Carbon removal tends not to be the most accessible pursuit for the layperson. One can plant a tree or practice regenerative farming in one's garden plot, but there typically isn't a lot else one can do. At least before Cyan! Cyan is an open-source do-it-yourself modular direct air capture machine for hobbyists you can build in an hour or two and start learning about and practicing carbon removal in your free time. And in this episode, Ross and his guest Dahl Winters build one in real time! (There is also an identical YouTube video of this podcast that shows the process!)
Dahl Winters is the CTO of DeepScience LTD and a member of the OpenAir Collective working on Cyan and other open-source DAC designs. Much scientific development focuses on patents and proprietary technology as a means of getting to a commercial market, but open-source development has an advantage of being anticompetitive, dynamic, and inclusive in ways that can be unexpectedly powerful.
Tune in today to learn the how and why of building Cyan, OpenAir Collective's work on policy as well as technological development, and why open-source movements can accomplish so much if done well.
More from the show
Ad-free episodes and other benefits come with a paid subscription.
Carbon Removal Newsroom, the news show that ran alongside this one, is over. Its episodes are still up, on the feed Climate Workers Anonymous now uses.
Carbon Removal Memes is still going.
Write to me through Substack @ rosskenyon.com.
Resources
Most importantly, watch the video version of this entire podcast on YouTube!
Cyan build instructions on GitHub
Full Transcript
Alexsandra Guerra: You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change.
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon. I’m the creative editor at Nori’s Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today I have with me Dahl Winters, CTO of Deep Science Limited and Open Air Collective member doing R&D on carbon removal. Dahl, thank you so much for being here.
Dahl Winters: Thank you so much, Ross. It’s a pleasure having you or having myself here.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Yeah. Which, which one of us is the first person pronoun, which person is the third or second? Okay. I even gave a little thing at the beginning because we’re doing video right now. Uh, cause I’m, we’re actually building a hobbyist direct air capture machine. I even warned us ahead of time that any sorts of changes or edits or goofy things that you say that is going to be harder to correct than usual. So, okay. We made a syntactical joke and now the show is ruined. So we’re going to, we’re going to fight.
My bad.
Dahl Winters: I’m sure there are many takes to videos. So we really appreciate your, uh, uh, your patience here.
Ross Kenyon: It’s my pleasure. I’m happy to do this. I’m so excited because I want people to be able to participate in carbon removal. And as far as I know, pretty much the only thing available to people is to garden in a regenerative fashion. I think if you want to use cover crops, if you want to have a really diverse polyculture garden, you can do that and you can increase the natural fertility of your soil. And that’s really fun. And I like doing that too. I think that’s it until now. Is this until now?
What is this thing that we’re building and how did this come about?
Dahl Winters: So this thing that we’re building, it’s called cyan. It’s short for cyanobacteria, which was the inspiration for this entire unit. Cyanobacteria are these tiny single cell organisms that early on in the planet transformed the early Earth’s atmosphere by taking CO2 out of the air, which is what we’re trying to do as well, and turning it into something useful. Which was oxygen. And this was a process that took several billion years, but we don’t have several billion years. We actually have 10 years to get from where we are now down to net zero.
And so if we are striving for the 2030 section of things, we have 10 years. So we’re striving for 2050, we have a few more years out from then. But I like to go for the more aggressive schedule. And so what this process is, it’s a way of getting started with our transformation of how we do things in order to reach net zero. We have to start somewhere. And it starts with changing hearts and minds around carbon removal. The whole goal of Cyan is to introduce a process of removing carbon that anyone can do at home.
It’s a home project, a school project. People can engage in the mechanics of actually removing carbon and see what it takes to do the process. And through that process, they can get a sense for what it’s like at larger scales and maybe be more supportive of the larger scale systems as well. So that’s what we hope to be building today. Ross, I’m so glad that you’re able to take this under your belt and get something developed today.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’m very excited. I’ve been acquiring these materials, but with regard to cyan and cyanobacteria, my understanding is that they originally oxygenated the atmosphere, but also killed everything that was not used to an oxygen, oxygenated atmosphere. Is that right?
Dahl Winters: Yes, yes. So they are the ultimate transformers of an ecosystem, but they gave rise to complex life as we know it. Without cyanobacteria, we would not be here. And so even though all other forms of life kind of vanished, which kind of is a mass extinction in itself, For the most part, it’s the very first mass extinction that occurred potentially. We’re here and we are faced with a decision that they weren’t able to make because they’re two single cells to actually make decisions. We can decide how we’re going to do our atmosphere.
Are we going to continue pumping CO2 into it without abandon? Or are we going to work to pull that CO2 that we’ve pumped in there out?
Ross Kenyon: I think the latter, I hope. And we’re going to do that today.
Dahl Winters: Yes, a small bit today, but this will get us started to bigger and better things. So how do you want to build your system today? Do you want to go for the inner portion of the system, which basically does all the functionality and then do the box and fan later? Or do you want to try to get through everything now? And we can do either one, whichever you decide.
Ross Kenyon: I like the modular approach. I like that there’s a basic system and an advanced add-on. I have the materials for both. Excellent. How much time do you think it would take to do both?
Dahl Winters: To do both, it will be about an hour, especially if you’re able to power through things with a drill. It’ll be an hour. So the basic system we’ve done in 20 minutes. So yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Okay.
Dahl Winters: Let’s get through that. And so I’m ready to begin when you are. All your parts are there.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I have a whole, okay. We’ve never done something quite like this. If you’re listening to this, cause I’m sure we’ll release it as a normal podcast. There’s a video version of this, but yeah, there’s a table behind me. As you can see, there’s materials over there at the table I’m working on as well. There’s stuff behind the computer and I’ll be working here. So here I have a hummus container, which figures prominently into this device.
Dahl Winters: Yes, first you have to eat the hummus, and then you have the container leftover. And this container is just the perfect shape and the perfect size to fit into a smaller outer container, which is actually the inner portion of the cyan unit. So the reason why we have this hummus container is to provide spacing. So we’re going to go ahead and get a few parts out To show our viewers and for those who are listening, we’ll walk you through what’s actually going on. So we need the small plastic container as well.
Yes, that one right there, perfect. So this is a small Sterilite Tupperware container that’s somewhat see-through. The hummus container will fit right within that, unit yeah right within the container perfect and notice that it provides it’s about half the height of the unit, so I have to hide of this container, so it provides a spacing between. The bottom and we’re going to fill this up with water, so that the water will actually reach to the height of the lower portion of the lid and so. Before we add water, we need to do a few things to that hummus container.
We need to make a hole in the top of the lid.
Ross Kenyon: So I have a quarter inch drill bit in the drill. Is it 830 seconds? It’s the same.
Dahl Winters: OK. Yeah. So you’ve already made a hole in there, or are you prepared to make one now? I am prepared to make one now.
Ross Kenyon: Should I just go right in the middle of it?
Dahl Winters: Yep. Right in the middle and then one out to the side as well. Excellent.
Ross Kenyon: Is that okay?
Dahl Winters: Yep. Yep. Hole in the middle and one out to the side to allow some flow of water.
