Tag: Direct Air Capture

  • Can I Drive to Work on Recycled Fuel?

    Can I Drive to Work on Recycled Fuel?

    How cool would it be if cars and airplanes could run on gas that has been made from carbon dioxide?

    Part 1 of my story about Carbon Engineering covered how they capture carbon dioxide out of the air and turn it into calcium carbonate pellets. This is part two, it covers how they turn the carbon dioxide that they extract into fuel that could be used by cars or airplanes.

    Turning air to fuel
    Turning Air to Fuel

    So, here is how it works. Carbon dioxide from the air is turned into calcium carbonate pellets. These are heated up to reach a much more concentrated form of carbon dioxide. This reacts with hydrogen and energy and is turned into hydro carbon fuels, such as gasoline, diesel or jet fuel.

    This technology enables the production of synthetic transportation fuels using only atmospheric CO₂ and hydrogen split from water, and powered by clean electricity

    https://carbonengineering.com/about-a2f/

    Carbon Engineering designed a closed cycle of turning carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into concentrated carbon dioxide and then into fuel. By utilizing as little water as possible and renewable energy for the process, they are creating a green fuel.

    This technology forms an important complement to electric vehicles in the quest to deliver carbon-neutral 21st century transportation.

    https://carbonengineering.com/about-a2f/

    The BBC has an interesting article about Carbon Engineering’s technology. It also covers concerns from environmentalists that carbon capture could be used as an excuse to prolong the fossil fuel era or prevent us from reducing emissions in the first place.

    I think we need to work on reduction emissions as well as capturing carbon. I would love to rely on natural ways such as restoring forests and wetlands only, but it looks like that might not be enough. Carbon Engineering’s technology certainly looks promising.

    What I like most about it is the idea of tuning the extracted carbon dioxide into a valuable product. If there is monetary incentive for carbon capture this technology might get adopted more broadly.

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  • Can Artificial Shells Reduce Carbon Dioxide?

    Can Artificial Shells Reduce Carbon Dioxide?

    The Canadian company Carbon Engineering takes carbon dioxide out of the air and turns it to calcium carbonate – that’s what shells are made of! They developed a scalable process for capturing carbon dioxide from the air, a technology called Direct Air Capture (DAC).

    Imagine an industrial plant with big fans to suck in air. This air is then mixed with chemicals and turned into calcium carbonate pellets.

    Turning air into calcium pellets
    Turning air into calcium pellets

    What stage are they at? That’s the interesting part. Carbon Engineering have been capturing air from a pilot plant since 2015. Now in their commercial validation phase, they received major backing from industry to scale this technology.

    Our proven Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology can scale up to capture one million tons of CO₂ per year with each commercial facility. That quantity of CO₂ is equivalent to the annual emissions of 250,000 average cars.

    https://carbonengineering.com/about-dac/

    What I like most about Carbon Engineering is that they have been capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for several years now and are ready to scale. We need to use all the options we have reduce emissions and to remove carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and this definitely sounds like a good one.

    While I personally like shells, they are turning it into something of more monetary value: Fuel. Stay tuned for part two of this post to read all about how Carbon Engineering creates clean fuels.