that I realized it's a country that kind of all makes sense. Does it make sense? It does cool place though I've heard moving on. Yes. So now, Josh, what we have is captured carbon. We got a whole lot of carbon dioxide. What do we do with the chuck? Well, you need to transport at first before you can store it? How through a pipeline? Oh yeah, I already talked about that. Right. That's a good thing is that infrastructure is in place. And uh, I think here's another stat there's more than fift miles of CEO two pipelines already in place here. And it sounds like technically it's not like consider the then oil pipelines and that kind of thing, and that actually I was talking about a lopside of figure with the Southern Company plant in Brazil. Um, you know CEO two pipeline safe. Uh as far as fatalities and accidents go, it's really low compared to like natural gas and in hazardous materials pipeline. I think to the tune of um, I've got stats, I can't now. These are death Okay, that's uh, we're talking. These are death. We're talking Between nine six and two thousand six, there's only been twelve CEO two pipeline leaks with no injuries and none yeah none zip and over the same period more than five thousand accidents within a hundred and seven fatalities with liquid um petroleum pipelines. So whoop whoop. It sounds like CEO two pipelines are way safer, but there's a lot fury. Yeah. Uh. And your friend Debbie Ranka thinks that these things, that these accidents will probably increases the UM CEO two pipeline infrastructure increases in in breadth. Right, and we should say Debbie wrote this, we didn't just chat about this and Debbie throughout her opinion, Debbie wrote this awesome formal trains and pediatrics, Right, Debbie a freak girl dot com? Is that her? Huh nice good girl? Oh, you're just plug happy, aren't you. You know, I think just for old times sake, you should plug our audio book I mean, you know, uh spoken word album. Yeah, well, I'm never going to get that right there in the front of my head. They will never be the first thing I call that. So now we have it in a pipeline and we are transporting it where it needs to go, which it depends on where you pick it up and where it needs to be for where it needs to travel, I mean, is pretty simple, right, but we're also we should probably say that there's different You could transport CEO two three different ways, right, gas, liquid, and solid, right, and the most efficient is is uh is gas? Right? Yeah? Yeah, of course? Um solid CEO two actually is dry eyes did you Yeah, yeah, I didn't. And it's not very cost effective to transport as a solid obviously, um, and gas is easier because you can compress it with these uh you know, these compressors kind of push it through the pipeline every so often they have these compressors. And where are you shooting it too, though, shooting into the storage area chuck there? Yeah, Which that depends on what storage you're gonna use, what kind of storage you're gonna use. Well, what kind do you want to use? I mean, there's only two underground and underwater, right right? What kind do I want to use? What kind do you want to use? If you're Chuck King of the World and somebody says, what, let's see something about CCS, you say, I decree that we're going to store it underground, underground? Alright? Nice? The ocean thing worries me a little bit. They both worried me a little bit, actually, but yeah, let's start with underground. Okay, let's do underground. Um, well, Josh, there are some estimates. If you want another stat you're right, this is chuck full of stats. Um, the planet can store up to ten trillion tons of CEO two underground, which is a hundred years of storage of all human anthropogenic carbon contributions, which sounds good, but that's really not very long d years. No, but consider this. I was actually um when I wrote the article can we bury our CEO two problem under the ocean? I think is what it was called. There's no telling what kind of technology we're going to have. We could conceivably take that trap carbon dioxide and and exert tons of force and and make synthetic petroleum out of it. Yeah point yeah, So a hundred years is a really long time with the kind of technological advances we've been we've been undertaking in the last hundred years, right yeah, I mean think about nineteen odd nine and what it was like then. I don't like to compare to now that's a syphilis yeah yeah sure. So yeah, that's underground. Um. You know, it's pressurized when it's at deep underground, and it behaves more like a liquid than a gas when it's at fronder ground because it like seeps into other little cracks and porous rocks, which is a good thing, right. And actually there there's a specific rock that they found um works really well for carbon storage, and that is basalt, which is volcanic rock, right yeah, yeah, and they just inject us what is it? Do they inject gaseous gasified CEO two? I think so? Yeah, they injected directly into the rock. And actually the rock transforms from base all into limestone. Pretty cool. It converts it into rock. So basically like it's like a hyper accelerated, uh geological process that's going on. But when I read that, I thought, wow, that's great, what a great idea, we just need to run around injecting all the base all in the world with c O two and will be set. It will just have a big limestone planet. And then again I thought, we really don't know what we're tinkering with here, Like what happens if we have like too much limestone on the planet. We we can't say we don't know. Like this, I can't tell almost I hate to admit