Ross Kenyon: Can you say out to the side?
Dahl Winters: Out to the side, meaning along the rim. Okay, like anywhere along the rim. Yep. And it should be near the top of the so on along the outer radius.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah.
Dahl Winters: And so what Ross is doing now is preparing two holes. One hole in the center of the hummus container lid and another hole on the outer portion of the hummus container lid. And that’s to allow bubbles of air when they form to basically to go out of the container as well as provide water flow throughout. This whole container will be filled with water. So this is just perfect, excellent. So we’re looking good. Yeah, that outer hole can be on the top, it can be on the side, but basically that middle hole is always in the middle and that just helps to push water and to add water through.
Okay, so now we have that. Our next thing that we’re going to add now is the air pump and the air stone and the tubing assembly. So we should have an air pump that comes from Tetra. I think that’s the air pump, yep, Tetra air pump there. It’s a Whisper 10. And we also have the Aqua Neat, which is a collection of parts that are needed for, okay, standard three, yes, stones and valves, air stones and valves, perfectly. Okay, so let’s go ahead and open that, and we’ll open the air pump as well.
So inside of this bag, there’s a bunch of stuff and basically everything you need is in there. He’s opening the bag now and we have a series of tubing, airline tubing, and then there’s an air stone. There should be two air stones in there. And now the air pump is being arranged and we have the air pump being shown. It’s a small unit, about hand size. Yeah, looks good. And there should be a place to insert tubing onto that air pump. So we’ll give you a chance to get everything situated there.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, for this tubing, I saw in the instructions, I should cut about a foot of it.
Dahl Winters: Is that right? Yeah, a foot of tubing. If it’s a little long, that’s OK. It will always help, but a minimum of one foot.
Ross Kenyon: And am I putting it onto this module here?
Dahl Winters: Yep, there’s a nodule at the end of the air pump, and we’re going to just sit that in there. You’re an excellent narrator for my work, though.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, sorry to interrupt you.
Dahl Winters: Oh, aerators, you’ve worked there? You’ve worked with aerators before?
Ross Kenyon: Oh, no, I said you’re an excellent narrator.
Dahl Winters: Oh, narrator. Oh, well, thank you. My ears are sometimes not as sensitive to... Hearing stuff, but I can aerate really well. I do appreciate things. Yes. Okay, perfect. So that looks like a good length and we have cut the air tubing. Perfect. And now that air tubing will fit on the end of one air stone. So in your other package, you should have an air stone. Air stones are those two small things that are purple. They are ceramic items that bubble the air through the ceramic and produce a whole bunch of micro bubbles, really small bubbles that are created.
So we have the air tubing going onto the end of the air stone and Capping the end of the air tubing. Excellent. That’s perfect.
Ross Kenyon: It’s all the way on there now.
Dahl Winters: Yeah. So how this is going to work is that air stone will reside on the side of the hummus container. So go ahead and insert that along the side of the hummus container, which is between the small outer transparent container and the hummus container itself.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, so inside of this container, but not inside of the hummus container. Correct, yes.
Dahl Winters: Okay. So basically one of the four corners will be good. And actually if you put it, yeah, like that, perfect. That’s exactly how it should go. So it should lay flat along the bottom side of the outer container. And the air pump is basically, it’s a 1. 5 watt unit. For viewers who are doing this, who are building one, you don’t have to run it continuously, but it has to be run enough to make the filter paper, which we’re going to put onto here in a bit. That has to get wet over time, but not wet immediately.
So that is for the outer unit, for the big box and fan unit, yes. So filter paper is a coffee filter.
Ross Kenyon: Oh yes, I have that too. Okay.
Dahl Winters: Excellent. So we all have coffee filters at home for those who have us to drink coffee. So those coffee filters are about the same color as the material that we’re going to add, which is the calcium hydroxide. So do you have the calcium hydroxide ready as well? I do. We don’t need it now, but if you just want to show everyone what it looks like. For those of us who can see it. It’s not this hydrated lime, is it? It is, yes. Hydrated lime is calcium hydroxide.
Ross Kenyon: It’s such an ominous sounding chemical synthetic sound.
Dahl Winters: Yes, calcium hydroxide is actually the material that once it soaks up CO2, it makes calcium carbonate. And calcium carbonate is the stuff that seashells are made of, eggshells are made of it, agricultural lime is made of it. So if you’re trying to put this out in your garden after it’s all carbonated, you can do so. That’s what this stuff is made of, so.
Ross Kenyon: Is it what limestone is or is it related? Yes.
Dahl Winters: Limestone is actually calcium carbonate. It’s mostly, it’s about 70% calcium carbonate and some other things as well.
Ross Kenyon: And it’s kind of like it’s basic in terms of its alkalinity.
Dahl Winters: Yeah. On the pH scale, it goes from acids to bases. And this is definitely a basic material that we have here.
Ross Kenyon: I think insofar as it makes sense to explain some of the chemistry, it should be done. I am certainly not even an amateur. I think it’s one of the few classes I did pretty poorly in, to be quite frank. So if it makes sense to explain this to someone with absolutely no chemistry background, it might be good.
Dahl Winters: Yeah, so hydrated lime is essentially calcium hydroxide. That is the form of calcium that occurs in It can occur in nature, but we generally make it from sources of calcium carbonate already. And so when we are using this in our cyan units, we’re actually taking the carbon, which was driven off, adding it back in and making a carbon neutral cycle. Now there are ways of actually making calcium hydroxide that are carbon negative, ways that you can use alkaline materials such as fly ash or steel slag or other sources of alkalinity and process those sources to reclaim the calcium that’s in them.
And that can be done electrochemically. There’s a company right now that is doing that and they should be online with providing us with some good resources later this year.
Ross Kenyon: I remember seeing in one of the grant giving cycles of, I think the Department of Energy, the moisture swing of Klaus Lackner is, I think one of the most famous, but also I’ve seen alkalinity swings that acquire and release CO2 from changes in the pH. Is that pretty popular right now or people are thinking about this?
Dahl Winters: Yeah, any and all means of collecting CO2 from the air, using alkalinity swing, moisture swing, there’s different types of methods. The reason why these are swing methods is you have to first collect the CO2 and then do something to it in order to release the CO2. So that’s why there are different, you have a swing in the process, basically, to carry yourself to a Uh, a more CO2, um, to, to release that CO2 from whatever you’re using to capture it.
Ross Kenyon: Amazing. Okay. Well, I have this hydrated lime here ready to go. I think this is the part where I need safety here. Yeah.
Dahl Winters: Not yet because we haven’t finished assembling everything yet. So, uh, there’s also a lid that, uh, goes onto the top of the hummus container and that lid should be the, uh, is either the HDX port lid or a, uh, Or it might be, you can even use a yogurt container lid. A one quart yogurt container is the same. Yep, the lid for that.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, I don’t think it came with a lid.
Dahl Winters: Oh no.
Ross Kenyon: Is this like a crucial item here?
