222 nm?? No way jose. Free radicals don't just stay where you generate them. Even if the UV dose is minimal below a few layers of cells, it doesn't mean that radical damage does not reach live epidermal layers. Just using ventilation is a lot safer and has no real downsides.
Except the current use of the byproduct is not just flaring it off pointlessly as waste. The byproduct is being burned as a fuel, which in that usage is already (nearly) neutral. If an alternative fuel has to be used instead, that fuel is more than likely going to be natural gas or coal.
It's correct that lignin is used as a fuel, here's one source of it. ~98 is burnt.
"currently most of the lignin produced from paper industry is burned as low-value fuel to generate electricity and heat (Luo and Abu-Omar, 2017) and only less than 2% is used for producing specialty chemicals ..." https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09266...
This was my first reaction as well. I think the subtext is that the byproduct is currently being burned as a fuel source, which is common for things like sawdust in mills. So there's one aspect of this calculation that could be waaay off. If the mills that would have burned this byproduct in a boiler are selling it instead, they'll need another energy source for their boilers! If that energy source is a fossil fuel instead of a wood byproduct, then this "upcycling" has inadvertently become carbon positive (or perhaps neutral at best). And it will be a lot easier to retrofit an industrial boiler for natural gas than to convert it to electric. Even if it were electric, most of the world does not remotely have as clean a grid as Norway's. So it would be some decades before any carbon advantage emerges.
Thanks for the comment. See calculation breakdown added in a few threads above. Some of our thoughts about the carbon negative part:
Paper mills captures CO2 from trees (that are sustainably harvested, more trees planted than harvested p.a.) of which parts of it is released after some of the lignin is burned (inefficiently) for fuel. If they stop burning lignin for fuel, they need other energy sources, and then the question is how the paper mill chooses to do this:
- The mills can choose to burn fossil fuels, get a renewable source, or buy electricity from the grid. We will only source lignin from players serious about sustainability and green alternatives (industrial broilers could also use green hydrogen), alongside prioritising maximised energy efficient operations
- Even if they get electricity from the grid, the world is moving forward and we’re luckily reaching a point where additional capacity in the grid is coming from renewables, while fossil is decreasing - boosting new renewable buildout more
What’s very important in what you point out is that when we expand our lignin supplier base, we need to be careful in selecting our suppliers, understanding their alternatives and understanding our Scope 3 emission effects to ensure it aligns with our mission of saving the planet :) And that's what we will do - ensure that this ends up on the right side.
Taken to the other extreme, as the value of sawdust goes up the incentive to reduce sawdust goes down, decreasing the number of board feet per tree, increasing trees cut for lumber.
If you find a better use for sawdust, great. But if you could invent a new saw blade with a smaller kerf, you’d be helping more.
"Even if it were electric, most of the world does not remotely have as clean a grid as Norway's. So it would be some decades before any carbon advantage emerges."
So.... you give up? This is stupid all-or-nothing absolutist thinking. I'm not saying OP YC is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but long-term sequestration of tree carbon is a carbon sink.
Solar/Wind is at LCOE parity with natural gas turbine. It will pass it soon, with basic subsidies (as if fossil fuels aren't subsidized) then storage won't be a disadvantage either. If not, emerging economies of scale and tech progress in wind/solar will leave natural gas in the dust.
So even if the grid is dirty now, there is a clear path forward, and the grid will adapt to the changing pattern, and we already have the delivery method solved (the grid). And there are opportunities to possibly scrub carbon from central generation. Not as much as the sociopathic petroleum companies would like you to think so they can go business as usual, but better than an ICE car.
We don't think we are the greatest thing since sliced bread either! But thanks for the encouragement and good points, we try and hope we can point the carbon needle a meaningful push the right way with the means at our disposal - and this we will keep on doing, now fed with more inputs & insight
Why should we pay any attention to someone who needs get only one prediction right? That suggests a probability of correct predictions that approaches zero. Let me know when a prediction comes out true. I would be foolish to pay any attention before then.