this, but I can't tell if this kind of tinkering may actually result in much more catastrophic consequences than just going the way we're going and trying to go with biofuels. I don't you know, a lot of the End of the World movies where it shows like the future, how mankind was wiped out, the little thing they'll use to to turn the story was we were trying to do something great and discovered something we thought was great, but it turned out to be some irrevocable change that lead to our demands. You're talking about soil and Green, of course, Well yeah, and just a lot of movies like that. But that's a great point. Actually, Slowly Green is a great example. I think we're doing something really good and that might lend lead to our undoing water World. Greatest movie ever made? Definitely? Maybe? Really? Yeah, what did that have to do with this? It's highly post apocalyptic. Okay, let's just see that one. I thought it was you haven't seen it. I thought it was a cheesy romance. No, it starts out like that and the twist at the end is mind boggling. Yeah, it's like The Road Warrior. So go ahead, Chuck. We're talking underground or are we done with that part? No, well we're almost done. What happens is they're studying all that right now, so your fears hopefully can be dismissed because they're looking to see what the result will be. Sure and as far as it goes, I think the oldest um underground uh CEO two Georage site is actually under the sea floor in Norway and it's only as old as nine and it hasn't had an accident or anything, but it's still it's only thirteen years old. Yeah, so I mean what happens in fifty years or a hundred years exactly? And that's what they're keeping their eye on. I mean they're worried about it too. I mean, we definitely have to do something, but I don't know. I'm just a little hesitant, all right, I agree, Yeah, well you wanna talk about the ocean. Yeah, let's talk about the ocean. I'm I'm with you. I'm much more trepid about the ocean storage and that, Um there's again. I wrote an article called can we bury our CEO two problem in the ocean? And in that article, um, there's this guy who came up with these the idea of having these pipelines pump liquefied not gasified, but liquefied CEO two directly into enormous bags. That's right at the abysmal plane. Yeah, not abysmal plane, the Yeah, but I imagine it's pretty abysmal down there. Yeah. Um, so yeah, down on the abysmal plane, right, And uh, it's it's a pretty good idea. The problem is, these huge, enormous bags can only store I think a day or ten worth of carbon dioxide captured. It would be a lot of bags, and they end up really quick, and if any one of them ruptured, we don't know what would happened. But apparently from a little more investigation, if we bury this stuff or dump it in the ocean deep enough which is to the tune of about eleven ft um. Then we can just let it go and hope for the best that the the incredibly low pressure uh and temperatures will basically globify it, compress it, it it ull be floating around. Sounds like that terrible, terrible idea to me, with any kind of cloud that I may have as a human being and a podcaster, I would like to hear now say that I think just dumping our captured carbon diode die oxide into the ocean is one of the worst ideas I've heard this year. Yeah, I know, Green Pieces and wild about the idea, and they said it's not even feasible until at least the year so you know, I mean, I have two camps. It's good that we're exploring things like this, but you know, it would be much better if we had electric cars powered by solar energy rather than just thinking of different ways to keep using fossil fuels over and over and over right now, And and that's a good point. I noticed Green Pieces kind of not too hip on this either, and I agree with them as well. I think that we basically have to stuff like this really distracts us from making hard decisions and hard choices. So this is easy. We get to like our lives don't change at all. It's just the power companies need to go retrofit their old their old flus with you know, scrubbers of some sort. Uh. And but for us to have electric cars or to have bio fuels, we're gonna have to pay more gallon kind of thing. So it does affect us. So people aren't paying that much attention to it. That's how to say. This is pielos Y technology, though, you know, I mean, it's very viable and it's going on now still right, Hopefully works are going to be done on a lot of fronts and there will be multiple solutions. You know what my favorite idea was, But did you read it that little sidebar about the company's sky Mine. Okay, So sky Mine has figured out a way where they just take um sequestered carbon dioxide and they inject it with salt and water sodium hydroxide, right, and it creates a chemical reaction that forms baking soda. That's it kind of baking. So it's good for everything, it is everything. I just think that's the greatest idea ever. The problem is we'd have massive baking soda stores and the baking soda market in which I'm heavily invested with just bottom out. So I mean, I like it as an idea, but financially it would suck for me. Right, No fridge would ever stink again, though, No, we can probably make fridges out of baking soda with that muchly, you know, if they can make a suitcase out of cocaine, they can probably make a refrigerator out of baking soda. The operative word is they. But getting back to the water real quick. You were talking about leaking CEO two from the ocean, remember our Little Exploding Lake podcast. Yeah, that's a great example of the coming up through