Dahl Winters: It’s crucial enough that if you don’t have it, we can’t run an experiment. But if you don’t have, do you have a yogurt container at home? And do you recycle your yogurt containers?
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I can run and go get one right now. Okay.
Dahl Winters: All right. Yeah. All right. Yeah. The one quart yogurt container is actually perfect. That is the lid, the same exact lid size because this is a one quart HDX quart container as well. So look at that. Look at that. See, it works perfectly. This is all we needed it for. And for those of you who bought the HDX quart container, It’s good for mixing other materials, so it’s definitely not a loss, but the lid is actually the most important portion of getting that container.
Ross Kenyon: Wow, that’s so funny.
Dahl Winters: I don’t know why they didn’t give it to me. I have everything here. Yeah, yeah. So the lid, it won’t actually, we don’t need it to fit on the container. We need that lid separate, and that lid should be turned upside down and put onto the hummus container. Yeah, just like that. So what that lid is for is for lifting up and out your coffee filter, which is going to house your calcium hydroxide. So we should get one coffee filter ready. And just to showcase how this is done, this is definitely one of the things that the coffee filter will rest on top of the lid.
And over time, the air will bubble through the water. And wet the side of that coffee filter. That, along with the humidity that’s in when you collapse the lid, will actually allow the filter paper to become more wet. And that will percolate through and up through the calcium hydroxide that you’re going to add. So next we’re going to add the calcium hydroxide. So let’s get that ready. And for those of you who are doing this at home, you should always wear a mask until you become familiar with how to scoop the material without pouring it.
So I’ve been able to use, without wearing a mask, oh wow, we have goggles and everything so we don’t get anything into the eyes. We are all, We’re decked out with the PPE here.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I went overboard, but I don’t want any of this inside me.
Dahl Winters: Yes, yes. So yeah, it’s always good. This material, you don’t want to get it in your eyes because it’s basic, but if you get it on your hands or so, just don’t rub your eyes. Always wash it off. Magnesium hydroxide, we’re experimenting with right now. It doesn’t have so much of the safety concerns, but we can’t get a good source of magnesium hydroxide that is relatively cheap yet. It’s cheap, but it’s not as cheap as going to your hardware store and getting hydrated lime. All we’ll need is a spoon, a small spoon, about a teaspoon size or so.
What we want to do with that is go ahead and open up the bag of hydrated lime. And to do this, yep, just cut the open, cut it open along the side. And you’ll want to cut enough of a space such that you can get the spoon into the bag, along with some of your hand as well.
Ross Kenyon: A little bit more room here actually.
Dahl Winters: Yep. And if you’re in a high humidity environment, such as if you’re in Florida or some places along the East Coast, you will definitely want to consume your bag pretty quickly if you’re going to run experiments, meaning that if you let it sit out, it will carbonize over time under the high humidity. If you’re wanting to capture how much carbon you actually are taking out of the air, just be warned that over time, in the course of a few months or so, it might actually capture less carbon than you had.
It will become calcium carbonate on its own in a high humidity environment.
Ross Kenyon: I can get the spoon into it now.
Dahl Winters: Excellent. Okay. So now we get the spoon in. Let’s go ahead and get a little bit out and Place it. We should weigh the filter paper first, but we’re just doing this for demonstration. And we know how much the filter paper weighs pretty much. It’s about 0. 86 grams. So I think you need a bigger hole than that.
Ross Kenyon: Okay.
Dahl Winters: Yeah, just like that. And go ahead and drop it in.
Ross Kenyon: Okay.
Dahl Winters: Yep. And make it nice and flat, spread it across the surface. Surface area is really important for this. The more surface area you have, the more likely you are going to absorb more CO2 in the air. So making it into a single mound won’t help very much. It’s always good to have it nice and flat. So, okay. So your hydrated lime has, let’s go ahead and remove the bag of hydrated lime. And see if we can tilt the camera down to see what you have going on there. Excellent. So this is now the assembled cyan unit that actually does all the work.
The box and fan are only to dry and to get more airflow. If you’re running it, it will consume about, I think it was at low speed, 0. 75 watts of electricity, the fan will. This is 1. 5 watts. And we calculated that even with the amount of electricity used, we still get enough carbon captured through the process to make it carbon negative. If you don’t count the manufacturer of the calcium hydroxide right now, which can come from different sources, low carbon sources as well as high carbon sources.
Ross Kenyon: I was going to ask you about that LCA point, but maybe that’s something to dig into a bit later.
Dahl Winters: Yep, yep. Yeah, it’s always important. You want to make sure that when you’re doing carbon accounting to make sure that you are actually removing CO2 from the air and not putting up more CO2 from the activities that it takes to make this unit. So we actually have some calculations that are on our GitHub site on openair-collective, that’s the name of our repository. And under Cyan, there’s a Cyan repository Under there, there are supporting system calculations that basically outline the energy use, the consumption, transportation costs, getting the material to and from the locations that you need and all of that.
That’s all in place. So I love the mask and the goggles. Those are just perfect on you.
Ross Kenyon: Am I too conservative?
Dahl Winters: Am I not too conservative? You are going at it well for a first time chemistry project. So I wanted to, before we get everything settled, there’s the minor portion of adding the water. So there’s some water that should be added to this container.
Ross Kenyon: Should I put it into the side like where the ceramic?
Dahl Winters: Yeah, go ahead and remove the filter paper for now and just set that off to the side. And then you’ll want to take the water and remove the lid as well, the lid of the yogurt lid. And pour the water into the hummus container, as well as on the outside, being careful to not get the water level above the bottom rim of the lid. Yes.
Ross Kenyon: Is the hummus container expected to fill up with water during this? Yes. Entirely? Okay.
Dahl Winters: Yep, entirely. So yeah, go ahead and fill up the whole thing. The whole point of getting water in the hummus container is to make sure it doesn’t float. You want it to be nice and stable at the bottom. And when the outer level of water reaches the bottom of the lid, you’re good. So is it flat?
Ross Kenyon: I need more water. Can I use this? Is that okay?
Dahl Winters: Oh yeah, definitely.
Ross Kenyon: And I using filtered water and not tap water to avoid any other chemicals is that okay.
Dahl Winters: Oh wow yeah yeah that’s great yeah you can use tap water if it’s chlorinated on that we haven’t tested chlorinated water, because I have well water here but um but if you use filter water that’s perfect.
Ross Kenyon: Okay I’ll be right back.
Dahl Winters: All right. So do you, where do you filter your water at? Do you buy it or do you have just like Brita filter water through a carbon filter or so?
Ross Kenyon: It’s just reverse osmosis through the sink.
Dahl Winters: Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. You have ultra clean water. So go ahead and press your hummus container down and make sure that it’s, before we get the water level too high in there. Perfect. Yeah. Let’s fill it up and Make sure we have plenty of water.
Ross Kenyon: I think it’s nearly...
Dahl Winters: Is it floating? Go ahead and press the lid down firmly and then any excess that you might have that’s air that’s trapped underneath the lid should work its way out over time. Hopefully there’s enough water in the middle that there’s no air bubbles inside the lid.
