Re: CO2 sequestration

[John Denker <jsd@AV8N.COM>]

Chuck Britton wrote:
> Big Money air liquefaction is currently done to provide liquid oxygen
> to the medical industry.
> LN2 is a useful byproduct of this $$$$ maker.

Not quite.  Far and away the biggest consumer of O2 is
the steel-mill industry.  A tiny, tiny sliver of the
production stream is diverted for welding.  An even
tinier sliver is diverted for breathing (medical and
aviation).

> LCO2 is also - and is now used at virtually every soda-fountain
> instead of high pressure tanks. Check the back of every fast-food
> joint for the storage tank.
>
> Dry cleaning is now being done with LCO2.
>
> LCO2 can be REAL cheap (and available) if the will is there.

That conclusion doesn't follow at all.  Think back to economics 101.
Because liquid N2 is a byproduct of the O2 industry, the supply of
N2 is spectacularly inelastic.  By that we mean:
  1) A byproduct, by definition, is produced in quantities that far
exceed demand.  You would expect the market price of such a thing
(net of shipping costs) to be infinitesimal.
  2) If you change the scenario to require larger quantities of
the item in question, it becomes _the_ product, no longer a
byproduct.  The marginal cost of the first non-byproduct unit
goes sky-high, because now you have to build from scratch a plant
to product that unit, and the O2 industry will no longer be
subsidizing you.

This argument, as applied to N2, is a famous example of inelasticity.
To the extent that liquid CO2 is also a byproduct, the same argument
applies, word for word.