The Current Status and Pillars of Direct Air Capture Technologies

The Current Status and Pillars of Direct Air Capture Technologies

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[Beth] Hello and welcome. I am Beth  Meschewski, assistant research scientist   for hazardous waste and pollutants at the  Illinois Sustainable Technology Center,   which is part of the Prairie Research Institute  at the University of Illinois [U of I].  As a land-grant institution, the University of  Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has a responsibility   to acknowledge the historical context in which  it exists. In order to remind ourselves and our  

community, we begin this event with the  following statement. We are currently on   the lands of the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Piankashaw,  Wea, Miami, Mascoutin, Odawa, Sauk, Mesquaki,   Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Chickasaw  Nations. It is necessary for us to acknowledge   these Native Nations and for us to work with  them as we move forward as an institution.   Over the next 150 years, we will be a vibrant  community inclusive of all our differences,   with Native peoples at the core of our efforts. This webinar and all of the Illinois Sustainable   Technology Center’s webinars are certified  green events through the University of   Illinois’s Institute for Sustainability, Energy,  and Environment. To find out more about certified  

green events through U of I, please visit  sustainability.illinois.edu. To find out more   about the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center’s  webinars or to sign up for the events email list,   please visit istc.illinois.edu/events. So a few housekeeping items before we get   started. Today's webinar is being recorded.  The recording will be available for   viewing online in about a week. I'll be sending  an email out to everyone who registered for the   webinar once it is available. Everyone  will remain muted for the entire webinar.   You can type in your questions at any  time through the Zoom Q&A feature.  

You will be able to upvote questions you like  within Zoom Q&A using the thumbs up button under   the question. I’ll be reading the questions to the  speaker at the end of the webinar. At that time,   the most popular questions will be asked first  followed by questions in the order they were   received. If you have technical difficulties,  please send me a private chat message.   So, with that I'm very pleased to welcome today's  speaker, Mihri Ozkan. Mihri is a professor in the  

electrical and computer engineering department, is  a cooperating faculty in the materials science and   engineering program and the chemistry department,  and is selected as the climate action champion and   change maker professor at the  University of California, Riverside or UCR.   She is a fellow of the National Academy of  Inventors and Frontier National Academy of   Engineering and is UCR's first and only female  engineering faculty to receive these honors.   Mihri's research is dedicated to green  energy technology and sustainable   systems. Recent achievements in her research group  include developing unconventional solutions for  

lithium-ion battery technologies using sustainable  materials and green chemistry with lower power   processing and transforming waste glass and  plastic bottles, biomass, and natural resources   such as sand and diatoms into high-grade battery  electrodes. Mihri earned her bachelor's--Mihri   earned her graduate degrees at Stanford University  and at the University of California, San Diego.   She has over 300 publications,  33 granted and 15 active patents,   and has earned 56 scientific honors and awards  for her creative research. So Mihri thank you  

for joining us and the webinar is yours. [Mihri] Welcome. Thank you very much for the kind invitation and also introduction. I really appreciate it, and I think coming close to the earth day in April I think this is a quite  meaningful presentation talking about   the direct air capture [DAC] technologies, and how  they can help to capture carbon dioxide [CO2] from   the atmosphere. And my today's focus is not  going to be on the lithium-ion batteries and all   majority of my research is but mainly will be  focusing on the carbon capture. And so we'll be   talking about the pillars of specifically direct  air captures technologies for carbon dioxide. And I will go ahead and get started. So hopefully my slides will move.