Ross Kenyon: Um, a little bit more, a little more. I see a couple air bubbles.
Dahl Winters: Okay. That’s not a problem. As long as it’s not floating, that’s what we want to avoid.
Ross Kenyon: So, okay. It’s like a little bit above the edge of the lid.
Dahl Winters: Yeah, it’s a little bit above, uh, see if you can pour some out, um, or take a, uh, take your spoon that you have and, uh, uh, see if you can dip some out. Uh, I think you have like a, uh, Not that spoon, but there’s another one that you had. Yes, scoop. Maybe that would work. Oh, it won’t fit.
Ross Kenyon: I’ll just take this guy out first. OK, perfect.
Dahl Winters: Yeah, so we’re emptying out some water. And that water, hopefully two scoopfuls will be good.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah.
Dahl Winters: Does it help? Perfect.
Ross Kenyon: Maybe, yeah. It’s like right at the touching the bottom of the lid of the hummus container. Okay.
Dahl Winters: That’s perfect. Perfect. Yes. All right. So now we can put the lid back on the top of the hummus container and the filter paper back on the lid. And then you can close the lid. Of the outer yeah just like that over the filter paper and everything else and it won’t close entirely it should close enough that you can have the tube running out and then that is your completed inner unit you’re actually ready at this stage to do an experiment and. In order to, I would actually, let’s see, that filter paper, if you can bend the edges down a little bit so that it will, yeah, kind of flatten it out a bit.
Yeah, just like that. Perfect. Okay. And then that should, yeah, it will almost close, but not quite. All right, so now that is actually ready to turn on and start carbonizing. You can plug in your air stone and then your air pump on the other end. And then over time, this will start getting humidity inside the container while allowing sufficient airflow. And if you were to weigh this beforehand, we didn’t weigh the initial, When you do an experiment, you do want to weigh the initial amount and then weigh it finally.
But for now, we’re just doing a demonstration, so we won’t be so careful about weighing things. But that will be the process by which you can tell if the carbon dioxide that you’ve captured has actually, that you’ve captured X amount of carbon over time.
Ross Kenyon: OK, it’s going. Can you see it?
Dahl Winters: It’s going. Look at that. Yeah, the air, the air bubbles are coming out of the air stone and we are getting humidity in there. Yes. So over time the paper will eventually go down and collapse a little bit. You’ll see it start to Ultimately, if you’re not seeing crackling or basically cracks form in the surface of your calcium hydroxide in the course of two hours or so, you might want to add a little more water or bend down the filter paper even more because there’s not enough humidity reaching it. But this is the basic process.
This is as simple as you can get. How much was this assembly? Everything in here should be about $20, a little bit more, except for the hydrated lime, which adds a little more to that. So about $40, I think.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, something like that.
Dahl Winters: Yeah, so excellent, excellent. So at this stage, this is Module 1, and we have just completed Module 1, just like that. Woo, we did it. Congratulations. Yes, yes. So the next step is module two. So we can go ahead and sit this off to the side somewhere. Let this continue running. You can unplug it if you need to, to get it to a final rest in place for the duration of today’s podcast. Excellent. And now we are ready for the box and the fans. Yes. So this is the portion that takes the longest amount of time in terms of making the hole, cutting the hole for the fan.
But once you have this in place, you can do a number of things with your unit. So we’re going to look at the, this is the unit that everything plugs into that we’re opening up right now. Perfect. So this is a USB as well as AC adapter. And then we also have the fan in place as well. This is what you’re opening up next. So the process for this fan is we’re going to, this fan basically has a front and a back, the front side We’ll need to face out of the fan or out of the box so that you’re actually getting airflow out of the container.
So what we’re going to do first is before anything else, we are going to use the fan as a template to draw and you should have like a marker or some way of actually drawing a hole Drawing a circle. Perfect. Sharpies. Yes. On the side of your, on the side of your container. So which side is the front? Where does it open up at? Right there. Okay. So your left is going to be not the videos left, but your left is going to be where you’re actually, yep, that side, that’s where you’re going to mount your fan.
So Before we mount the fan, we’re going to disassemble the back of the fan a bit. And then actually it’s the front, the front of the fan. Yes, the front. So yeah, that part right there. That part has four, the front of the fan has four corners with these little foamy knobs on them. And we’re going to, There needs to be a screwdriver, Phillips head screwdriver, that you’ll need to assemble, disassemble the front side. I love that tool, by the way. Oh my goodness, that is a very, very nice one.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it’s come in handy more than once.
Dahl Winters: Oh my goodness, that is perfect. So what you’re doing is you’re disassembling the front of the fan, removing the four The four knobs that are actually acting as vibration dampers. And then that frees the front side grill for further use. So what we’re going to do with that is align that on the side of your box. So on the side that we were going to, not on the side, but on, yes, the actual side, the left side of the box, or actually the, this will be the right side for those who are Facing the box, yes, just like that.
So we want to put that not in the center, but a little bit towards the top. Not exactly at the top because the fan will need to sit, but yeah, right about an inch below the top of that one rim, just like that. And now you can draw with your Sharpie. The holes that you’ll need to create as well as the center hole which is drawn if you are go ahead and draw your four holes. And that will give you a point of alignment. And then With it still in the same place, draw your round hole, the big round, the big round hole that you’re going to cut, which will follow the outside of the circle.
Ross Kenyon: Actually like just trace the outer.
Dahl Winters: Yeah, trace the outside. Yep, there we go.
Ross Kenyon: Are you able to see it okay?
Dahl Winters: Yep, we can see this perfect. Yeah, right back there. And we have traced. So now, can you remove that and show us what you’ve done? Perfect. So this is what we should all have when we’re building this unit, basically a trace of where the holes are that we need to make. So the drill will slice through like butter. If you have a really sharp drill bit, it’ll go through those four outer holes really quickly. We’re going to do, and you can angle the camera up a bit for this as well.
Ross Kenyon: The quarter, the quarter inch drill bit, the same one.
Dahl Winters: Yep, same one. And this will, you’ll want to start with the inner hole first. And this will be good if you have like a speeding up of your video for later, showing the process, because this will take a bit of time. Basically what you want to do is make drill holes. Don’t do the four on the outside first, but concentrate your efforts on drilling several holes in succession around the circle.
Ross Kenyon: The air on the inner side of the line.
Dahl Winters: Uh, yeah, yeah. Inner side line will be good.
Ross Kenyon: Okay.
Dahl Winters: And you have to press down a bit. Yeah. Did it go in?
Ross Kenyon: It locked up.
Dahl Winters: Oh no. Okay. This is always the hard part. Oh no. Okay, maybe you should try a smaller drill bit just to get things started. Yeah, we had an open air member and her mom do this the other day. It was like two weeks ago and she had an ultra sharp drill bit. Probably, I think they just bought it from the store and It just powered through like butter. It just cut through the plastic amazingly. But the other way of doing this, if you don’t have a drill, is to use a box cutter.
That takes a lot longer amount of time. So it’s a lot of work, but once you get it done, you don’t have to do it again, so.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, I have a, I’m using a smaller one that I think will cut through much faster.
