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00:00:16,967 --> 00:00:25,976
And this gets me now to
our last why this matters,

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and I'm doing it on the backdrop
of this beautiful periodic

3
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table.

4
00:00:31,949 --> 00:00:39,089
So that's a lot of
energy, by the way.

5
00:00:39,089 --> 00:00:40,724
First you had to make
these iron pipes,

6
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and now you've got
to case-harden them

7
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or maybe you've got to
put even more iron in.

8
00:00:47,497 --> 00:00:51,568
Look at the other
900 C is really hot.

9
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How much energy do we take
to make stuff as simple

10
00:00:54,972 --> 00:00:56,240
as concrete?

11
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It's just liquid stone.

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Didn't you just grind some
stones down or something

13
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and then pour it out?

14
00:01:05,582 --> 00:01:08,785
Actually, if you think about
concrete and other materials

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like steel, the use of
them is skyrocketing.

16
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This is how much we're making.

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So look at this, the
millions of tons.

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Let's see.

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There's steel, and
there's cement.

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Look at that.

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There's the world
population right there,

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and this runs out in 2009,
2010, '11, but it's continuing.

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It's continuing because it's
not just that the population is

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growing, it's that the
places that the population is

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growing the most are
also industrializing.

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And that means building.

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You go to some of these places
and there's a new building.

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Literally every block, there's
a new building being built.

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That takes this stuff.

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That takes a lot
of ovens at a lot

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of really high temperatures.

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Just the cement
alone is accounting

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for 7% of all CO2 emissions,
all CO2 emissions on the planet,

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7% of that goes into simply
making this magic liquid stone,

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this powder.

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And at the core of it,
what is at the core of it?

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It's chemistry.

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It's clinker.

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It's called the clinker.

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What is a clinker?

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It's this thing.

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It's simply a calcium
silicate group.

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Making that is what
takes all this energy.

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It takes half of it at
least, making that right.

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And as always, the
chemistry gives us

46
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the chance to get out of our
constrained optimization.

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And so you've got to make this
mixture of different types

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of synthetic rock.

49
00:03:00,130 --> 00:03:02,165
You've got to make mixtures
of alite and belite.

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They have different names.

51
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And you might be able to
make more belite, which

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takes less energy.

53
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You can cool your
oven down by 300 C

54
00:03:12,542 --> 00:03:15,978
to make belite
compared to alite.

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But then even though
it's structurally OK,

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it takes 90 days to dry.

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So you can't do that.

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So you've got to spend the
300 extra Celsius to make

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more alite.

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Why It's in the chemistry.

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It's in the chemistry.

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And understanding,
what seems like

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not a very interesting-- cement,
is it really that interesting?

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You bet it is.

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7% of all CO2 emissions is
just making this one material,

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and we're making a lot of it.

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We're making a lot of it.

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There's a 164
tower in Dubai that

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opened in 2010 that
took a billion kilograms

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of this stuff.

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Now, this makes a lot of CO2,
and I've talked about CO2

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throughout the semester.

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And so one thing I
wanted to leave you with

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was also some things that
we're doing about it.

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What do we do about CO2?

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00:04:12,903 --> 00:04:17,007
So how is carbon capture
and sequestration going?

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Can we take it all out?

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00:04:18,975 --> 00:04:21,745
We put it in, can
we take it out?

79
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And so I'll share
a couple of things.

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So one of the problems
with CO2 capture

81
00:04:28,685 --> 00:04:32,889
is that if you don't do it
right where you make it,

82
00:04:32,889 --> 00:04:34,858
then you have to transport
it, and it turns out

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that's actually really
hard to transport CO2.

84
00:04:37,861 --> 00:04:39,262
And there's a lot
of problems that

85
00:04:39,262 --> 00:04:40,497
have happened over the years.

86
00:04:40,497 --> 00:04:42,065
In the '80s, there
was a leak that

87
00:04:42,065 --> 00:04:44,167
killed thousands of people.

