Source : ABC
A project that might yearly remove millions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere has been developed by a U.S. climate technology company.
According to a news statement published by Business Wire last week, CarbonCapture Inc. has disclosed plans for the largest carbon capture facility in the world in Wyoming, in an exclusive agreement with top carbon storage firm Frontier Carbon Solutions.
Adrian Corless, CEO and CTO of CarbonCapture Inc., stated that the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the growth of businesses looking for high-quality carbon removal credits, and a disruptive low-cost technology have given us the ingredients we need to scale DAC to megaton levels by the end of this decade.
“We want to field our first DAC modules before the end of next year and to continue installing capacity as modules come off our production line. Our goal is to use economies of scale to provide the lowest priced DAC-based carbon removal credits in market.”
According to the company description, massive amounts of CO2 can be removed from the environment by linking direct air capture (DAC) devices that CarbonCapture has created & deployed in massive arrays.
Wyoming was chosen because of its abundant supply of renewable and carbon-free energy sources, as well as its favourable operating and regulatory conditions for carbon storage.
Business Wire
When will the project start?
The project will be the first in the United States to use Class VI wells for long-term storage of atmospheric carbon removal facility. It is expected to be operational by the end of 2023.
The goal of this partnership initiative, dubbed “Project Bison,” is to absorb five million tonnes of CO2 yearly by 2030, which is about equivalent to the amount of roundtrip flights between London & New York.
“Safe, permanent carbon storage and direct air capture are critical components of a low-carbon economy,” said Robby Rockey, President and COO of Frontier Carbon Solutions, a Tailwater Capital portfolio firm.
This agreement will scale these important businesses in Wyoming, ultimately bringing additional investment money and jobs to the state, thanks to CarbonCapture’s DAC technology and Frontier’s storage assets.
To provide industrial emitters with services for carbon collecting, transportation, and sequestration through the purchase, building, and management of commercial CCUS infrastructure, Dallas-based Frontier Carbon Solutions was founded in April 2021.
Is carbon capture and storage (CCS) effective?
At least 90% of the CO2 in smokestacks should not be released into the environment, according to most carbon capture techniques. Though the system becomes more expensive and uses more energy to absorb more CO2 as it approaches 100 percent efficiency.
There are numerous methods for capturing carbon dioxide from fossil fuel-burning facilities including cement plants and coal power plants.
The most typical method is to cool the exhaust gases and pump them into a chamber filled with chemical “scrubbers” that bind CO2 molecules.
While the carbon-free exhaust is released into the atmosphere, the captured carbon is then condensed and stored. CCS has already been implemented in two coal power plants (one of which will be shut down in 2020) and around two dozen other locations.
According to Howard Herzog, Senior Research Engineer at the MIT Energy Initiative, CCS programmes have used a baseline efficiency target of 90% for years because 90% is a feasible goal and 90% CO2 removal is essential for a system to be financially viable to build and deploy.
However, power plants will have to pay substantially more for each extra molecule of CO2 that they absorb in order to attain that goal. They need more powerful financial incentives as a result to cut their carbon emissions. A carbon price would be one way to give those incentives by taxing plants on any CO2 discharged into the environment.