Dahl Winters: Excellent. Yeah, so yeah, just punch through. Oh, yes. Perfect. Oh, look, we have somebody there who’s there to meet you. Hello.
Ross Kenyon: This is Dahlia. This is a foster dog. Hi.
Dahl Winters: He’s wondering what you’re doing.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, that’s so sweet. What is all this sound in here?
Dahl Winters: He’s wondering what you’re doing. I’m surprised he’s not scared of the sound.
Ross Kenyon: No, I think she’s just curious.
Dahl Winters: Oh, what are you doing with this box? This box was a perfectly good box. It could house my dog food.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, exactly. I guess I’ll keep trying here.
Dahl Winters: Yep. So yeah, just err on the side of the inner portion of the circle and just keep drilling around. And the idea is that you’ll get enough of these holes where you can use a box cutter to basically Connect the dots between each of these holes and it will go by a lot faster. Oops. That’s not good. We have a drill bit that actually came off of the drill, but that’s easy to remedy. Okay. Yeah, your dog is so sweet. She’s so calm in this whole process.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, she’s a sweetie.
Dahl Winters: What’s her name?
Ross Kenyon: Dahlia.
Dahl Winters: Dahlia. Oh my goodness. I’m sure she thinks that when you’re saying my name that you’re saying her name. Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. She’s good. Just hang in.
Dahl Winters: Oh yes, yes. So how’s it going? Are you finding the, it looks like you’re doing a great job with developing the holes there. You’re getting it all on one side and it’s going quite well.
Ross Kenyon: I think it’s gone fairly quickly here.
Dahl Winters: Yep. You have one hand on the box, which is good. Helps to stabilize things quite a bit. Are you doing consecutive holes? It looks like you’re doing consecutive holes.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I can show you.
Dahl Winters: Oh my goodness, look at that. Oh, that’s great. That’s great. Yeah, we tried doing holes in different spaces before instead of doing them consecutively, but you’re doing such a great job at this that This might be the next best way of actually making this hole happen. So the goal of this hole is to mount the fan and that provides enough airflow through the unit. Now, in the past, we’ve had cyan builders do the one hole first and then leave the lid open. To let enough airflow get through. But really there are supposed to be two of these holes.
And the second one doesn’t need to be, it’s not as visible if you happen to make a mistake in the plastic or so. Second one is directly opposite this first one.
Ross Kenyon: I have a conceptual question, Doll.
Dahl Winters: Sure.
Ross Kenyon: Which is when we’re talking about the moisture swing and the alkalinity swing, My understanding is that it’s a swing because it’s moving between two states, one of capturing and then one of releasing. And the device that we’re building here with Cyan is not a swing because it seems like it’s only one way, right? It only captures it.
Dahl Winters: That’s absolutely correct. It would be a swing if you were to do like a process where you took the CO2 and actually released it from being a calcium carbonate. But to do that requires either acid or really high temperatures. And so since those are two things that we’ll never encounter, it is a very permanent way of locking away the carbon. So we are going to basically take this CO2 and store it as carbonate, and it will not come back out again for the foreseeable future.
Ross Kenyon: Is it more common to think in terms of swings at the commercial or even bench testing scale? Yeah.
Dahl Winters: I think the swings are really important because at the commercial scale, you’re able to run more cycles over a period of time and you’re taking the CO2 out of each cycle and storing it as compressed gas. So in a home process, you’re not actually doing a lot of compressed gas or if any, you’re wanting to Lower your amount of energy consumption and not put so much of it into compression. So in this process, we are interested in just locking away the CO2 if at all possible. Whereas in commercial plants, you can do something with the CO2.
You can actually compress it and then that frees up your sorbent for another cycle.
Ross Kenyon: It probably also helps with the LCA if you’re not constantly having inputs. There’s like a recycling kind of aspect to the swings.
Dahl Winters: Oh yeah, yeah. Basically, if you’re making the material to use one time, like metal organic frameworks or solvents or liquids or not liquid solvents but sorbents, Those are things that you make one time and then you can reuse 20 or 30 times easily without suffering any loss of capacity. So at a commercial scale, you definitely want that. At a more home scale for demonstrations, if you have material and you’re locking away CO2 in the form of carbonate, it’s totally okay to be able to do that because that way you get to measure How much carbon dioxide you’ve actually taken up over time.
With these commercial processes, with each swing, it’s really hard to actually measure anything. You have to measure the CO2 in parts per million that is in the air. And look at this, I think we are done.
Ross Kenyon: I think so. You can finish your thought. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.
Dahl Winters: Oh, no worries. I just saw that and I thought that was so cool. So yeah, basically the parts per million in the atmosphere, you want to measure that, but it’s hard to do with these industrial processes. You basically need like a flow meter and some other things to get underway. But back to this, I think we have the whole Perfectly formed. And that was by far the fastest hole cutting. Yes. There we go. That is why. Yes. Yes. Oh my goodness. Yeah. That helps to build up a little bit of muscle too, you know, just putting the force down on that.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. I think it’s good. Now I’m trying to figure out how to do this part. This part seems kind of dangerous.
Dahl Winters: Yeah. This part, just make the blade go out just a little bit. Uh, so you don’t need the blade, like, fully extended. Um, maybe a little more than that. Yeah, or, yeah, about halfway. And then hold one hand on, just like you’re doing, uh, hold one hand on the box, and then the second hand will point downward with the box cutter onto the, uh, Where you have your holes at. And basically you want to slide the knife across the holes and score, press down while you’re doing it.
Ross Kenyon: I can just press into it.
Dahl Winters: Yeah, press into it and go right back out. So that way you’re never in fear of cutting anything else than the box.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think this will be pretty easy to just kind of go across like this. I would say don’t drag it if you the dragging it seems dangerous.
Dahl Winters: Yeah, yeah. The dragging part is really difficult and dangerous. So just punch into it. And there we go. It looks like it’s coming along really well.
Ross Kenyon: How am I doing though? Am I an excellent?
Dahl Winters: You’re doing perfectly. This is, I think we have a new record for the amount of time it takes to cut this hole. Yeah, the time’s really well too. So we’re doing great on time.
Ross Kenyon: Great. Look at that hole.
Dahl Winters: It is coming out. Oh my goodness. Oh, that is great. We’ve got a good bit. We’re about halfway done here with cutting the hole. Has there been a lot of interest in Cyan? There’s also another unit you’re working on called Violet, is that right? Yes, yes. Yeah, Cyan, there’s been a very good amount of interest. We have the University of Michigan, which is going to start a competition, has plans for a competition. And we also, based on Cyan, what’s that?
Ross Kenyon: To make Cyan or to improve it or?
Dahl Winters: Improve it, yes. Wow, that’s cool. Yes. And we also have interest from, I just gave a talk to the Open Hardware Summit, which is the Open Hardware Associations, Open Source Hardware Associations meeting, annual meeting this year. And there was a good bit of interest about building Cyan. And we also have a curriculum that we’re planning To put together on this as well for other colleges and universities and high school students to all be able to participate.
