Carbon
How to "mine" carbon out of the air for use in nanotech?
Speculating on this I beleive that perhaps the easiest way would be to first suck in some air and then cool it past the dew point of Carbon Dioxide. This would percipitate Co2. (at what pressure is it possible to have liquid co2?......does it matter?)
This C02 "snow" would then be "picked apart" by tiny atom grabbers pulling the carbon atoms loose from the oxygen.
Question...should monoatomic oxy be released back into the atmosphere?
The caron atoms can then be used to immediatiately build (grow) something diamonoid.
Possibly a "seive" device that would capture carbon dioxide from the air directly by passing the cooling step. I assume that all molecule have specific shapes. If so...then Carbon Dioxide is uniquely shaped and would fit into a "cutout" which would tend to exclude all other molecules.
Driving down the road and bored with radio I do a lot of speculating like this...I've come up with a nanotech tunneling machine but it'd be hard to explain..
EvMick
Salt Lake City Utah.