One guy who makes grandiose predictions about the future convinced another guy who pretends to be a philosopher. It's the blind leading the blind. In truth, they both just make bets as any gambler does.
You probably only have a few services that you genuinely want the TV to reach. If I had a "smart" TV, I think I'd go with a whitelisting approach instead.
I ran allow list at home for a while with a transparent squid proxy. It worked well for me, I could add stuff to the squid Conf and reload easily but not practical for the other three people ink my home. Amazing all the endpoints failing with no visible impact on anything I wanted to use.
No, the problem has been that the variant vaccines have not shown superior responses to variants vs. the original spike isolate in preclinical and small trials.
Incorrect, the beta variant vaccine for example showed quite good strength at stopping the beta variant vs. the wild type vaccine (which beta much more easily evaded). The problem is beta variant grew for a bit last year but is entirely gone now.
> If cement manufacturing alone were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of CO2 on the planet. Since mushrooms are relatively easy to feed, can be grown anywhere, and are appealing to increasingly environmentally aware consumers, we expect to see significant growth in mushroom tech solutions in building materials.
Mushrooms are not plants. They don't photosynthesize and fix carbon dioxide from the air. Growing mushrooms is still carbon positive. It's important to understand that this is an organism that respires, so these generic claims about a carbon benefit need much more analysis to understand whether there is in fact a benefit at scale.
By themselves they may not remove carbon from the air but they do sequester carbon by consuming carbon stores and converting them into different products.
You could, in theory, make a wolffia farm (Wolffia being the fastest growing plant on the planet and very carbon hungry to boot) and feed the wolffia to mushrooms to convert them into building, clothing, and packing materials and thus create a cycle of utilitarian carbon sequestration
> they do sequester carbon by consuming carbon stores
They can't sequester any more carbon than was in the feed stock. And when you're trying to sell a biodegradable thing (which I think is laudable), this would have a minimal net effect on carbon for a material that is readily disposed and biodegrades within a few weeks. The benefits of reducing plastic waste, landfill, and pollution are obvious. The carbon benefits are less clear. Paper packaging from pulp waste comes directly from a photosynthetic resource, and may be found to be equivalent materials. So the argument for mushrooms as an intermediate seems like it needs more explanation -- to me anyway. Obviously, a bioplastic that never degrades is a far better carbon sink than a material that degrades readily, but then you are generating waste that must be stored somewhere indefinitely. Not a problem for a building material, but obviously not great for packaging. But I don't see how a building material made from mushrooms could ever sequester more carbon than, you know, wood.
It's about speed. Wolffia can double in size every day whereas the fastest growing woods can take years to double in size.
Also, while Wolffia is human and livestock edible, to make it safe for consumption would require precise control over the growth media to prevent unhealthy buildup of contaminants whereas using it as feed for self-growing building materials, clothing materials, and packaging materials is a viable alternative.
It would require little by way of energy, be a carbon-negative process practically from the start, help supplant a more dangerous industry (plastics and foams) with a safer one, and the waste products would be compostable organics.
Further, Wolffia prefers mildly acidic, highly carbonated water for optimal growth, so you could boost production by percolating carbon-heavy air into the water, and for secondary utility you could also grow fish in the vats to provide additional fertilizer for the Wolffia while also farming a secondary source of income, or failing that you could incorporate these farms into wastewater cleanup plants, allowing them to help provide clean drinking water for cities while also absorbing carbon out of the air, locking that carbon into static pieces, and then growing useful materials from them all in one fell swoop.
So, yeah, wood has its uses and is a great carbon sink, but for sheer quantity and speed Wolffia and mushrooms have it beat.
There is a problem though, and that is getting Wolffia to grow in a farm is a difficult process that we do not have mastered. It can be done but it takes time and skill to get started, and would require maintenance above and beyond traditional farm work, but if that problem were solved then it would be a good thing all around.