88
00:04:44,167 --> 00:04:47,270
There have been
massive leaks in Canada

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in transporting this material.

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00:04:49,506 --> 00:04:52,976
So transporting is
actually really hard to do.

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00:04:52,976 --> 00:04:54,211
There's metal pipe corrosion.

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00:04:54,211 --> 00:04:58,415
This is a great chemistry
problem unsolved.

93
00:04:58,415 --> 00:05:01,785
And then the next part
of CO2 sequestration

94
00:05:01,785 --> 00:05:03,820
is one is transporting
it that's challenging,

95
00:05:03,820 --> 00:05:05,021
and the other is storing it.

96
00:05:05,021 --> 00:05:06,389
What do you do with it?

97
00:05:06,389 --> 00:05:08,959
Let's suppose we
could capture it.

98
00:05:08,959 --> 00:05:10,126
Well, then what?

99
00:05:10,126 --> 00:05:12,762
And there's ideas around this.

100
00:05:12,762 --> 00:05:16,766
So you could pump it maybe
underground, geosequestration.

101
00:05:16,766 --> 00:05:19,503
That's not a sure thing.

102
00:05:19,503 --> 00:05:21,671
We don't know, we
don't understand

103
00:05:21,671 --> 00:05:24,841
at those scales exactly how well
we can in case this material

104
00:05:24,841 --> 00:05:27,644
and how long it lasts, so a
lot of questions with that.

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00:05:27,644 --> 00:05:31,014
There's a whole line of thinking
on putting it in the ocean.

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Right?

107
00:05:34,651 --> 00:05:36,620
Really?

108
00:05:36,620 --> 00:05:41,424
So you want to fix the
CO2 problem by acidifying

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00:05:41,424 --> 00:05:43,793
the oceans even faster?

110
00:05:43,793 --> 00:05:44,928
OK.

111
00:05:44,928 --> 00:05:47,931
Interesting.

112
00:05:47,931 --> 00:05:51,234
So transport and sequestration
is a big problem,

113
00:05:51,234 --> 00:05:54,471
but what about technologies
where you simply sequester it

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00:05:54,471 --> 00:05:58,808
right there where you
make it, like clean coal.

115
00:05:58,808 --> 00:06:01,711
You may have heard of
clean coal, so clean coal.

116
00:06:01,711 --> 00:06:03,880
So I'm going to look at a
case study of a clean coal

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00:06:03,880 --> 00:06:05,482
project in the US.

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00:06:05,482 --> 00:06:09,019
In 2005, I got really excited
because eight companies joined,

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00:06:09,019 --> 00:06:11,555
and it was called Future Gen,
and the US government was going

120
00:06:11,555 --> 00:06:13,156
to put a lot of money into it.

121
00:06:13,156 --> 00:06:15,325
They were going to
capture 90% of the CO2.

122
00:06:15,325 --> 00:06:17,327
You get a little
bit less efficiency.

123
00:06:17,327 --> 00:06:18,828
Depending on how
you think about it,

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00:06:18,828 --> 00:06:21,398
it could be 30% less
efficiency, I mean, less power

125
00:06:21,398 --> 00:06:24,768
out of the plant, but
you sequester the CO2.

126
00:06:24,768 --> 00:06:27,971
And in 2009, construction
was planned in Illinois.

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00:06:27,971 --> 00:06:29,472
In 2010, it was canceled.

128
00:06:29,472 --> 00:06:31,707
In 2010, it was restarted.

129
00:06:31,707 --> 00:06:36,880
In 2012, there was all sorts
of discussions with the DOE

130
00:06:36,880 --> 00:06:39,983
that agreed to pay $1.1 billion.

131
00:06:39,983 --> 00:06:42,519
It was all located, and then
the companies dropped out

132
00:06:42,519 --> 00:06:43,787
and the DOE canceled projects.

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00:06:43,787 --> 00:06:45,188
So that was 10 years.