There we go. And by the way one of my  hobbies is making cartoons, so you will   be seeing a bunch of my cartoons throughout my  presentation as well. And the points that I am   trying to make at the beginning of my presentation  is that the lungs of the earth that is known as   the Brazilian Amazon Forest, they tipped being  a carbon sink to carbon emitter because of the   vast deforestation. And secondly the things  that we need to pay attention is arctic ice   melts with the global warming and then so  loss of ice at the same time brings the second   problem which is the solar lights absorption.  And origin it was reflected by the ice

and that means that more heat is being absorbed  by earth, and then that's also adding on the   global warming. About 90 percent of the heat from  our fossil fuels are absorbed in the ocean, and   this is kind of a tipping point for the severe  weather events as well having surface of the   ocean being warmer than usual, which is  around like 2 to 2.5 degrees centigrade. And also additionally 25 percent of carbon dioxide is  absorbed by oceans causing more acidification,  and then many of the economies worldwide are  basically based on the seafood and related sectors   and this is a tipping point for our world's  economy as well. This particular cartoon   I specifically prepared just to kind of summarize  the important pillars for the direct air capture   of carbon dioxide. On one side is the  capture fans and then on the right hand side   is showing the pillars, which I  am going to talk about in detail.

And in October and November time frame in Glasgow, we had our 26th conference of the parties for the   climate summit. And about 40 countries pledged to  abandon coal and Australia, United States, China, and   India have declined this actually. And then they  pledge more in the emissions reductions in methane. And then everyone pretty much was agreed  to switch to renewables, solar, and wind, which will dominate by 2050 and away from petrol  diesel and going towards the electrical cars   and clean your fuel for the aircraft, and plant more trees for restoration   and deforestation by 2030, and decarbonize industry,  which is the capture emissions at the source, and remove carbon dioxide from the  air, which is the direct air capture and the content of my presentation today. And then bringing about like 100 billion   dollar pledge by the rich countries to help South  Africa and others to move away from the coal use. All this is to keep the global warming around 1.5  degrees C, which was agreed by the Paris agreement   by the end of the century. So first I think we  need to look into what are the top emitters,  

and then this basically graph is summarizing this  nicely. And China is the major green gas emissions   actually this number came close to 33 percent now. And the us is second and India, European Union, combination here Indonesia, Russia, Brazil, and  Japan are the major carbon dioxide emitters.

Now the China as you can see from the graph emits more than next three countries combined. And it pretty much like brings to the conclusion  that what China does or doesn't do will largely   determine the failure or the success of the  Paris Accord and global carbon dioxide emissions. And it is important to look into also  per capita emissions not per country. And if we look at the per capita and here you'll  see that the wealthy nations lead: Saudi Arabia,   United States, Canada, Australia, Korea, Japan  and Europe. And it's just interesting that even   the European Union have been leaders in the  movement of toward renewable and clean energies, they have the highest per capita carbon  emission rates in the world as well.

So how can we face down elevated coal  power and of course the solutions are   there the renewable sources. And one of them is the  solar PV [photovoltaic] and onshore wind. And now   they are actually becoming cheaper and comparable  to the coal power. And it's around like 50 dollars   per megawatt hour to 44 dollars per megawatt  hour. And in comparison to coal, it's pretty decent. And what is expected is that  the renewable sources, wind and solar, are doubling actually globally every  5.5 years within the last 15   years, which is a great trend that we would  like to see. And this means ensured that 50 percent

of the electricity could be coming from solar and  the wind by 2030. And the main driver is the cost   here, and the graph is actually showing here  over the years how onshore wind, offshore wind, and the solar cost is going down. And also at the  same time, the battery storage, which is needed for   smart grid applications, is also going down. So these are the main drivers to see this picture. And if you look at into our innovation  box to improve this even further, for example in   the solar area, perovskite solar cells are quite  promising and they today it's been recorded that   28 percent efficiency demonstrated. And what is needed in  this area that people may like to choose the work, 

the full encapsulation of devices and protect  them from the external degradation from ambient   moisture and UV [ultraviolet]. In the wind area, the simulators for wind farms and modeling better   control tools I think you can really increase  the efficiency about four to five percent, and   people can look into turbine controls to help  this. And grid interface, we need today a better   controllable good interface systems to minimize  the disturbances on the electric power system.