the water. So that could happen lakes. And we should also probably mention carbon sink, yeah, which is a phenomenon the The ocean actually does absorb CEO two from the atmosphere already, and what happens now is it's sinking to the bottom ideally, but some oceans, like the Southern Ocean, have soaked up so much that it's not soaking it down to the bottom anymore. It's not sinking, it's kind of staying on top. And that makes the water very acidic, which is not good for fishies. No, which is again like nives. We have no idea what happened in the marine life, probably because they were exploded into trillions of pieces. That's toughs account. So yeah, a little troublesome. I mean capturing carbon this is this is a good thing. Storing it a little more dodgy, yeah, I mean, we'll see what happens. We're gonna script this planet one way or another. Might as well make it quick, like in just a huge massive eruption of c O two into the atmosphere that chokes us all the death. That sounds encouraging. Sure, well, it'll get filtered out eventually in some strange new life form will eventually take over and screw it up later on. So, oh you're a bright one today. It's just a shining light. Yeah, so Chuck, I'm glad we did this again, buddy, This one, this one's done until next time, until that carbon dioxide exploit. Let's agree right now, we don't do carbon capture and storage again until that massive eruption takes place, All right, okay? Deal Part three that you have it coming not too soon, so you know what time it's for then it's time for Chuck to plug our spoken word album. Go ahead. Wow, it's been so long. Um it was on economics, if I remember correctly, The Stuff you Should Know a super Stuff out of the Economy. Yeah, you can buy it in your iTunes store for what was planal price four bucks something like that, something like that. Nice and and again we got really good feedback on it. We did. Yeah, and that was a good experience. So yeah, there's Chuck plugging our audio book, The Stuff you Should Know super Stuff Guide to the Economy. I can't believe I remember the name. And it's just World Time Safe and that means that it is listener mail time. All right, Chuck, what do you have for us, baby compass head Catcher's mit. I have something I'm just gonna call shocking listener mail. We have a lot of that lately. Yeah. We had a fan that wrote in that UM was struck by lightning. Yeah, but not just the fan, but her dog too. Yeah, And she just kind of off handedly mentioned it because she was talking about she read that spontaneous human combustion could be caused by lightning, and I was struck by lightning, by the way, And that was kind of it, and I wrote her back. It was like, no, no, no, no, you need to give me some details here because I would like to read this on the air. And I've never talked to anyone who I was struck by lightning. Yeah, so here we go. It turns out it was a side strike, which I never heard of. Uh, And she says a side strike is a really well phenomenon of lightning. It struck about a half a block from me. It was incredibly bright, and I was blinded for a few minutes afterward. I was not back about six feet but still landed on my feet and I couldn't hear for a good half hour afterward. It was a booming and crackling yet incredibly quiet, which I thought it was interesting. I can't totally explain the sound except to compare it to the sound you get when you skydive, which didn't help me. It's I've never been skydivan. It's kind of have you done it? No, no way, it's terrifying. Okay, I believe it the rush of wind booms around you, but it's definitely still would you agree with that? Yeah, similar sort of Oh you were all hammered when you did it? When you're talking about remember uh. In my research about lightning strikes and strike victims, I found it incredible that a side strike can occur UH up to a mile away from something and you can still receive the electrical charge. I saw the lightning strike, but I didn't feel any pain, so I assumed I wasn't hit. It wasn't n till later in the day when Burnmark showed up. I don't think I lost consciousness, but I was totally routed on the spot where I was standing. Rooted is r O U T. I'm not sure. If it wasn't for my dog, I probably would have continued to stand there for a while. Yeah, I guess she was rooted. That makes sense. My dog was so frightened that she just took off running. I was holding onto the leason couldn't let go, so I sort of ran blindly after her to her house. I was an emotional blur for a decent while afterwards. Consequently, my dog's black fur is now very speckled with white hair. And let me see actually coincides with another of our podcast. Oh yeah, and she had singes across her fingers and toes, little burn blisters and as far as long term damage. And you see she has affected her balance sum and messes with her inner ear at her frontal lobe is fine, and she's taking neurological exams in psychological testing and she is fine and normal and considers herself very lucky. I consider her very lucky too. That is doll. That is Hannah of Tennessee. And we're very glad that you and your little girl Pucci are all Okay, Hannah, I would strongly recommend that you play the lotto as often as you can. Yeah. So yeah, If you want to tell us any amazing true stories about lightning, shark attacks, far fights, whatever, you can send us an email. That's what they call in these stags, right, chuck electronic men. You can send that to stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot Com brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camra. It's ready, are you