B(a)P
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That is one heavy ring finger
I was reading this article this morning out of interest, but found their claim a little hard to swallow.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/modern-alchemists-turn-airborne-co2-into-diamonds/
They claim that, 'each carat removes 20 tons of greenhouse gas from the sky.'
1 carat is 0.2 g, which is 0.0167 moles of carbon.
If you got a 100% yield you would need only 0.0167 moles of CO2, which is 0.73 g.
So are they getting a yield of 3.7 x 10-6%?
Where does the rest of it go?
What am I missing?
The article is more about carbon capture and storage generally, but I am curious if anyone knows anything about the process of converting
CO2 to diamond via CH4.
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Texium
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What an absolute load of horseshit.
My guess is that the process of mining a carat of diamonds contributes approximately 20 tons of CO2 to the atmosphere. Thus, by buying one
of their diamonds instead of a mined diamond you're not releasing an additional 20 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. But even if that is
true, it is a very sleazy and misleading marketing tactic, because it makes it sound like each diamond that they produce is actively sequestering tons
of CO2! Their claim that "With the purchase of a 2-carat diamond, you're essentially offsetting two and a half years of your life" is the
most cringe-worthy statement I've heard in a long time and that's saying something considering I've been grading lots of sophomore lab reports this
month... You'd be thousands of dollars richer and no worse off on your carbon footprint if you abstained from buying a diamond altogether.
In short, it's a marketing tactic to attract people with more money than brains who want to feel good about themselves.
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B(a)P
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Quote: Originally posted by Texium (zts16)  |
My guess is that the process of mining a carat of diamonds contributes approximately 20 tons of CO2 to the atmosphere. Thus, by buying one
of their diamonds instead of a mined diamond you're not releasing an additional 20 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. |
Ah yes, that makes sense, I was wondering if they ended up with a heap of some carbon based by-product.
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itsallgoodjames
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I'd imagine the diamonds actually emit more CO2 to produce than they are made from, by many thousands or tens of thousands of times, given how energy
intensive the process of making artificial diamonds is.
Nuclear physics is neat. It's a shame it's so regulated...
Now that I think about it, that's probably a good thing. Still annoying though.
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Texium
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| Quote: Originally posted by itsallgoodjames | | I'd imagine the diamonds actually emit more CO2 to produce than they are made from, by many thousands or tens of thousands of times, given how energy
intensive the process of making artificial diamonds is. |
They claim to use only renewable energy to produce
them
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itsallgoodjames
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Even then, it's not like renewables emmit no carbon dioxide. They just typically emmit less
Nuclear physics is neat. It's a shame it's so regulated...
Now that I think about it, that's probably a good thing. Still annoying though.
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Fyndium
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This is typical newspeak of climate business. In the logic that you don't buy their competitor's product, you will make emissions not to happen.
Only remotely realistic methods of utilizing atmospheric CO2 would be to generate electricity by solar/nuclear power and use it to condense CO2 from
air and use it to produce hydrocarbon fuels through fischer-tropsch, or produce other stuff that CO2 can be used either directly or as modified.
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itsallgoodjames
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| Quote: Originally posted by Fyndium |
Only remotely realistic methods of utilizing atmospheric CO2 would be to generate electricity by solar/nuclear power and use it to condense CO2 from
air and use it to produce hydrocarbon fuels through fischer-tropsch, or produce other stuff that CO2 can be used either directly or as modified.
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I mean, yeah. What I was saying is that all the electricity used in the process of making artificial diamonds, would offset the amount of CO2 being
taken out of the atmosphere, even if 100% of the electricity came from renewables.
Nuclear physics is neat. It's a shame it's so regulated...
Now that I think about it, that's probably a good thing. Still annoying though.
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Texium
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Yes, the whole point is that the company claims (probably factually) that their diamonds have a much lower carbon footprint than conventional
diamonds. Even so, nobody NEEDS diamonds of this type, so if you’re actually concerned about your carbon footprint... just don’t buy them.
Synthetic moissonite exists as a comparable and even more energy efficient alternative to diamonds. Even if this company’s core claim is true, the
way that they frame it is highly fallacious, since it makes it sound like their diamonds are a net-negative on CO2, which is obviously not true. But
that’s what companies often do. They bend the truth to make their product sound larger than life to the critical thinking deficient.
The thing that really bothers me here is that Scientific American is effectively advertising this company by repeating and validating their misleading
marketing claims. I would have expected better. Shame on them.
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Fyndium
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Synthetic diamonds are much likely a lot less expensive to manufacture than natural, as they have larger lead-in costs than running costs. Locating
and extracting diamonds from crust requires megascale landmass moving, and the collateral damage is also hefty, as forced slave and child labor is
used in non-democratic countries for production. The time I learned something about the world, I considered diamonds a great allotrope of carbon, but
one of the most stupid applications of humans is to use it as a trinket. Same applies to gold - gold mine sounds like free gold with little work, but
usually the return of investment barely settles the costs of extraction. Put a million in, get possibly a million and a few bucks out.
Possibly, in the great future, diamond and graphene are used in daily applications and in industry as conductors, abrasive bits and other stuff in
large scale, as their production costs plummet with new innovations. And, the day will come when someone lits a fireplace with diamonds and posts it
in social media.
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Morgan
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A diamond ring made from ranch dressing is for sale on eBay
https://www.foodandwine.com/news/hidden-valley-ranch-diamond
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Fantasma4500
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diamonds. where the marketing turned into a psychological operation
maybe they go by the concept that you need to compress a whole forest into carbon for it to become a diamond, as to use the probability of it being
formed, as the baseline for how much carbon is required?
maybe one day, humans can be reduced to pure carbon and then be either pressed or blown up to yield one large diamond
burglary could then become a very personal issue.
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Morgan
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"3 steps are needed to turn cremated ashes into diamonds: Step 1: Extract the carbon from the cremation ashes or hair. Step 2: Purify the cremation
ashes to ..."
https://www.lonite.com/cremation-ashes-into-diamonds/
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