Chapter 1

Ithaca, New York - Five years prior to the attack on the climate lab

“Dad, have you seen the latest news on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases? Looks like in spite of your new invention for airplane engines and all the other initiatives from people all over the world, they are still going up.” It was Sita, the older of Dr. Ravi Kumar and Dr. Caitlyn Mariko’s identical twin daughters.

It was a beautiful spring day in Ithaca, New York. The three Kumar daughters, Lilly, Sita, and Reiko, and their son-in-law, Jesse, had come back home for the long Memorial Day weekend. Ravi and Jesse were trying to get the grill going while the girls and their mother were getting the Beyond Meat burgers, corn on the cob just harvested from the local farm, and a cornucopia of other fresh vegetables as well as fish ready for a lazy, and relaxing holiday afternoon for their backyard cookout.

It had been a long, hard winter and it was time to shed the heavy winter clothing and get out to enjoy the fresh cool breeze blowing from Lake Cayuga, one of the five Finger Lakes in upstate New York, about four hours’ drive from the Big Apple.

It had now been almost eight years since MRI–297, the new material invention that Sita was talking about, had become a reality and was now in just about all modern commercial airliners currently flying, significantly reducing the amount of greenhouse gases they produced. Sita had brought back memories from that harrowing summer when Ravi and Caitlyn were on a worldwide flight for their lives from two of the most powerful CEOs of American industry and the Chinese government -- all because they had refused to sign an exclusive licensing contract with either the Americans or the Chinese. They were determined to make their new invention available to all industries and countries which were legally allowed to have that new material and join them in their fight to do something about the unabated growth of that insidious gas. In the end, after escaping many close calls on their lives, they did manage to come out alive and license their new revolutionary material for use throughout the aviation industry. Their story had become a much-talked-about saga of the time and was well publicized in the bestselling book – Not For Sale!

“Yes, I have, and like you, I am quite concerned and have been wondering what we can do about it,” Ravi answered in a subdued voice, still lost in the memories of eight years ago but slowly making his way back to the present.

“It is interesting we are talking about it. I just saw an article on Carbon Dioxide recapture and the promise it holds to reverse or at least slow down the damage caused by it to our planet and the climate,” Reiko, Sita’s five-minute younger identical twin sister chimed in.

“I also read something about it but did not follow up. It sounded too complicated and too futuristic,” Lilly Kumar, the eldest of the Kumar daughters, added.

“Actually, it is not. It does happen to be one of my areas of research, and if you all are interested, I can give you a quick primer on it.” Dr. Jesse Shapiro, Lilly’s husband, was a NASA scientist.

“That will be great, as long as you don’t go too deep and keep it at a level that mere mortals like us can understand,” Sita piped in teasingly.

“I will remember that and if I do begin to wade into waters any deeper than your ankle, just holler – ‘Deep’ and I will retract,” Jesse answered, smiling with a wink.

Dr. Kumar now had the burgers and the freshly husked corn on the grill. The corn kernels had begun popping and would be ready for that first mouthwatering bite in less than five minutes. The cooler beside the picnic table held cold Corona beer, everyone’s favorite brew. Caitlyn opened a bottle for Ravi and invited the others to help themselves as they settled down, straddling the backyard wooden picnic bench – Jesse, Lilly, and Caitlyn on one side and Sita and Reiko on the other, while Ravi remained standing tending the grill with one hand and that cold beer in his free hand.

“So, as you know, there is a mountain of carbon dioxide - CO2 for short, that has been accumulating in our atmosphere ever since we began burning fossil fuels to heat our homes and produce electricity, and of course the wide-spread use of cars, trucks, and more recently, airplanes. And as Sita said, despite all the measures society has taken over the last several decades to reduce the amount of new carbon dioxide we produce, we have not gotten ahead of the curve and are still adding to that mountain, albeit at a somewhat slower rate. The increase in the planet’s average temperature has, as a result, been steadily increasing, causing the change in climate we are experiencing with the cycle of drought, flood, and heat becoming more severe each passing year.” Jesse began his introduction to the subject.

“Dr. Shapiro, we know all that. Can you get to the point and talk about carbon dioxide recapture?” Sita asked playfully.

