Sugar Carbon Sequestration

[PaulB]

Hi Can anyone assist a non chemist who's working up ideas on sequestering carbon by dehydrating sugar with sulphuric acid. All I ever seem to find are utube videos showing demos of what I was shown years ago in a lab. What I am trying to find out is whether that process is a viable, cost effective method that can be scaled to produce around 100 kg of carbon. I am also trying to understand whether or not it's possible to estimate  the amount of heat, sulphur dioxide and co2 produced so that the process can be managed so as to minimise co2 emissions and benefit from heat recovery for example. I know burning in air and with acid is essentially the same chemical process but does its output and properties  have to be the same? Couldn't dehydration be completed in a partial vacuum for example with just enough oxygen for the oxidation of the carbon to complete? If anyone has ever looked at this process in minute detail and is concerned about climate change it would be great to correspond. Thanks for your help.

[John Cuthber]

1 hour ago, PaulB said:

I know burning in air and with acid is essentially the same chemical process

Not really.

Burning sugar gives (ideally) carbon dioxide and water.

The reaction with sulphuric acid gives carbon and water.

 

In principle, growing plants, extracting sugar and then dehydrating it with acid to carbon would remove CO2 from the air.

But it's more practical to grow plants and make them into charcoal.

 

[PaulB]

John. Thank you for your comment. I appreciate that having lifted a plant, you might as well process the whole plant. My thought was that since plant sugar is the building block of growth, if you pick the sweetest plants, that are adapted or bred for sugar production,  the sugar and carbon would be concentrated in its sugars. The other advantage is that sugar production is an "optimised" industrial process and therefore sugar, as a fuel source and food is readily available in the kinds of quantities I think I can persuade drivers to pay for.

Curious why you would advocate  converting plants to charcoal. Is there a difference between sugar carbon and charcoal that I'm missing or can the same acid production method be used and on the whole plant  rather than a slow airless burn? Charcoal production isn't feasible on any sensible scale  in South East England hence my interest in acid as a short cut to carbon production.

Any further thoughts?

[John Cuthber]

5 hours ago, PaulB said:

Curious why you would advocate  converting plants to charcoal.

It is easy.

 

5 hours ago, PaulB said:

Charcoal production isn't feasible on any sensible scale  in South East England

Why not?

You can heat the dead vegetation is some sort of container.
Volatile material- mainly water  but lots of other stuff will come off.

Cool that and let the water + tar condense + then use the tar etc for fire the  furnace.
Even if you need to use some of the charcoal as fuel you can still get net carbon capture.

This was done on a large scale with coal; why not with scrubby vegetation?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas

 

[PaulB]

Would never get passed the planners. There are plenty of ancient charcoal burning sites but they are exactly that. Long gone. A few artisan producers of very expensive BBQ charcoal but nothing on any scale. Also local nimby's would put a stop to it. That said I had thought of just purchasing charcoal from sustainable forest at about £1 per kg and just ploughing it under after some innoculation process. Might be starting point for people most reluctant to pay for sequestration. Hoping that acid approach has most chance to have economies of scale and be relatively less labour intensive.etc. Your thoughts?