Ross Kenyon: I love stuff like this so much. I think it’s really valuable for making people think and encouraging their imaginations. I also just like working on my hands and having an excuse to do so. I don’t think a lot of people have as much of that as maybe they would like.
Dahl Winters: I know. And look at that. Look at what you’ve done in such a short amount of time. This is so cool. So that hole is cut. It’s done. So the violet unit is going to be much bigger than this unit. So that’s currently underway. And that’s something that we’re also building open source, open hardware as well.
Ross Kenyon: Is it similarly using hydrated lime or is it some other chemical?
Dahl Winters: It’s some, it’s using a solid sorbent. So it’s a material that actually absorbs, absorbs CO2 and then releases it upon contact with water.
Ross Kenyon: So it’s a moisture swing. Moisture swing, yes. That is what it is. Okay.
Dahl Winters: Yeah. Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Okay.
Dahl Winters: So now you have this fan, fan hole built. Do you want to go ahead and put the fan in?
Ross Kenyon: Yes.
Dahl Winters: Excellent. So we also need to cut four holes for the outside. I don’t think we’ve done those yet. Have you done those?
Ross Kenyon: I have not, but I can.
Dahl Winters: Okay. That’s going to go on the inside. That’s the backside and that’s going to, yep. So that’s the backside of the fan and that’s going to mount on the inside of the plastic container.
Ross Kenyon: Understood. Okay.
Dahl Winters: Let me cut these. Four more. We’re almost done. Once we mount this fan, we’ll definitely consider us done for this build. And the goal is to put what you’ve done on the inside, the inner unit, on the inside of this unit, if you’re going to dry out the... It’s basically to help get more drying of the... Oh, that’s perfect. So look at that hole. Oh, that is like the best, roundest hole that I have seen. It’s a jagged though. Yeah, you need a file to, but you won’t be able to feel it when the fan’s mounted, so.
Okay. So now I’m going to frame out this from the inside. Yeah. So the fan is going to go on the inside. Excellent. And the wire is going to go towards the back of the box. And you’ll want to mount it such that, yep, so there’s the wire. It’s going to go in the other direction. So like that. And then the wire should go towards the back of the box. So you might need to rotate that by 90 degrees. Oh, the fan. The fan, yes.
Ross Kenyon: You need to go to the back of the box.
Dahl Winters: Uh no actually so open the lid and go ahead and mount the fan in there, just like you had it, but this will just like that, yes, and if the wire is facing the back of the box that’s good I can’t quite tell where it is.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, so here it’s coming off the front.
Dahl Winters: Okay, yes. So rotate the fan 90 degrees such that the wires facing the back like that. Perfect. Perfect. Yep. Just like that.
Ross Kenyon: The back being where the hinges for the top. Yes.
Dahl Winters: Correct.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. I have this now.
Dahl Winters: All right. So now you can put the safety grill on the front and then line it up with the holes and then mount the fan. And you might need to let the fan go for now and then just concentrate on the safety grill and getting the holes. Yeah, you’ll need to remove, oh, sorry, you need to remove the nubs from the screws, so the screws are actually, the four screws that you have that are sitting on the table, those four screws will have to be removed, so.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, I actually, I cut these four holes in the plastic using the small bit, so I need to bring them up to the quarter.
Dahl Winters: Oh, okay, all right, all right.
Ross Kenyon: I’ll just quickly amend that.
Dahl Winters: Okay.
Ross Kenyon: How many of these have been built so far?
Dahl Winters: We’ve had about, let’s see, there’s six, seven, eight, nine, 10. I think 10 have been built so far. So we’ve had quite a few from the University of Michigan. We had quite a few from open air members. So I think there are about, yeah, about 10.
Ross Kenyon: This is kind of tough.
Dahl Winters: Kind of tough for those holds?
Ross Kenyon: If you keep locking up, you need a... Oh no. I’ll try something to keep working my way in. Okay, okay.
Dahl Winters: Yeah, see if the screws, the screws may go in without them being at 830 seconds. Or one quarter, I should say. Okay, so there we go. So it looks like we now have the holes the proper size.
Ross Kenyon: Let’s see, it might still be too small.
Dahl Winters: Okay, so the four vibration dampers have screws in them. We’ll need to remove those from the foam. And to do that, you can easily pop them out relatively easily. If you set them down on a table and then press downward on the screw and that will separate it from those relatively easily, I guess. If not, then maybe you can try unscrewing them as well. But I’ve had some success with forcing the screw down onto the table, but you have such a nice table there, we probably don’t want to do that.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I prefer not to, but I think I already have one out.
Dahl Winters: Oh, excellent, excellent.
Ross Kenyon: So I’m taking these out of these dampers.
Dahl Winters: And then I see someone there.
Ross Kenyon: Oh yeah, can you see?
Dahl Winters: I saw her there for a moment there.
Ross Kenyon: She’s inspecting the process. She’s the form.
Dahl Winters: Yes, yes. Yeah. Look at her. Oh. Yeah, she’s going to be there for the first run of Cyan. New experience for her.
Ross Kenyon: This occasion, yeah. How’s my audio been coming through during this? I keep neglecting the microphone and forgetting.
Dahl Winters: Oh, it’s been coming through well. I can still hear you perfectly. So microphone just makes it a little more clear, but everything you’ve said so far has been coming through great.
Ross Kenyon: I wonder how many people will listen to this versus watch it. If you’re listening right now, I wonder what this is like. Is it an ASMR thing and people just talking about building a machine that you can’t see? Is this even listenable? I don’t know. We’re going to find out, doll. It’s a good experiment.
Dahl Winters: It is, yes, yes. Yeah, all of this, this entire process has been an experiment for us. Just getting these carbon removal systems out there, trying to work through how these are actually going to be made, developing these, getting them to run better. All of this has been a big experiment, and so where this will take us in the future, who knows, but with the help of people like yourselves watching, who are interested in building one of these, we’ll get there a lot sooner, and so carbon removal really demands that we do something to remove the carbon from our atmosphere, and this is something that It’s on a small scale, but if you have millions of these units out there, each doing hopefully a kilogram a day at some point when we get enough efficiency, then that will have quite an impact on things, especially if you’re using this to remove your, to try to remove some of your personal carbon amounts as well.
Ross Kenyon: Now you have a background as well in, I think you said remote imaging and sensing and agriculture. Yes. You’re kind of a full stack carbon remover.
Dahl Winters: Yeah, my background, yeah, I guess I’ve been, I’m full stack in engineering. I’ve actually, I’ve done science, biology, computer science, and geographic information systems. So my background is actually doing Software around making things happen geospatially, but like satellite images, looking at land cover classifications with satellite and aerial imagery. But since I have started with carbon removal, I’ve just been doing this DIY work, trying to see what I can do to remove my personal carbon contribution. So far, it’s definitely a journey. I’m doing small amounts. I’m able to take my light bulb that I actually run to power this room.