“All right then, carbon dioxide recapture, as the name implies, is literally sucking that insidious gas out of the air around us. Trees and forests do that quite effectively, but we are producing more of it than they can process -- and to make matters worse, we have been cutting down a vast expanse of forests, reducing nature’s capacity to capture and convert it into something useful such as oxygen. So, what is the big deal? Why can’t we just use some huge, big vacuum cleaners and get it out of the air? Surely, if we can go to the moon, we should be able to do that?” Jesse asked, waving his arms and waiting to see the reaction of his audience before answering his own rhetorical questions.

“Yes, why can’t we? I have never understood if there is such a big accumulation of this gas, why with all of the technology we have, are we not able to simply suck it down just like we would if it were a mountain of sand, dirt, or snow?” Reiko asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Well, that is because the mountain of carbon dioxide is not really a mountain sitting in a few places in the sky like Mount Everest or the Rockies. Rather, it is well mixed in with the rest of the air, which as you know, is basically nitrogen and oxygen. In fact, even with the increase that has been going on for years, CO2 is still only a minute part of our air, roughly 400 parts per million. While that is double the amount it was a couple of hundred years ago, it is still quite small, though increasingly harmful all the same, as it traps more of the heat within our atmosphere, raising the planetary temperature,” Jesse said, taking a swig of his cool Corona beer.

“The first challenge after we have sucked that well-mixed, CO2-laden air into a device is to be able to separate it effectively and efficiently. And then we have to worry about what to do with it. And that is when the fun starts, as there are many ways to deal with the captured CO2 - each with its associated problems,” Jesse continued, taking another deep swig of his slowly warming beer.

The silence following the pause Jesse had taken to gulp his beer was suddenly broken by the announcement from Dr. Kumar,

“Anyone up for burgers? I have a few ready.”

They all got up and stood in line as Ravi carefully placed a burger on each of their plates and directed them to the table with condiments and a large bowl of Spicy Chickpea Salad – Ravi’s and the girls' favorite dish, ginned up by Caitlyn for the occasion.

“The basic process for separating carbon dioxide from the air is relatively simple and has been known for quite some time. The air sucked in from the atmosphere is brought in contact with an alkaline liquid solution that traps the carbon dioxide and through heating and some familiar chemical reactions separates it from the rest of the air which is then exhausted back into the atmosphere. The chemical reaction also produces water as one of the byproducts which can then be used for other purposes such as converting that captured, carbon-rich CO2 into fuel,” Jesse said as he combed his fingers through his dirty blond hair fluttering in the gentle breeze from the lake.

“What type of fuel?” asked Lilly, who had kept mostly quiet so far, though fascinated by Jesse’s ability to talk about a complex scientific subject in terms that they all could understand.

“It could be any carbon-based fuel such as gasoline, diesel, kerosene, or jet engine fuel. It could also be used to produce other petroleum-based products such as heating oil, coal tar, polyester, plastics, or anything else for which we currently use fossil fuel extracted from the earth. Basically, we would be replacing the vanishing supply of the precious fossil fuel with the manmade fuel produced from the abundantly available carbon dioxide in our air and cleaning it up in the process,” Jesse answered passionately. This was a subject near and dear to his heart, and he was excited to talk about it.

“The process to convert the carbon dioxide captured from the ambient air into fuel is also well understood. It starts with breaking apart the very stable CO2 molecule to provide one of the ingredients for making the synthetic fuel - carbon monoxide or CO. The other key element is hydrogen, and that is generated by splitting the water molecule or H2O, which if you recall was a byproduct of capturing carbon dioxide from the air. The CO and hydrogen are then chemically reacted in a well-known process known as Fischer-Tropsch to synthesize the manufactured hydrocarbon fuel that replicates the natural fossil fuel that we extract from the earth,” Jesse continued, skipping many of the details lest the twins scream “Deep.”

“If all this is well understood, then why we are not using it to take care of that mountain?” asked Sita with furrowed eyebrows. The twins were in the habit of using their delicately sculpted eyebrows as an integral part of their expressive personalities.

“Well, because there are still many technical and engineering challenges that need to be solved to make the science a reality. But that has not stopped some futuristic individuals from building small prototype plants to demonstrate the feasibility of the basic science. They are not very economical right now and use a lot of energy – more than they produce, to be of much practical use. They also have exceptionally large footprints, occupying almost half a football field just to remove a few tons of carbon dioxide – a drop in the bucket,” Jesse answered, trying to sound optimistic but injecting a sense of objectivity and reality.

