Carbon Engineering founder and Harvard Professor publishes the first viable solution for the commercialization of large-scale Direct Air Capture technology, producing clean fuels
Squamish, B.C. – Announced today, Carbon Engineering (CE), a Canadian-based clean energy company, has published new research that proves CO2 can now be captured from the atmosphere for less than $100USD per ton. Released in a peer-reviewed paper, CE’s breakthroughs in Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology demonstrate, for the first time, a scalable and cost-effective solution for removing CO2 from the atmosphere.
The implications of CE’s proven DAC technology on climate strategy are twofold – it allows the removal of existing CO2 from the air to counteract emissions too challenging or costly to eliminate at source, and enables the production of clean fuels that can significantly reduce transportation emissions. These outcomes accelerate the shift to a “net zero” world that avoids the risks of climate change while affordably delivering clean energy.
The research was led by David Keith, a Harvard Professor and founder of CE, and published by Joule, a leading scientific journal dedicated to ground-breaking energy research. The findings are based on three years’ research from CE’s pilot plant located in Squamish, B.C.
Keith explains, “Until now, research suggested it would cost $600USD per ton to remove CO2 from the atmosphere using DAC technology, making it too expensive to be a feasible solution to removing legacy carbon at scale. At CE, we’ve been working on direct air capture since 2009, running our pilot plant since 2015, and we now have the data and engineering to prove that DAC can achieve costs below $100USD per ton. No prior research in the peer-reviewed literature provides a design and engineering cost for a complete DAC system– and this paper fills that gap.”
CE is now commercializing DAC technology through integration with the company’s AIR TO FUELSTM process, which uses water electrolysis and fuels synthesis to produce clean liquid hydrocarbon fuels that are drop-in compatible with existing transportation infrastructure. CE has proven both DAC and AIR TO FUELSTM technologies and has been capturing CO2 from the atmosphere since 2015 and converting it into fuels since December 2017.
“CE’s vision is to reduce the effects of climate change by first cutting emissions, then by reducing atmospheric CO2,” says Steve Oldham, CEO of CE. “Our clean fuel is fully compatible with existing engines, so it provides the transportation sector with a solution for significantly reducing emissions, either through blending or direct use. Our technology is scalable, flexible and demonstrated. Today, we’re actively seeking partners who will work with CE to dramatically reduce emissions in the transportation sector and help us move to a carbon-neutral economy.”
Noah Deich, Executive Director, Center for Carbon Removal, says: “Direct air capture technology offers a highly-scalable pathway to removing carbon from the atmosphere. This analysis demonstrates the potential for Carbon Engineering’s technology to fall to a cost that would drive significant investment and corporate adoption in the near future.”
The full manuscript, detailing the cost and process for capturing CO2 from the atmosphere, can be viewed here.
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Footnote:
*The most influential prior estimate of DAC costs was provided by a 2011 American Physical Society (APS) study.
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About Carbon Engineering (CE):
CE has developed and demonstrated the most cost-effective, scalable technology for removing CO2 directly from the atmosphere.
CE creates clean fuel directly from the air. CE’s AIR TO FUELS™ technology is designed to decarbonize the transportation sector and provide fuel sustainability within a circular economy. CE has a pilot plant in Squamish, British Columbia, which has been removing CO2 from the atmosphere since 2015.
About the research:
The manuscript, called “A process for capturing CO2 from the atmosphere,” was launched in Joule Journal on June 7th and is available to view in full here. Carbon Engineering (CE) has published new research that proves CO2 can now be captured from the atmosphere for less than $100USD per ton using its proprietary Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology.
The paper’s primary researcher was David Keith, Founder of CE. Most of the funding for the work came from funds CE raised from its investors. This research was also supported in part by the British Columbia Innovative Clean Energy Fund, Sustainable Development Technologies Canada, Natural Resources Canada, the Industrial Research Assistance Program, Western Innovation Initiative, and the U.S. Department of Energy.
Last week, the Carbon Engineering team demonstrated “AIR TO FUELS” by directly synthesizing a mixture of gasoline and diesel using only CO2 captured from the air and hydrogen split from water with clean electricity.