And I want to kind of like give a baseline where  we are at today in 2021. If you look at the 2021, the global carbon dioxide emissions actually  rebounded almost close to 5 percent in 2021 reaching to about 35 billion tons. So the increase  in carbon dioxide emission over about 2 billion, this is the highest in the history and the  coal power accounted for about 40 percent   of the overall growth in the global carbon dioxide  emissions in year 2021 and reaching all-time high,   which is about 15 billion tons. And another larger  rebound occurred in the aviation sector. People   started after the COVID, people started  traveling more and that gave about like 22 percent boost in the carbon emissions, which is  bringing and adding another 115 million ton. So what are the reasons for all this jump increase  in the carbon dioxide emissions in 2021? Mainly is the record high natural gas  prices and people want to go back to   the cheaper version, which is the coal. And so  that's unfortunately one of the reason that  

the closed coal basically plants are turned on  back again. And another one is driven by China because they increased about 750 million  tons between 2019 to 2021. And that mainly   because of the major economy, experiencing an  economic growth in China both in 2020 and 2021. And only in 2021 China's carbon dioxide emissions  rose about almost like 12 billion tons, which is   coming close to as I mentioned  earlier 33 percent of the global total. So what are the sources of carbon dioxide? So those are the ones that we need to pay   attention, and one of them is the ammonia on the  left top, corn and ethanol plants, and their exhaust   pipes gives about 80 percent or more carbon  dioxide and carbon capture at the source has   cost you about ten dollars per ton. And another source is the steel

industry and then the exhaust gives  between 15 to 80 percent carbon dioxide, and the capture cost is between 10 to 60 dollars  per ton. And another one is the flu gas from   fossil fuel combustion in air and the natural  gas fire power plants and about 15 percent is   the emission of carbon dioxide you observed  and the capture of that cost you about 60 percent. To collect all these carbon dioxide that  is being emitted to the atmosphere we can   use direct air capture, and but since this is not  at the source we are collecting already emitted   and deposited in the atmosphere, and so we are  working with very low partial pressure of carbon   dioxide, which is around 414 parts per million.  Then of course this increases the cost of carbon   capture from the atmosphere anywhere between  200 to 600 dollars a per ton of carbon dioxide.

We can use other net negative  emission technologies, and they are listed here. All of  these actually has probably better-- if you look at the cost perspective, they are much  cheaper as compared to the direct air capture here. But they have also some limitations. For example,  the coastal blue carbon requires a coastal access.

And reforestation or forest management  and all requiring a land from farming. And then there are some issues like  challenges with the implementation of   management practices both in agriculture and  the forest management. And in the case of the bio   one here that needs basically land again and  taking away from food and the bio diversity.

Towards the end of the 2021, I did publish  a commentary about the direct air capture of carbon dioxide. It's been published in a Materials Research  Society's Energy and Sustainability. In there, I   summarize actually the status of the direct  air capture and things to pay attention. And if you ask the question why direct air capture  of carbon dioxide because some of these industrial   sectors that I discussed earlier, the cement,  natural gas, and the iron and steel, and they are   actually difficult to decarbonize. And there are  also distributed emissions from the aviation and   the transportation that also needs to be offset, and then we need to offset also emissions from   wildfires, which start occurring more due to global  warming. So direct air capture can help at this point. And industry today produces about 8 billion  tons of carbon dioxide and mainly about the 70   percent of that is coming from this difficult  to decarbonize industry that as I mentioned.

And even when you try to do carbonization at  the source, decarbonization at the source   about two billion tons of the  carbon dioxide emissions cannot be   avoided, which requires other types of carbon  capture technologies such as direct air capture. And just within the this month and I also...  we published it's going to be available in   April 15th already online available online in iScience. We discuss about the current status and the   pillars of the direct air capture technologies, which I am going to talk about in details today. And let's look at the how direct air capture works  in short, and there are two main technologies.

One is called like a liquid technology and  the other one is the solid technology   and both requires fans to run the ambient air through and push that air to the sorbent, the contactor. And in one technique the solvent is liquid and  then after the interaction it absorbs specifically   the carbon dioxide, and that capture carbon dioxide  is separated with the regeneration step, and the   sorbents is recycled back, and then the carbon  dioxide moved to the storage. The similar thing   with the solid technique is  in this case the contactor has   solid particles that are specifically  absorbs the carbon dioxide from the air.

