☁️ HackTrends: Direct Air Capture

Direct Air Capture: Extracting CO2 from thin air

With thanks to Florian Schabus at Planet A Ventures, Tank Chen a Carbon Dioxide Removal Advocate and Daniel Rennie at LEILAC.

Let’s dive in…

☁️ The big picture

• What if we could simply…extract excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere directly? Could it be the answer to our global warming woes?

• Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology uses chemicals or minerals to selectively react with and trap CO₂, pulling it out of ambient air. Unlike carbon capture, which generally happens at the source of emissions, DAC can theoretically happen anywhere. It’s a viable, but energy-intensive and expensive method for atmospheric carbon removal.

• A drastic reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is a must. But the latest science indicates that even if all emissions halted today, it still wouldn’t be enough to limit global warming to below 1.5°C. That’s why startups are working to quickly scale up DAC technology.

🤔 Why we should be paying attention

• Right now the estimated cost to remove a single tonne of CO₂ with DAC is $600. But companies like Climeworks say they will eventually get that number down to $100.

• Boston Consulting Group, who has signed multi-year DAC partnership agreements with Climeworks and CarbonCapture Inc., estimates that the end-to-end cost of DAC must fall to below $200 and closer to $100 per by 2050 to be widely adopted. However, today the known average price of DAC carbon removal hovers around ~$718 according to CDR.fyi Price Index.

• Tank Chen told HackTrends: ‘DAC operators are eligible for the 45Q tax credit for $180 per ton and $130 per ton for geological sequestration and for the capture and utilisation of CO2, respectively.’

• Even so, the Biden administration has earmarked $3.5BN in funds for DAC projects in the US. The administration recently announced up to $1.2BN for the development of two commercial-scale DAC facilities in Louisiana and Texas, the initial selections from the President’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law-funded Regional DAC Hubs program. The projects are expected to remove 2M metric tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere each year.

• Yet, DAC technology is largely unproven at scale. The world’s biggest carbon capture facility is being built in Texas (more on that below) and it aims to remove 500,000 tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere yearly once fully operational. That figure, if accurate, would eliminate about “260 seconds of the world’s emissions.”

🔍 How is it shaping up?

Liquid-solvent direct air capture (L-DAC):

• Companies such as Mission Zero opt for, you guessed it, a liquid solvent. While most L-DAC approaches require high heat, Mission Zero’s approach is decentralised and heat-free. Their aim is to reduce downtime while maintaining a modular form factor.

Electrochemical pH-swing:

• Carbon Atlantis’s system uses a solvent to capture CO₂ and an acid to release it. This approach is inspired by recent innovation in Proton Exchange Membrane fuel cells and electrolyzers, making the process both cost-effective and energy-efficient. They are currently building a larger lab-scale demonstrator and are targeting a larger field pilot within the next two years.

Solid-sorbent direct air capture (S-DAC):

• There is a diverse portfolio of technologies for S-DAC, each of them differing in required energy intensity, temperature, and cost to operate. S-DAC plants are designed to be modular, and typically operate at ambient to low pressure (such as under a vacuum) and medium temperature (80–120°C). Climeworks, Global Thermostat, and Noya use a solid sorbent in their approach.

A novel design for temperature vacuum swing adsorption:

• NeoCarbon is using existing infrastructure to cut the costs of DAC, mainly due to waste heat streams and the airflow of cooling towers. They’ve also developed a novel reactor design (structured bed with temperature vacuum swing), for which they are filing three patents.

Mineralisation:

• Heirloom uses lime in a novel carbonation process to capture CO₂ from the air and form limestone, effectively speeding up a binding process that normally takes years into a matter of three days. The limestone is then fed into a renewably-powered LEILAC kiln where the CO₂ is separated and captured, and the cycle begins again.

Industry giants getting involved:

• Big names like Microsoft are betting big on DAC. The tech giant has signed up for Climeworks services, a plant that captures and stores 36,000 metric tonnes of CO₂ annually. It also made a purchase agreement for up to 315,000 metric tonnes of CO₂ removal with Heirloom, which plans to remove 1B tonnes of CO₂ by 2035.

👀 Who ? (30 companies in this space)

• 1PointFive (commercialising DAC facilities at an industrial-scale, USA)

• Aircapture (helping businesses go carbon-neutral with DAC, USA)

• AirMyne (scalable DAC approach, USA)

• AspiraDAC (DAC from modular, scalable renewable energy, Australia)

• Avnos (hybrid DAC producing water, USA)

• Capture6 (flexible DAC solution for permanent CO2 removal, USA)

• Carbon Atlantis (low-cost DAC approach, Germany)

• Carbon Blade (compact and self-contained DAC systems, USA)

• CarbonCapture Inc. (modular DAC machines, USA)

• Carbon Collect (world’s first passive DAC solution, Germany)

• Carbominer (helping businesses decarbonise with DAC, Ukraine)

• Carbyon (fast-swing process for low-energy DAC, Netherlands)

• Climeworks (CO₂ removal as a service via DAC, Switzerland)

• CO2Rail (carbon negative transportation via DAC, Germany)

• Global Thermostat (unlocking air carbon industries, USA)

• Greenlyte Carbon Technologies (low-energy DAC, Germany)

• Heirloom (lime cycling in DAC, USA)

• Holy Grail Inc. (storing air-capture carbon in pyramids, USA)

• Mission Zero (low-energy, heat-free technology for DAC, UK)

• NeoCarbon (waste heat and infrastructure for DAC, Germany)