Over the last few years, we have been working on a concept we call “AIR TO FUELS”, or A2F for short. A2F uses our direct air capture technology to extract and purify CO2 from the air, and employs electrolysis to produce hydrogen from water using renewable electricity. The CO2 and hydrogen are then combined in a process called “thermo-catalysis”, where they are directly synthesized into liquid fuels such as gasoline and diesel (and in the future, jet fuel also). A2F is a potentially game-changing technology, which if successfully scaled up, will allow us to harness cheap intermittent renewable electricity to drive synthesis of liquid fuels that are compatible with modern infrastructure and engines. This offers an alternative to biofuels and a complement to electric vehicles in the effort to displace fossil fuels from transportation.
This recent achievement builds on a lot of previous work and effort here at CE. We have been developing direct air capture technology since our inception in 2009, and in October 2015, we commissioned a DAC pilot plant here in Squamish B.C. which captures and purifies 1 tonne of CO2 per day from the atmosphere (see our previous blog post, and video coverage). For the past year, our engineering and operations teams have been building on this by installing water electrolysis and fuel synthesis modules (another post on the arrival of this equipment, from Greyrock Energy), which once combined with our DAC pilot, give us the capability to synthesize roughly 1 barrel of fuel per day. This month we successfully integrated and started up our equipment, and have now produced the first small quantities of liquid fuels.
Fuels! A mix of gasoline and diesel, that the CE team synthesized from carbon captured out of the air and hydrogen split from water, all powered with clean electricity.
This milestone is important, but in fact, it’s not the first time that fuels have been made from CO2 and H2. That has been done in small-scale demos before, but we do think our pilot plant is the first instance of “AIR TO FUELS” where all the equipment has large-scale industrial precedent, and thus gives real indication of commercial performance and viability, and leads directly to scale-up and deployment.
Our recent achievement of “first fuels” here in Squamish is an important stepping stone towards engineering and deploying large commercial-scale A2F facilities in coming years. Our internal data and work show that A2F will be able supply fuels into leading markets that place premium value on their low life-cycle carbon intensity with viable economics.
Further, while A2F fuels are at best carbon neutral, our progress also has relevance to the concept of “carbon dioxide removal”. CDR – or sometimes referred to as “negative emissions” – is the concept of removing and permanently storing industrial-scale quantities of CO2 from the air to help avoid climate risk. Recent articles in Wired (here) and the Economist (here and here) have highlighted the growing recognition that negative emissions are baked into many climate mitigation scenarios, but that precious few projects are actually being deployed and tested. While A2F fuels do not themselves qualify as CDR, we have an opportunity to deploy A2F – based around our core direct air capture technology – as a means to scale up and commercialize, and in so doing, prepare to deploy direct air capture in a CDR role once markets are ready.
Overall, our hope is that A2F can add to the on-going emissions mitigation efforts in the transportation sector, and that DAC can also play a CDR role to augment aggressive mitigation efforts across all sectors, to accelerate us towards net zero GHG emissions as soon as possible.
There is lots of work still to do to get A2F into market, but for the moment, we simply wish to highlight the hard work and smarts that it took our team to get to this milestone. -GH.
Today marked an important milestone on our journey towards commercializing renewable transportation fuels made from air, water, and clean electricity. On a humid West Coast fall morning, two tractor-trailers arrived at our site here in Squamish, B.C. and CE and Greyrock teams unloaded a Greyrock M5 fuel synthesis platform. Once integrated with our direct air capture pilot plant, and a water electrolyzer supplied by Hydrogenics, this equipment will give us the ability to produce gasoline and diesel fuel, using only air, water, and renewable electricity as inputs.
We call this concept “AIR TO FUELS” (or A2F). It allows us to use clean renewable electricity – which is quickly becoming the lowest cost source of energy in the world – to remove CO2 from the air, split water into hydrogen and oxygen, and then combine the CO2 and hydrogen to produce liquid hydrocarbon fuels like gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel.
Interest in A2F is growing rapidly, as countries and markets search for means to cut GHG emissions and reduce the use of crude oil and other fossil fuels. At CE, we have been developing direct air capture (DAC) technology since 2009, and now we are building on our successful DAC pilot by demonstrating it can be integrated with fuel synthesis to make clean renewable fuels that can displace crude oil and help reduce GHG emissions from the global transportation sector.
