Skip to main content

CO2 Harvesting from Air: A Low-Cost, Scalable 'Direct Air Capture' Technique and its Techno-Economics

Speaker
Mansour Massoudi from Emissol LLC
Date
Location
L2D2

Carbon dioxide removal from air, known as Direct Air Capture (DAC) of CO2, is gaining widespread attention as a negative emission pathway for reversing climate change. CO2 harvested from air through DAC may be sequestered permanently, or it could be utilized in various industrial and household processes or products.
            That being said, costly adsorbents used in many DAC processes remain a major obstacle in widespread adoption of DAC as a mainstream, viable approach.
            In this presentation, we discuss a highly efficient, enhanced mass transfer contactor specifically designed for removing CO2 from air needing substantially less adsorbent. This, when coupled with optimizing the CO2 capture process, is shown to markedly lower the overall CO2 capture cost by ~ 50 – 80%.  Discussion will include methods of inducing enhanced mass transfer, sorbent types, CO2 convection in the channel scale vs. molecular diffusion in the sorbent pore structures, and techno-economic analyses indicating a holistic approach to the capture process yielding lowered capture cost.