“So, what do you think is required to make it a practical solution for getting the greenhouse gases back in the box?” asked Reiko.

“We will need to make advances in all areas of the underlying technologies, but without going into details that you may find boring, it basically boils down to reducing the energy required for the process and to reducing the footprint of the plant,” Jesse replied.

“I understand the need to reduce energy, but why the footprint?” It was Caitlyn, who had been intently listening to Jesse and nodding her head in agreement and understanding.

“Because the large footprint limits the number of such plants that can realistically be built and operated around the world. Carbon dioxide is everywhere and therefore needs to be removed from everywhere, not just locally by a few plants. Distributing the carbon dioxide processing plants widely would be the only way to make a meaningful difference in that mountain,” Jesse replied.

“Based on what I have seen so far, I do not see how we can get it down from its current size of roughly half of a football field to something that is considerably smaller – perhaps no bigger than the size of a suitcase,” he continued.

“It is interesting you say that Jesse. I remember when I first started in the business, we used to work on something that you kids may not have even heard of – an IBM mainframe computer. It had a large footprint, perhaps as big as a full-size SUV and it used to consume gobs of power to run it and to keep it cool from all the heat its internal electronic gadgetry used to generate. And for all that size and power, it had the computing capacity of less than what is in your laptop computer or even in your cell phone.” Ravi had taken a breather from his cooking duties and joined the conversation.

“I would, therefore, not put it past human ingenuity to rise to the challenge, whatever that may be,” Ravi added.

“Assuming there were breakthroughs, and we could get the whole plant packaged in a suitcase, how exactly did you think it would be used?” Lilly asked.

“Well, I don’t know. Since I did not think it was an achievable goal, I really have not given much thought to it,” Jesse replied.

“What if every car and truck around the world was equipped with this device? We would then have millions of small-scale plants cleaning up the air and at the same time producing fuel for their own consumption.” Sita said thoughtfully, making her contribution to the discussion.

“Yes, and even though we would still be producing carbon dioxide by burning the hydrocarbon fuel that we would have synthesized, it would be mostly neutralized or could even be negative relative to the amount we took out. It would also mean that no new crude oil needs to be taken out of the ground. A win-win proposition,” Reiko added excitedly, backing up her twin sister as the twins often did – feeding off each other ideas.

“You know, although it appears to be pie in the sky right now, I am beginning to get a chill in my bones thinking of the possibilities -- what such a device could do for our planet. Jesse, it is worth pursuing further. Let us talk and maybe get a small exploratory project started. I will bring it up with my board at the institute, but I do not foresee any problem in getting their support. The Environmental Defense Fund has been growing with the royalties coming from the MRI-297 super alloy and we have been looking for exactly such a project to deploy some of that money,” Dr. Kumar said.

“And, although not absolutely necessary, it would be great if rather than calling it a device, we could come up with a suitable name for it. Any ideas?” he added.

“How about CRAP?” said Reiko. She was good at coming up with eye-catching unconventional names. Her petit, one hundred fifteen pound, five feet two inches frame packed with boundless energy almost bouncing with excitement at the prospect of a device that could actually do something about the spiraling growth of the harmful gas and the ravages it was causing to the climate.

“Really?” Jesse said with a hint of a snicker in his voice.

“Yes, Dr. Shapiro. CRAP for Carbon Dioxide Recapture And Processing,” Reiko replied, not quite appreciating the snicker in Jesse’s voice.

“It sure is catchy and does capture the essence of what this gizmo is supposed to do. I can buy that,” Jesse said, trying to smooth Reiko’s ruffled feathers.

“Some may find it too shocking and distractive. I suggest we think of something less offensive,” said Lilly. Her calm demeanor reflected her serious nature - a contrast to her more ebullient twin sisters.

“What if we added S to it and called it CRAPS – for Carbon Dioxide Recapture And Processing System. Will that make it less offensive but still memorable and somewhat shocking?” Reiko said, striking a compromise. The twins had a lot of respect for their older sibling and generally deferred to her comments and suggestions.

“That would be better. I can go with that,” Lilly agreed with a nod from the others.

“CRAPS, it is,” Ravi said as he went back to tending the corn on the cob and their popping kernels.

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