Advanced Atmospheric Carbon Capture Technology

ended

Ever increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations and global emissions of 36 Gt/year impose unprecedented threats to the world’s ecosystem and endanger industrial human activities in their entirety. This AACCT project will establish a new advanced technology that facilitates efficient CO2 capture from air and results in a commercial, stand-alone prototype that will demonstrate its economical and ecological viability, outperforming all other emerging approaches to atmospheric CO2 capture. The technology takes advantage of unique, intrinsic micro- and macro-molecular structures of porous materials that were developed within the ERC SUPRAMOL and Science Foundation Ireland funded projects. These adsorbents reveal extraordinary affinity to CO2, are non-corrosive, non-toxic and are based on stable, cheap and abundant silica materials. The system operates in moist air whereby the CO2 recovery is facilitated at mild conditions under which the adsorbent is regenerated. These intrinsic characteristics in combination with the macro-structure of sub-millimetre pellets that enhances the ad/desorption kinetics, results in exceptionally low operational CO2 capture costs. The technology is modular and the number of capture units scales linearly with the desired CO2 quantity. It is not restricted to fixed locations or CO2 point sources and thus, can conceptionally lead to negative or net zero CO2 emissions. The AACCT technology will provide pure CO2 that can be sold, used or transformed within established or emerging chemical processes (i.e. methanol synthesis). Initially, it is envisaged that the systems, using low-grade waste heat, will be employed in energy-intensive industrial sectors requiring air circulation and cooling devices. A very modest adaptation of the AACCT prototypes can facilitate the reduction of Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions by >10%, thus highlighting the potential impact and scalability of the proposed technology at European and global levels.