• Noya (a scalable DAC approach using abundant materials, USA)

• Octavia Carbon (reversing climate change with DAC, Kenya)

• Parallel Carbon (DAC paired with water electrolysis, UK)

• RepAir Carbon Capture (scalable and low-cost DAC approach, Israel)

• Removr (flexible, energy-efficient DAC technology, Norway)

• Soletair Power (onsite DAC technology, Finland)

• Sustaera (novel DAC technology to restore carbon balance, USA)

• Terrafixing (DAC for cold and dry climates, Canada)

• Ucaneo (DAC with cell-free DAC technology, Germany)

• Verdox (electric DAC technology, USA)

Amazon-backed DAC technology: 1PointFive

🗓 Founded: 2020
👋 Founders: Jim McDermott
🇺🇸 Country: USA
👀 Investor: US Department of Energy

• 1PointFive is developing decarbonisation solutions at scale, including DAC, point-source capture, geologic sequestration hubs, and AIR TO FUELS^TM facilities.

• Why: The mission is to curb global temperature rise to 1.5°C by 2050 by providing practical options for high-emitting organisations to reduce their carbon impact.

• How: Oxy and Rusheen Capital Management formed 1PointFive as a development company to finance and deploy Carbon Engineering’s large-scale DAC technology. 1PointFive’s first DAC facility, STRATOS, is under construction in Texas, and expected to begin commercial operations in mid-2025. It’s designed to capture 500,000 tonnes of CO₂/year when fully operational.

• Unfair Advantage: 1PointFive is working to commercialise DAC technology at an industrial scale, and has the project partners and financial support to make that a reality. (Ultimately, the project is owned by big oil company Oxy.)

• New: E-commerce giant Amazon’s first investment in DAC was committing to purchase 250,000 metric tons of carbon removal from STRATOS.

Startup to watch: Noya

🗓 Founded: 2020
👋 Founders: Josh Santos and Daniel Cavero
🇺🇸 Country: USA
💸 Raised: $12.2M
👀 Investors: Lowercarbon Capital, Climate Capital, MCJ Collective

• Noya is accelerating the world’s transition to carbon negativity with scalable, cost-effective DAC technology.

• Why: Noya was founded with the admirable goal of enabling the human race to continue enjoying the things we collectively love, such as smoke-free hikes in the forest and a full snowpack for ski season on a healthy, thriving planet.

• How: Based in California, Noya uses an energy-efficient, modular design paired with an innovative capture technology to pull excess CO₂ from the atmosphere on timescales that meaningfully address climate change.

• Unfair Advantage: Noya uses activated-carbon monoliths to deploy modularly and regenerate CO₂ efficiently to… wait for it… fight carbon with carbon.

🚀 Opportunities

• Massive DAC deployment could substantially lower cost, and commercial-scale projects are already underway. If successful, DAC may reduce the cost of emissions reductions and climate policy costs in the short- to medium-term.

• A solution for legacy emissions: DAC is a promising solution with a relatively small land and water footprint for removing already-emitted carbon pollution from our atmosphere to curb further global warming.

• A way to balance difficult-to-avoid emissions: Beyond carbon removal, air-capture CO₂ can be used as carbon-neutral feedstock in hard-to-abate industries such as aviation and chemical manufacturing as we navigate the net-zero transition.

• Gold standard of Carbon Removal: As Tank Chen told HackTrends: ‘CO2 removed through DAC is highly measurable, verifiable and reportable. Storage of carbon dioxide has also been a routine practice for decades in the energy sector with no major leaks or safety concerns.’

❗️Risks and remaining questions

• DAC is the single most expensive carbon removal technology: Costs are dependent on capture technology, the price of heat and electricity, and specific plant configuration. Locations with high renewable energy potential are the most promising in reaching a hopeful forecast of below $100/tonne by 2030.

• Resource limitations: DAC technology requires a lot of energy to operate. Clearly, it makes no sense to use non-renewable energy sources. But is DAC the best use of our available renewable energy, or would it be better spent avoiding CO₂ emissions in the first place? Some argue that ‘Engineering-based removal activities are technologically and economically unproven, especially at scale, and pose unknown environmental and social risks.’ And that we should instead be investing in and protecting already proven Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technologies and natural solutions instead, such as rainforests — which do the same job, with no assembly required.

• Suitable accounting and storage is needed: Air-captured CO₂ needs to be safely and permanently stored or it’s all for nothing. Not to mention, this is an invisible gas we’re dealing with. Robust, transparent, and standardised accounting methodologies are needed for inventory reporting, and to boost trust of DAC in the marketplace.

• A ploy to future-proof the oil industry? Big oil is using DAC technology to tout net-zero oil. Could this be the newest form of greenwashing? To this end, advocacy groups have openly denounced the use of CO2 from DAC to be used for EOR (enhanced oil recovery) purposes.

💡 The bottom line

• DAC is in its early stages. It’ll take time to see how impactful and cost-effective it can become in comparison to other technologies.

• As Florian Schabus of Planet A Ventures neatly summarised for us: ‘If you look at all the climate reports, there’s no way we can reach our climate goals without really scaling up carbon removal. We are past the point of going for avoidance and reduction vs. removals. We need both. Direct air capture offers a very exciting pathway to reduce emissions.’

📖  Take a deep dive

• Visual renderings of how DAC and other carbon management solutions might look in various real-life settings.

• Good read from Forbes: Why carbon capture tech can’t quite compete with rainforests, yet.

• Check out this interactive Carbon Removal Map

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