My one light bulb, which is an LED light bulb, I can offset its emissions for three hours during one run of my cyan unit. So it does something. And my house is on 100% solar, so it’s going to be really hard to get down to net zero if I don’t do something to actually remove my other carbon emissions. I don’t drive but once a week, so I’m actually at the kind of like the two ton, two metric ton range of emissions so far. Average emissions for Americans is 16 metric tonnes.
So I’m actually on low end due to my lifestyle changes, and then I need to do something to remove my further emissions. So this is part of that process.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s great.
Dahl Winters: And it sounds like, I don’t know, do you ever feel like you’re giving up a lot or is it pretty fun? No, no, I think I’ve actually gained from what I’ve done. I work from home. I do all my business, my operations and everything from home. My Zoom calls and everything is how we actually make an income here. I have not Felt that bad about not driving more than once or twice a week at the most. I go about 50 miles across those entire weeks, 50 miles per week almost. And I just go to the grocery store, buy a few things, order everything else online that we need, which isn’t very much, but it’s amazing what you can do without having to fly everywhere.
You can do everything from Zoom. It’s so cool. That’s one of the things we learned about working in this remote age.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, it’s been not as bad as expected. In some ways, I miss it, but I think it’s a hard world maybe.
Dahl Winters: Yeah, it’s always a change. We’re so spoiled with how many cars that can travel like 320 miles on a tank of gas. But look at that. That is beautiful. Is this right where you have the grate and then these screws? Yeah, that’s perfect. And so go ahead and put the screws in and then you’ll be able to match those screws up with the fan on the other end. So yeah, I have been doing this since November of 2020, making these units. So it’s been a process to get things developed and made more efficient, but it’s definitely been well worth it.
Look at that. Perfect. Have you just been on Clubhouse? Or was there anything new? I think you came to the Open Air Collective and we met there and then we also met on Clubhouse, so.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that’s been really a fun thing. What else is going on at Open Air Collective too? I know there’s policy work happening.
Dahl Winters: Yep, yep. We do a lot around low embodied carbon concrete. It’s called LEC. If you look at our website, there’s something called LEC LA, which is the Low Embodied Carbon Concrete Leadership Act. And this basically is a bill that many people are working on across the Eastern Coast as well as some other places that we’re starting to get LECLA bills passed or worked on. What these bills allow for is the consideration of carbon footprint in your selection of your concrete that states procure. So when states, they actually are like the number one concrete consumer for a number of these plants that are within each state.
And the goal here is to have them consider the amount of carbon that goes into their concrete procurements. And so if you can use negative emissions techniques to actually sequester some carbon in your concrete, like CarbonCure is doing, that would be really awesome. There’s also ways of sourcing your concrete from lower carbon sources. And so we’ve been really active in doing all of that, helping to Support the people who are doing the legislation. Perfect.
Ross Kenyon: One quick question, though, is that the wire coming off of it is facing the back, but it’s in the top back rather than the bottom back. Is that okay?
Dahl Winters: Yes, that’s perfect. That is excellent. It should be on the top back.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. So yeah, it should be all, is that looking good?
Dahl Winters: Yep, looking great. So that wire should actually come out the top and yep, just in the back like that. And then there will actually, so we’ve done one hole. The other hole is for you to do at your leisure, but you don’t actually need that hole if you are, if you keep the lid open a little bit just to let the airflow go through to dry the calcium hydroxide. So the way this works is you have your small unit operating right now. It will fit within the larger unit. And if you finish your run, you can take the filter paper and set it on top of the small container.
And then that will allow you to use this fan and box to dry out, to get more airflow during the dry process. During the dry process, you’re still absorbing CO2.
Ross Kenyon: Is the desire for more airflow to increase its productivity due to the same principles that cause you to want increased surface area?
Dahl Winters: Yes, precisely. Yeah, you want more airflow to get more CO2 and you also want more surface area to get more CO2 as well. So because we’re capturing CO2 from the ambient air indoors, you’re at probably around 900 ppms or so on average, 600 to 900 amazingly due to just being indoors.
Ross Kenyon: Just from exhalation?
Dahl Winters: From breathing, yeah. Yeah, so the ambient air, if you were to go outside, you probably would experience like a reduction in capacity, a little reduction in the amount of capture, but not by much because 400 to 600 to 900 ppm, that’s just like a factor of two or less. So look at that, we have our box made. Ah, yes. And everything is nicely clean.
Ross Kenyon: What’s that? Am I an engineer yet or what? You are, Ross.
Dahl Winters: You are doing awesome. Look at this. I love these open hardware things where we can just build and basically every time we make one of these, there’s an opportunity to make the unit even better. So now that we have that there, our fan is mounted. We are able now to Insert what we have on the back table inside of this unit. And just to show how everything will work, this is currently operating. If it’s okay to unplug it to transport it back over here, we can go ahead and do that.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I was thinking I was going to do that.
Dahl Winters: Yeah. And basically the air pump is going to go on the side near the fan.
Ross Kenyon: So inside, near the fan? Inside, uh-huh.
Dahl Winters: On the side, near the fan, and the wire comes out the back, yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Does it come out the back, like, here? Yep, same place. Both of them cannot go.
Dahl Winters: And this is more for portability than anything else, to have both units Coinciding with each other on the inside. So yeah, go ahead and lower that as you can. Perfect. And then when everything’s done, you’ll be able to open the lid and then let the filter paper dry on top. And that’s when the fan will actually be useful.
Ross Kenyon: So I have, oh, you can’t really see very well.
Dahl Winters: Yeah, we can see if you turn it around. Okay, perfect.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, these cables.
Dahl Winters: So the lid’s open now. It just popped up. Okay. And it’s down.
Ross Kenyon: You want it like this, ultimately.
Dahl Winters: Yeah, like that. But we want the lid closed because the, if you left it open, it would decrease the humidity and therefore it wouldn’t work as efficiently. So you want it closed. And then leave the lid open as well, because we don’t have the hole in the back. Yeah, there is a hole that, on my unit I have a hole in the front and the back, or the side, the two sides. But for now, we’re just going to use the box and the fan for drying. And so right now it’s humidifying, so we’re not going to use that for this purpose right now.
But if you can turn it so that we can see the camera. Perfect. Yeah, there we go. OK. So this is a sign that we would have the second fan hole through. That’s what those safety grills are for that we have that you said was the filter paper. Those are what go on the backside. That’s not entirely necessary for now, but I would declare that we are complete. After all that work, I know. It is great, is it not? Do you feel accomplished, Ross?
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I do. I sort of want to figure out how to make it so I can close this up and have it be like a single unit. Yes.
Dahl Winters: So to do that, go ahead and close it up. And you can route the wires around the backside. Yeah, just like that’ll work as well.
Ross Kenyon: Close is fine.
Dahl Winters: Close is fine. Excellent. And then the fan in order to, because right now the fan will not be used for drying because, will be used for drying, but it won’t be used now because right now your Right now you’re trapping the air inside the air pump. There’s not a lot of airflow going on right now. So the air pump is actually using, that’s why the second hole in the back is necessary to get some airflow. But right now you’re taking what’s in the box, the CO2 that’s in there and actually removing it.
