Carbon conundrum, climate change, CO2 capture and consumptions

•Carbon dioxide (CO2) emission and absorption components consist of biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere, and fossil fuels.•Study of convective and advective carbon cycle in air and water across the globe.•Performance testing of 11 future natural refrigerants for thermosyphon driven solar water heating system.•CO2 can outperform all chosen refrigerants in temperature range of −20 to 70 °C.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emission and absorption components consist of biosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, lithosphere and fossil fuels. CO2 flow rates are governed by large scale fluid dynamic, thermodynamic and radio-active transfer processes. This results in dynamic flow of CO2 over land and oceans affecting regional climates. Convective uptake of CO2 from Asia flows at high altitude to America and then returns sweeping the local emissions back to Asia. In this process the bulk clouds of CO2 are absorbed in cold Pacific Ocean surface waters near America, causing regional cooling effect. Dynamic thermohaline circulations take away the dissolved carbon to warmer Asian waters maintaining the global carbon balance. Monsoon winds sweep Himalayan valley smoke and CO2 to Arabian Sea causing regional warming. Atmospheric CO2 and dissolved water carbon concentrations cause regional warming and cooling effects. Global carbon circuit may cause regional warming and cooling, irrespective of local emissions. In this study, nature's response to higher concentration of CO2 and its direct removal from atmosphere or sequestration at source is presented. This paper describes global carbon balance, regional climate changes and carbon fix alternatives by developing industrial use of CO2. ASHREA has envisioned 11 new future refrigerants for evacuated glass tube solar water heaters. Our simulation results show that supercritical CO2 is an optimum natural refrigerant in terms of thermodynamic and heat transfer properties in the range of −20 to 30 and 30–70 °C. We demonstrated the utilization of captured CO2 as mediating fluid for refrigeration and solar water heating applications.

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