Our efforts moved out of engineering and simulation today, and into the world of hardware demonstration and testing with the arrival of the Greyrock Energy fuel synthesis platform. This system will be connected and integrated with our existing direct air capture (DAC) pilot facility which removes 1-tonne CO2 per day from the atmosphere. Once connected and commissioned, the A2F plant will produce approximately 1 bbl/d of ultra low-carbon liquid transportation fuels using captured CO2, and hydrogen produced renewably on-site by electrolysis.
Our A2F facility will be the first of its kind at this scale, and marks a major step towards commercialization of an innovative A2F approach to reducing world-wide transportation emissions. Our direct air capture pilot, Greyrock’s M5 fuel synthesis platform, and Hydrogenics’ water electrolyzer are all technologies that can be scaled up to produce clean renewable fuels at industrial volumes for use in transportation markets.
Once commissioned, we will operate this A2F pilot throughout the rest of 2017, and into 2018, testing and optimizing the system, and collecting data that will be used to develop engineering packages for larger commercial-scale systems. Keep checking CE’s website in the upcoming months for updates on the commissioning and fuels production progress.
-DJK & GH.
Link to press release hosted on Greyrock’s website.
Carbon Engineering and Greyrock Energy today announced a partnership to develop commercial air-to-fuels (A2F) systems, converting ambient CO2 and renewable power into clean, liquid transportation fuels that can be used in the existing transportation infrastructure.
Carbon Engineering and Greyrock are both leaders in the core technologies required for A2F. Carbon Engineering has developed an industrial process for the extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere, and is leading integration of this system with hydrogen production and fuel synthesis steps. Greyrock Energy is recognized as the leader in small scale gas-to-liquids systems that produce clean, specification liquid fuels from gas feedstocks.
The parties are working on an integrated commercial demonstration plant in Squamish, British Colombia that will convert atmospheric carbon dioxide to low carbon liquid fuels, using scalable processing technologies. Carbon Engineering has already secured the requisite financing for this project from a combination of private investment and from the British Columbia Innovative Clean Energy Fund. Carbon Engineering and Greyrock are concurrently working on plans to develop larger commercial systems in Canada and the United States.
“Carbon Engineering is committed to develop and commercialize technologies to produce ultra-low carbon intensity fuels utilizing atmospheric CO2. We are excited to to work with Greyrock Energy on this and future AIR TO FUELS projects. Hydrocarbon synthesis from atmospheric CO2 is a wholly transformative technology.” said Adrian Corless, Carbon Engineering’s CEO.
“Greyrock is pleased to be selected by Carbon Engineering for this unique project. We recognize the many years of work that Carbon Engineering has done to capture CO2 from ambient air and believe that commercial systems to produce liquid fuels from this feedstock are within striking distance. Environmental benefits driven by this combination of emerging technologies are substantial.” said Robert Schuetzle, Greyrock’s CEO.
About Carbon Engineering
Recognized as a leader in air capture technologies, Carbon Engineering was founded in 2009 and is funded by private investors including Bill Gates and Murray Edwards. CE grew from academic work conducted on carbon management technologies by Professor David Keith’s research groups at the University of Calgary and Carnegie Mellon University. CE’s mission is to develop and commercialize cost effective, industrial scale, air-capture technologies in order to enable scale-able production of low-carbon fuels. CE has in-house engineering, laboratory research, and operations teams, and is currently running a 1 tonne-CO2/day air capture pilot plant.
Media Contact:
Geoff Holmes
Director of Business Development
gholmes@carbonengineering.com
About Greyrock Energy:
Founded in 2006, Greyrock has developed its state of the art Direct Fuel Production™ technology and GreyCat™ catalyst, enabling production of clean liquid fuels from a variety of gas resources, including flare gas, bio-gas, natural gas, and natural gas liquids. Greyrock systems enable customers to solve key environmental and energy challenges.
Media Contact:
Charles Nelson
Vice President Sales & Marketing
cnelson@greyrock.com
It has been roughly a year since we broke ground in Squamish, and we now have our full end-to-end air capture demonstration plant up and running. The entire CE team, with the support of our collaborators and suppliers, has been hard at work to make this happen.
The plant is operating, and removes roughly 1 ton of CO2 from the air each day. The CO2 gets processed through all the major sub-systems that will be required to operate a future full-scale commercial plant. As part of this milestone we want to share the progression of our plant coming to life, with a series of photos below.
We’ll let the pictures say the rest, we hope you enjoy them. -GH.
