It's too bad these DAC systems don't take it a step further kicking the o2 back into the atmosphere while turning the carbon into something physical and industrially valuable like say spools of carbon fiber fabric or graphene/carbon nanotubes.
At this point every thread with an archive.is link has atleast one similar comment. Etiquette should probably shift to including this info in the same comment that posts the link to reduce the noise.
Oxygen really likes being connected carbon so spitting it off takes a lot of energy. All the things you mentioned burn in oxygen for exactly that reason. Making them requires at least as much energy as you’d get back by burning them so is hard to justify right now when instead you could make it directly from the carbon in things like fossil fuels and not have to spend all the energy to spit oxygen off first
I guess that's something humanity can consider once the question of energy sources is settled.
For now, whatever energy that could be used to gather energy to split CO2 into C and O2 could as well be used to replace fossil-burning generators, at likely better efficiency.
But are trees the most efficient technology for the job?
Trees evolved to work with the inputs of their environment, we can engineer practically anything in terms of what materials/inputs are available to a synthetic tree having the sole purpose of spitting out solid carbon.
It's non-trivial to prevent other nations from destroying their forests. But nations that care might be able to make up for it with engineering, from anywhere else on the planet, at least in terms of atmospheric co2. Is the best way for such a nation to do so to just plant trees, or can we do better? It seems like a path worth at least exploring the possibilities of.
It's too bad these DAC systems don't take it a step further kicking the o2 back into the atmosphere while turning the carbon into something physical and industrially valuable like say spools of carbon fiber fabric or graphene/carbon nanotubes.