It’s getting cheaper to filter carbon dioxide from the air

The next generation of industrial installations to filter CO2 from the air is on the way and is getting closer to overcoming some of the biggest challenges of using this technology to combat climate change. Climeworks, one of the first startups to develop this technology, today unveiled its Generation 3 plant. It is supposed to use half the energy of older designs and cut costs in half as well.

If Climeworks delivers on this promise, it could go a long way toward making this technology, called direct air capture (DAC), a viable way to reduce the amount of carbon pollution accumulating in the atmosphere. Right now, the technology is too new and expensive to significantly reduce these emissions. However, a number of big brands and the Biden administration are already placing a lot of faith – and funding – in the technology’s development.

Capturing this amount of CO2 would be fantastically expensive today, as DAC costs over $600 per ton. A large part of these costs comes from the amount of energy required to operate a DAC plant, which is another concern with technology. Power grids in the US are already struggling to meet growing demand for electricity from electric vehicles, data centers and manufacturing. Furthermore, DAC plants create their own carbon dioxide emissions if they run on dirty energy. And if they run on renewable energy, they run the risk of diverting that clean energy to possibly more important uses, such as keeping the lights on in homes.

Climeworks claims its Gen 3 DAC plants can reduce the cost of capturing CO2 to $250-350 per ton by 2030, although there will be additional costs to permanently sequester the CO2 underground or at sea so it doesn’t escape back. to the atmosphere. Across the industry, the goal is generally to get it down to around $100 per ton to make the technology affordable enough to be widely deployed.

Climeworks’ older DAC plants are made up of shipping container-sized modules lined with fans that suck in air. The air passes through a special filter that uses a base to attract and retain carbon dioxide, which is slightly acidic. Once the filter is fully saturated with CO2, the unit heats the filter to about 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit) to release the gas. This creates a concentrated stream of CO2 that can be transported and stored elsewhere.

Climeworks claims that Generation 3 is more energy efficient because it increases surface contact with CO2 and its filters should capture more than twice as much CO2 as older filters. The modules are now also cube-shaped to maximize CO2 capture.

The company has been testing the new filters in Switzerland for the past five years, finally carrying out a full-scale test this month. Now, the plan is to deploy the technology in DAC factories in the US before expanding to other countries. The first will be in Louisiana, where the Biden administration has chosen Climeworks to be one of the first companies it is donating funds to as part of a $3.5 billion program to develop at least four DAC centers in the US.

Climeworks now has plans to expand in Australia, it announced today during a press conference. It is already developing other CAD projects in Norway, Kenya and Canada. Its first two commercial-scale facilities are located in Iceland.

Update June 4th: Added news about Climeworks’ plans in Australia.