So if you were to mount a CO2 meter right now, In the inside of your box, you would actually be able to measure, hopefully, a reduction of CO2. That’s the idea.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. Well, if I wanted to start going, are you saying that I would turn on the air zone or the water zone or whatever it was called?
Dahl Winters: Yeah, turn on the air pump. That would get it going. And then I would also, just to make sure there’s a good amount of airflow, Yeah, we can move it back there and turn on the fan as well and see what happens with the fan. I imagine there won’t be a lot of, there will be a good pressure reduction with the fan, but that will get, since your wires are coming through, you’ll get enough air, hopefully.
Ross Kenyon: But I should be using, oh, I need the USB.
Dahl Winters: Yep. Yep. You’ll need to plug in your fan into one of the USB ports. And then plug in your air pump to one of the AC outlets.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, I’m in that now.
Dahl Winters: Okay, you’re in that now, great. That is so, I love your dog. Oh, yes. She comes to inspect what you’re doing.
Ross Kenyon: There goes the fan.
Dahl Winters: There goes the fan.
Ross Kenyon: Here comes the water.
Dahl Winters: Excellent.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, now they’re both on.
Dahl Winters: They’re both on. How’s the fan doing? Is it quiet? It should be on the lowest level. There’s three settings, and if it’s on low, it’s consuming the least amount of energy while still allowing airflow through the process.
Ross Kenyon: It’s on low now.
Dahl Winters: Excellent. Excellent. Well, Ross, you are a proud owner of a cyan.
Ross Kenyon: I did it.
Dahl Winters: You did it. Yes. Yes. Awesome.
Ross Kenyon: What do I do moving forward? I mean, I guess I could improve it more with. Yeah.
Dahl Winters: Yeah. You can also run experiments and help share the data with us to try to see if you can develop some method of improvement. So basically, do you have your scale with you? Scale for Wayne?
Ross Kenyon: Uh huh.
Dahl Winters: Okay, we should walk through the process of how we actually weigh the material and put it in and then weigh the material after. So we didn’t do that yet. And yeah, go ahead and unbox your scale. And then this will allow you to actually take measurements and report them on the on a spreadsheet or on the cyan data share site, which is linked to from our GitHub page on the open air dash collective repository.
Ross Kenyon: That’s one thing I like, too, is I’ve seen people call this open science or citizen science.
Dahl Winters: Yeah. So that scale, go ahead and turn it on. I think the batteries are already in there. So what you would do is weigh your filter paper first. Then you can weigh your material on the filter paper. Get a sense for how much you’re adding. 10 grams is about a good amount to add to your filter paper. And then after that, you can then report what your weight increase was. So there will always be a weight increase because mass is not going anywhere else other than being added in the form of CO2.
Ross Kenyon: I just zeroed the scale. The filter paper is 0. 42 grams. It’s resting on the table also, so probably not. OK, there we go. Oh, wow. OK. 0. 91.
Dahl Winters: 0. 91, okay. So that’s a heavier filter paper than I usually come by. We usually get 0. 86 or so, but you might have a little bit of humidity in your environment. You’re in Seattle, so it probably absorbs some humidity. So that’s perfectly okay. What we are interested in is the change in mass before and after. So next time when you run your experiments, Definitely add your calcium hydroxide to the filter paper after you weigh the filter paper. This time we’re going to assume that you have 0. 91 grams in there already.
And so when you are done drying your material, you will then take your material out, put it on the scale and subtract the 0. 91 grams to get your amount that you’ve actually taken up. Multiply by factor 1. 7.
Ross Kenyon: Am I doing that right now or is that just in the future?
Dahl Winters: In the future.
Ross Kenyon: Okay.
Dahl Winters: Yeah. Yeah. So that’s just the rest of the process, how you can do experiments, but you’re all done now. You are completely done and we have built a unit. It’s actually sitting back there running right now. And, um, when we get done, um, just give me a call and give me a ring and, uh, um, Actually check in with in a few hours to see how this is going. If you have some time.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. Yeah. How do I know when it’s when it’s done or what should I expect out of this device?
Dahl Winters: Yeah, you should expect to see when it’s done. There will be thorough wetness of the paper, the filter paper and your calcium hydroxide will not be soaking, but it will be it will be It’ll have like these really fine crackles or it’ll look crackly. It will look, there will be indentations like roots within the calcium hydroxide.
Ross Kenyon: What should I do with the finished product once it has stored carbon?
Dahl Winters: Once it is stored carbon and it doesn’t take up any more, you can make it into these cool things. If you were to get some extra important cement and biochar, you can make blocks out of these. They’re nice and solid. You can basically save them up for shipment back to me, or you can also Use them out in your garden if you ration the amounts that you use as well, because tomatoes like calcium carbonate. It’s one thing I’ve heard. So if you haven’t to grow some tomatoes, you might be able to do that.
Ross Kenyon: Or you can eventually make a retaining wall out of it.
Dahl Winters: Yes, yes. Building materials are excellent for an excellent application for this.
Ross Kenyon: Very cool. Well, if someone wants to do this themselves, they want to get involved in Open Air Collective, how should they go about doing so?
Dahl Winters: Yeah, definitely reach out to us via openaircollective. cc. That’s our website. There’s a Join Us button, and the Join Us button is at the very bottom of the page when you go to that page. You will then be able to get an invite to our Discord server where we have community support for Cyan units. I will be on there. We’ll all be on there to help you out. And we also do Cyan build sessions about twice a month now. So anybody who has a question or who is interested in building their Cyan will definitely be able to provide you with the resources you need to get started.
Ross Kenyon: Cool. Well, thanks so much for the personalized walkthrough. I mean, the instructions online are quite good and detailed. And I think I probably could have done this without your guiding hand, but I think it was more fun this way. I think it was as well.
Dahl Winters: Thank you so much, Ross. Appreciate it. And this is so cool. I’m glad to help and to see that you’re underway on your own personal journey with Cyan.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Well, links to all those things are in the show notes. If you’d like to do this as well, get involved. I think it’s really cool what Open Air Collective is doing. And Dahl, thank you so much for being on the show.
Dahl Winters: Thank you so much, Ross. It’s been a pleasure.
Ross Kenyon: For me too. And if it’s been a pleasure for you listening, please rate and review us on, I guess if you’re watching this on YouTube, thumbs up, subscribe. If you’re listening, rating and reviewing on Apple Podcasts or iTunes is always appreciated. It helps us get this content out to more people. And thank you so much for listening. And then I guess I’ll cut here, I guess. I’ve never had to do the video.
Dahl Winters: I’ll cut here as well with my audio recording.
Ross Kenyon: Well, thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it in Apple Podcasts and or Stitcher. It really helps us a lot to get this content to a wider audience. If you think what we’re doing is useful, interesting, fun, hopefully all three, we’d certainly appreciate your rating and review. You can keep up with Nori at nori. com where there is a newsletter that’s nori. com slash subscribe. There’s podcast, there’s a whole bunch else, or you can send us an email at podcast at nori. com.
We are also now on Patreon at patreon. com slash noripodcasts if you’d like more content, engagement, and community. And thank you so much for your support.