Today there are two major companies that are  leading this effort. And one of them is the   Carbon Engineering. They are based on the  liquid technology, and they already have a   pilot operational plant in Canada started in 2015, and today they are working on a larger capacity. So these are showing the ton carbon dioxide a  larger capacity in Texas basin here in U.S. and  

using again their liquid technology.  Here they are using potassium hydroxide, and then precipitating the carbon dioxide  coming from the air and then it puts into the   pellet form calcium carbonite and everything  is being recycled back again all the capture liquid. The second major company is the Climeworks. They have--Today actually more than 14 now   available and operational plants and all the way  starting from 2015 until today, and they are also   trying to increase their capacity. They have in  Iceland, Switzerland, Europe and then even now   trying to do it in U.S. more also. And again in the  form of as you can see like membranes the solid  

capture technique and capturing  the carbon dioxide and then storing. If you look at that projects around the globe, so this is a nice graph that we also used and   published in our review in iScience. And  here anything you have seen is a circular   representing the direct air capture facilities  and the green ones are the operational DAC today. And then the red ones are the ones that are  under construction. And the other technique is  

the carbon capture storage at the source, which is  represented by triangular. And the green ones are   operational ones again. And then the red ones are  demonstrating the under the construction. So you   see some number in China, India, and in Europe,  in Saudi Arabia, and also in Canada, and U.S.

Again, published in January 2022, we discussed  about the main players, which are the capture   technology and what type of capture technologies  are being used today, and also being worked   in research and development for carbon  capture not only in the DAC but also   all at the source. And the liquid, membranes, MOFs [metal-organic frameworks] and solids are some of the   classes of these capture materials that  we have discussed in this paper in detail. So I want to go over some of the major ones here. And one of them is like of course the liquids and  

the solid sorbents MOFs and also the membranes  and I will be talking and giving some examples of these. There's pros and cons and the cost related  information. Alkali metal solutions for example, they are good sorbants effective for DAC,  direct air capture, and then and also they can be produced in low cost. But some of  the issues are the high temperature  

requirement for the regeneration step,  which increases the operational cost. And another class is the organic amine  solutions, and they are also effective for   direct air capture. And here the problem is  making the basically the sorbent is expensive   but operation is less expensive as  compared to the alkali metal solutions. Ionic liquids, they are new emerging sorbents. And the main problem today is the cost, making, the material cost, and also the operation  cost. Alkali and alkali earth metal powders, and  

they are also effective for direct air capture. But they require high temperature again for the   regeneration step. Even though the making them is  inexpensive again the operational cost is high. Activated carbons, they are quite cheap,  inexpensive, and also the operational cost is low. But there are issues with the absorption  capacities especially at low pressure, which is direct air capture is at the low  pressure. And so that's going to be a problem.

And graphene-based nanomaterials they  provide high surface area for the interaction   and capture of carbon dioxide. Of course the  scaling here is a problem and also the synthesis   today is costly even though the  operational cost is not as much. And solid amines and polymer salts are also  other classes here, and their both material   cost and operational cost are in the mid-level. And  people are still working on these to improve the   high surface area forms. The silicates and their  chemosorbents with the potential to mass produced,

which is great. And they are inexpensive. And today, they are trying to   provide composites, and which actually they  have higher thermal regeneration temperature   requirements. So that's was that's why the  operational cost is in the mid to high level. Zeolites is another class of carbon capture  materials. And aluminum silicate materials   are effective for direct air capture  applications. And the one of the problems here  

