Largest CO₂ filter plant in the world opens in Iceland
The world's largest plant for the direct capture and storage of CO₂ was opened in Iceland. It is ten times larger than its predecessor.
Mammoth, the world's largest plant for the direct capture and storage of up to 36,000 tons of CO₂ per year.
(Image: Climeworks)
The world's largest plant for the direct capture and storage of CO₂, called "Mammoth", has started operations in Iceland. It is the second commercial plant from the Swiss company Climeworks in Iceland and is around ten times larger than its predecessor "Orca".
36,000 tons of CO₂ per year directly from the air
At full capacity, the plant on the Hellisheidi plateau is designed for a capacity of up to 36,000 tons of CO₂ per year, which is extracted directly from the air using filter collectors and then permanently stored underground. The Direct Air Capture and Storage (DAC+S) plant of the former ETH Zurich spin-off has already successfully started capturing the first CO₂ with the first twelve of a total of 72 collectors, as was announced in the middle of this week. The plant, which is being built in a scalable modular design, is due to be completed later this year and all 72 collectors will be installed on site.
Climeworks uses renewable energy to power its energy-intensive direct air capture process, which requires low-temperature heat such as boiling water. The partner company ON Power in Iceland, which generates electricity from geothermal energy, supplies the energy required for this.
CO₂ storage underground
As soon as the CO₂ is released from the filters, it is dissolved in seawater and transported to underground cavities by the company Carbfix, the Icelandic partner for CO₂ storage. There it reacts in a natural process with basalt rock, for example, transforming into stable minerals that can be stored permanently. Climeworks has the entire process checked and certified by independent third parties.
Carbfix was founded in 2007 as a project by Reykjavík Energy, the University of Iceland, an institute of the French research organization CNRS and Columbia University in New York. It is now a subsidiary of ON Power.
Mammoth is another step forward in Climeworks' project pipeline, which aims to achieve megatons of carbon capture capacity by 2030 and gigatons by 2050 via numerous DAC plants around the world. In this way, the company wants to make an important contribution to combating global warming.
Larger plant from Canadian company by 2025
In addition to Iceland, Climeworks is developing several megaton plants in the USA. North America is also home to one of the few other companies focusing on DAC technology, the Canadian company Carbon Engineering, which is also supported by Bill Gates. Carbon Engineering has set itself the goal of removing 500,000 tons of CO₂ per year from the ambient air with a plant that it is currently building in Texas - almost 14 times more than Mammoth. The plant is scheduled to go into operation as early as 2025.
Climeworks is also receiving support in the USA: the Swiss company recently received public funding from the US Department of Energy in the amount of 50 million dollars to kick-start "Project Cypress" - a DAC plant in Louisiana.
At the Mammoth presentation this week, Climeworks announced that it is currently also examining opportunities for carbon capture in Canada, Norway, Oman and Kenya. Climeworks is now also offering compensation packages that also include natural methods of CO₂ removal, such as reforestation or biochar.
DAC process still costly
Internationally, Climeworks works with a number of large organizations and companies, including the asset manager Partners Group, the major banks UBS and JPMorgan, the reinsurer Swiss Re and the Swiss car importer Amag. The first corporate customers for the "Orca" system included Microsoft and the payment platform Stripe.
However, the DAC process for capturing CO₂ is still very expensive, and Climeworks is therefore reliant on many investors and major customers to implement the technology on a meaningful large scale. Last year, Climeworks was able to secure a whopping 650 million dollars from investment companies.
Experts disagree on the costs of DAC technology. Roughly speaking, the sums range from 100 to 1,000 dollars per ton of CO₂ removal. From today's perspective, most experts estimate the costs at several hundred dollars per tonne of CO₂ in any case.
(nie)
