Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers
Cooling tower "drift" is an air emissions PM2.5 permit matter in California.  What is drift / carryover of the unsaturated and saturated material?  Typically it happens associated with entrained water droplets; that's why e.g. salt water can't be used (among other reasons).  More to the point, what fraction of the total capture energy are you eliminating?  If you're changing evaporative efficiency in a forced-draft tower, you're incurring additional fan power or  worse, increased fuel use in the process for which cooling is taking place.  How do those balance against the fan power of a separate capture unit?  But maybe the biggest matter: in other capture technologies, the heat of dissociation/regeneration and the compressor power to deliver to sequestration are very large.  What change to the total energy budget are you proposing?  When you're at scale, what fraction of total capture needed could be delivered this way?<p>Does putting CO2 in a bottle keep any CO2 out of the air for as long as a month?  Removal times of hundreds of years are required for the capture process to contribute to climate.