it's the humidity in the environment where  it's humid since they also capture water, so it will compete with the capture of the  humidity and the carbon dioxide. So this is a   problem to solve. And they are both operational  and also the material costs are in the mid to high. MOFs is a next generation and quite a promising  material system that can be tailored specifically   for carbon dioxide capture. But today the material  cost is high and operational cost is also high. And membranes for the modularity of the system  for scaling I think is also convenient. And they   require low energy consumption, which is wonderful, which we are going to discuss more. But making   them today is expensive. And other composites  of other chemistries putting them together  

like membranes, MOFs and so on so forth. So that  also kind of like adds into the material cost, which needs additional work. In summary, so we  have mature technologies, next generation, and   early stage. And Carbon Engineering is using more  mature technology, and the Climeworks is using   more next-generation technologies, which is great.  And they all come with the pros and cons that I   discussed in detail earlier, which is exciting  for researchers such as ourselves. And we also looked into the scalability of direct air capture. And together with thought leaders in academia  

and industry, we discussed about the potential  and feasibility of scalable direct air capture, whether the direct air capture is a sustainable  technology. People such as Carlos, he's the   CEO [chief executive officer] of the Climeworks,  and Marcia McNutt, she's the president of Nation  Academy of Sciences, myself, and Edda, she's  the CEO of Carbfix, and Kalliat, a member of the   National Academy of Inventors, and Paul, is the  president of the National Academy of Inventors, Shuchi and also Jennifer from the U.S.  Department of Energy, we did publish   and discussed our personal opinion about the  scalability of direct air capture in Chem Voices. And this graph actually shows the  large-scale widespread direct air   capture or point source capture or carbon  dioxide utilization and implementation   in California. And this is the sources coming from  the California Energy Commission and Guide House   Incorporated. And what they have shown is that  the financial feasibility is one of the I think   number one I would say the challenges that direct  air capture faces today in California. And then  

the scalability is another challenge. And besides  that technical feasibility and also environmental   policy are some of the challenges that are being  foreseen for the DAC specifically in California. In our review in iScience, we looked into  the land requirements of direct air capture   if we were to basically use the Climeworks  or Carbon Engineering technology. One is again   liquid, one the other one is the solid. And to go  back to the pre-industrial levels, how many of the   plants we need? And so that's pretty much like we  need about 2.4 million plants from the Climeworks   and 980 plants of the Carbon Engineering. And if  you put together the overall land requirements,

so it's about 2.5 times both of them New  York. So if you use 2.5 times of New York   land size it will take care of the entire carbon  dioxide problems that we have today. And if we   at one point making that this is like  a lot of land but actually the land requirements   for DAC plant if you deploy, it's  about 0.2 kilometers square per million tons of  

carbon dioxide removal. And if you want to compare  this with the refrigeration, which is another   negative emission technology, it requires  862 kilometer square per million tons   of carbon dioxide removal. So it's much,  much less compared to the reforestation. And of course DAC's cost is the as the major  and big I guess the elephant challenge if you   like that people are working very hard on this. And so I summarized here the both capital cost   and operational cost of different technologies. The top is showing the liquid sorbent and the bottom  

is showing the solid solvent. And if we compare  the capital cost of the liquid sorbant technology   of DAC versus the solid absorbent technology of  DAC, the solid one requires a higher capital cost. But if we look into the operational cost  because of the high temperature requirements   close to 900 degrees C versus 100 degrees  C and you need much more energy to run the   liquid sorbent DAC. So that's why the operational  cost is much higher. And it has been shown here  

also which steps in the liquid sorbent and which  steps in the solid sorbent actually are the   energy consumers. And air contractor is common  on both. So that's why you need that regardless. But in the liquid the calciner which will be  running 24/7 and the 900 degrees C. So this is the   one of the major energy thirsty step. And then the  steam here in the solid sorbent one is one of the   energy thirsty steps. But if you can use some of  the waste steam from, for example, other industries, then I think you can lower the cost here. And this  is simply showing again the heat requirement and  