134
00:06:45,188 --> 00:06:49,159
10 years and $200 million of
taxpayer dollars and absolutely

135
00:06:49,159 --> 00:06:51,328
nothing has come out of it.

136
00:06:51,328 --> 00:06:56,399
So one of the things I want to
point out about this direction,

137
00:06:56,399 --> 00:06:58,668
I'm not saying that it's
not a good direction

138
00:06:58,668 --> 00:07:01,037
to keep pursuing.

139
00:07:01,037 --> 00:07:03,740
But the timescales are long.

140
00:07:03,740 --> 00:07:06,109
So we need to be able
to make decisions that

141
00:07:06,109 --> 00:07:08,044
can cover longer timescales.

142
00:07:08,044 --> 00:07:10,547
That's a huge part of
the challenge with this.

143
00:07:10,547 --> 00:07:13,149
It's a policy challenge as
much as it is a technical one.

144
00:07:16,152 --> 00:07:20,624
And tying this
back to the cement,

145
00:07:20,624 --> 00:07:23,860
there is some really
interesting research

146
00:07:23,860 --> 00:07:26,563
that's going on in
actually instead of--

147
00:07:26,563 --> 00:07:27,764
OK, so you've got the CO2.

148
00:07:27,764 --> 00:07:29,733
It comes out when you
make it because the ovens

149
00:07:29,733 --> 00:07:32,702
and you're burning stuff, but
what if you could take that CO2

150
00:07:32,702 --> 00:07:35,672
and just put it into
the thing you're making.

151
00:07:35,672 --> 00:07:37,807
And by the way, if
what you're making

152
00:07:37,807 --> 00:07:41,177
is a huge scale like
cement, then maybe you

153
00:07:41,177 --> 00:07:43,279
can put a lot of it
in, and maybe that

154
00:07:43,279 --> 00:07:45,015
could have a real global impact.

155
00:07:45,015 --> 00:07:49,919
So there's a lot of interest
in substantial global carbon

156
00:07:49,919 --> 00:07:51,955
uptake by cement carbonation.

157
00:07:51,955 --> 00:07:53,957
So maybe you could get
some of it in the cement.

158
00:07:53,957 --> 00:07:55,125
I like this paper.

159
00:07:55,125 --> 00:07:57,227
I'm pointing it out
because they say that they

160
00:07:57,227 --> 00:07:59,629
used Fick's diffusion law.

161
00:07:59,629 --> 00:08:02,198
They modeled the carbon uptake
by applying Fick's diffusion

162
00:08:02,198 --> 00:08:02,699
law.

163
00:08:02,699 --> 00:08:03,933
Yeah.

164
00:08:03,933 --> 00:08:04,768
It actually matters.

165
00:08:07,303 --> 00:08:09,339
Right?

166
00:08:09,339 --> 00:08:11,341
You can do this too now.

167
00:08:11,341 --> 00:08:14,844
And just a few weeks ago
on CNN, this concrete, yes,

168
00:08:14,844 --> 00:08:16,780
concrete is going high tech.

169
00:08:16,780 --> 00:08:17,447
Why?

170
00:08:17,447 --> 00:08:20,383
Because this company has
managed to figure out

171
00:08:20,383 --> 00:08:23,286
how to put a bunch of CO2
into the concrete while

172
00:08:23,286 --> 00:08:26,089
they make it, and it doesn't
change the mechanical integrity

173
00:08:26,089 --> 00:08:27,424
of the concrete.

174
00:08:27,424 --> 00:08:28,525
And it's in there.

175
00:08:28,525 --> 00:08:30,527
It's actually in there.

176
00:08:30,527 --> 00:08:32,361
This is all chemistry.

177
00:08:32,361 --> 00:08:33,296
This is all chemistry.

178
00:08:33,296 --> 00:08:36,566
So this is, I think, another
very interesting direction

179
00:08:36,566 --> 00:08:39,869
where technology can
play a vital role

180
00:08:39,869 --> 00:08:42,772
in this particular
global challenge.