One is materials, such as graphene, carbon fiber, carbon nanotubes, and various kinds of carbides - including the miracle materials represented by the MAX phases, such as Ti3SiC2, Silicon carbide SiC, etc., all of which are made from earth abundant elements, and all of which can be expected to be required in huge amounts in any kind of energy efficient system, which necessarily will involve high temperatures.
Then there's asphalt: Asphaltenes are often side products of reforming reactions, and though they are often not desirable, they are useful for roads, roofing and other things. To the extent that carbon capture involves the high temperature reforming of biomass, the formation of asphaltenes will probably always be involved, however much their formation is minimized.
A fellow I've met, with whom I've exchanged a few emails, Dr. Richard Lehman, has founded a company that claims it can make carbon negative concrete; current concrete manufacturing is responsible for the release of a few billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. The caveat is that to do this, one needs highly concentrated carbon dioxide; air alone won't do. However, to the extent this material were utilized, it would also sequester carbon.
Then of course there are polymers, hundreds of millions of tons of which are synthesized each year. Although polymers represent environmental problems in their own right, to the extent that the remain in use, they are not in the atmosphere. Many monomers are readily accessible from syngas, which is the ultimate product of Dr. Willauer's technology.
I personally believe that we can substitute chars from reformation reactions for coal/coke to make steel and other carbonaceous alloys.
The point is this: If we stop using all dangerous fossil fuels, and leave what remains in the ground as "presequestered" carbon, and we capture carbon dioxide from seawater, not all of it will necessarily end up as transportation fuels. Some will end on in materials. The latest figures suggest we're dumping about 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year; one can imagine the removal of 5 billion tons per year for materials, perhaps if none were dumped, and all the requirements for organic chemistry now addressed by dangerous fossil fuels were satisfied by the use of captured and reduced carbon dioxide.
Eventually this would mean that the concentration of dangerous fossil fuel waste in the atmosphere would go down, slowly perhaps, but steadily.
It is the only way I can imagine it happening. I'm, of course, not optimistic that it will happen, but based on what I know, it's probably the only shot we have.
There is an approach to geoengineering that is a little less extreme than say, seeding the clouds with sulfuric acid - one hears these schemes and one really can't believe it - and this is by increasing the surface area of water evaporation, i.e. large scale irrigation. Processing huge quantities of seawater to remove carbon, uranium, and perhaps some other elements of sufficient rarity or low requirements for use (or toxicity, such as mercury and lead) might be coupled to desalination. (A very important element that we will need from the sea ultimately is phosphorous - this is a major, but largely ignored crisis) This is not an environmental bye by any stretch, since the new thing requiring management would be salt, but a potential side effect would be to produce significantly more evaporation, hence more clouds. The clouds, being white at their tops, would increase the Earth's albedo.
But the real fact of the matter is that the carrying capacity of this planet is not 7 billion human beings, not even three million human beings, especially not at the American life style, to which all 7 billion seem to aspire. Nevertheless, our inaction of the 20th and now the 21st century may call for extreme efforts to save whatever can be saved, that which can be saved being less and less each year we delay.
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