Air Capture

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an approach to mitigate global warming by capturing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from large point sources such as fossil fuel power plants and storing it instead of releasing it into the atmosphere. Technology for large scale capture of CO₂ is already commercially available and fairly well developed. Although CO₂ has been injected into geological formations for various purposes, the long term storage of CO₂ is a relatively untried concept and as yet no large scale power plant operates with a full carbon capture and storage system.

CCS applied to a modern conventional power plant could reduce CO₂ emissions to the atmosphere by approximately 80-90% compared to a plant without CCS. Capturing and compressing CO₂ requires much energy and would increase the fuel needs of a coal-fired plant with CCS by about 25%. These and other system costs are estimated to increase the cost of energy from a new power plant with CCS by 21-91%. These estimates apply to purpose-built plants near a storage location: applying the technology to preexisting plants or plants far from a storage location will be more expensive. Rarely considered in such mathematics is the embodied carbon cost of the equipment and machinery needed to create this act of reverse-entropy.

Storage of the CO₂ is envisaged either in deep geological formations, in deep ocean masses, or in the form of mineral carbonates. In the case of deep ocean storage, there is a risk of greatly increasing the problem of ocean acidification, a problem that also stems from the excess of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere and oceans. Geological formations are currently considered the most promising sequestration sites, and these are estimated to have a storage capacity of at least 2000 Gt CO₂ (currently, 30 Gt per year of CO₂ is emitted due to human activities)

Air Capture Techs Companies