CO2 Air Capture

CO2 levels are increasing in the air year by year.  The added CO2 is causing problems.  Reducing CO2 output to zero today would not have a large effect on our problems for 50-100 years.  The real solution is air capture, which takes CO2 from the air directly.  Klaus Lackner, in his Scientific American article, outlined a plan for building many air capture machines that would be able to reverse the buildup of CO2 in the air and get us back to ~350ppm within a decade or two.

Carbon Engineering has commissioned an air capture pilot plant in Squamish, Canada - Bravo!

Climeworks 900T/year Swiss Air Capture Plant - Operating June 2017.  500x smaller capacity than CO2 Solutions' pilot plant, but it still is a beautiful thing! The true genius is selling the captured CO2 to a customer.

CO2 Solutions is a Quebec company that uses the enzyme carbonic anhydrase to capture CO2 from industrial CO2 sources.  They have demonstrated capture of 1250 tonnes/day from a concentrated source at a cost of $28/tonne.  Air capture is estimated to be 10x more expensive than from concentrated sources.  Carbonic anhydrase exists in our blood to help us release of CO2 from our bodies.  Mimicking nature has proven to be a cost effective way to capture CO2.  

These two companies are showing how to capture CO2.  Shell's Quest Project has shown us how to store it.  The pieces are now in place to take care of the problem effectively.

More interesting news on carbon storage underground has come from Iceland's Carbfix project where CO2 was dissolved in water, injected into basaltic rocks which mineralized the gas, forming stable carbonate rock within 2 years.  Check out the Icelandic accented English in the video of the Carbfix Project.