electricity requirement of the liquid technology  versus the heat and the electricity requirement   of the solid DAC. You can see in the numbers that  the heat requirement for the liquid is much higher   compared to the solid DAC. And also  the electricity requirement is higher. And here I am discussing about if  that electricity is coming from   different energy sources renewable sources  like solar, nuclear, wind, natural gas, or geothermal. How that will reflect to the final  cost and as you can see the solar with storage  

will cost the most. And then as compared to  the geothermal if you run on the geothermal   the DAC plant is going to be about 42  percent less expensive than the solar power. We also looked into detail about the  environmental impacts of direct air capture. And so as you can see looking at the particulate  matter and toxification, human toxicity, or environmental toxicity, and issues with the  fresh water, or the marine life, and all, and one   of the I think few items that pay attention is the  freshwater ecotoxicity, land use, water scarcity, and   the resource depletion for the energy. So these are  the highest impact, a negative impact, I would say   for DAC. But we said that the land  use is much better compared to   like your reforestation or others. And another  points we need to pay attention is the water,

and it requires about 7 to 13 tons of water  per ton of carbon dioxide. In the areas where   water could be a problem, then  this is something to consider. So in summary, in our review, so we thought that  these are the major key players and the pillars   of the direct air capture. Of course the type  of the capture technologies that I mentioned  

will impact, and the choices of the energy sources,  and then how we can reduce the energy demand, and which definitely defines the final cost  both operational and also the capital cost, the environmental impacts, and also political support. 'Til now I didn't talk about the political support,  which I would like to mention the next few slides. So political support is certainly one  of the enabling pillars of the DAC and is highly critical to drop  down the cost of that below 200   dollars per ton of carbon dioxide. And early stage  investments and supporting policy frameworks are  

necessary to implement a mass manufacturing and  deployment of DAC. And in U.S. Department of Energy   now invested about 24 million dollars to advance  the transformational air pollution capture   in March 2021. And federal section 45Q, which  is an incentive, offers about 20 dollars per metric   ton for saline and other forms of geological  carbon dioxide storage, and about ten   dollars per metric ton of carbon dioxide stored  geologically through the enhanced oil recovery. At the climate summit in April, China made the  pledge to achieve net zero carbon emissions by   2060, but we really need to see this happening. The UK [United Kingdom] planned to invest about   70 million pounds in DAC. And Climeworks in Europe  received about 50 million euros in total   from the investors for commercialization of  DAC. And then people are also trying to support  

this improve the tax benefits in South Africa. So in U.S., here is the situation and this basically   the government the administration. They are trying to give 240 million   for negative emission technologies and improving  the nuclear, fossil fuel, renewable energy, and so on. And about like 61 percent increase in spending  of Department of Energy on carbon capture   use and storage has been observed. And this  administration also trying to launch a 50-50  

cost sharing initiative to deploy first wave of  carbon capture facilities in the United States. In April, we, myself and Radu Custelcean, from  the Oak Ridge National Labs we guess editors   of this special issue that we discussed about  the materials for carbon capture technologies. And we also have a basically introductory article  in this issue. At the same time a number of great authors discussed and reviewed like different, forms of different types of carbon capture materials. So I encourage you to look into  this also soon. And one thing is that the cover,

we prepared the cover for this issue. And the  background picture was taken by Radu from Alaska, and I organize and draw and  arrange the final cover myself. So I want to give you a prospect for the future, what's waiting for DAC. And the point source  

carbon capture won't be enough. So that's the  given. And about two to ten percent of the carbon   are still let go even though if you  have a point source carbon capture. So that's why we need an alternative carbon  capture technologies, which is direct air capture. So simply point capture has to scale up  from about 40 million ton per year today to 6.6   billion ton by 2050. And DAC has to  grow from 3,000 metric tons per year   to almost 1 billion ton by 2050. So this is based on the IEA's [International Energy Agency] analysis. And if we try to  

build all those plants 1 billion ton by 2050,  this will cost about 655 billion dollar to 1,280 billion dollar over the next three decades. And this is depending on what type of technology   you are using for capture. And to meet the  global goals using DAC alone only, which you   have to remove about 1,000 giga ton carbon  dioxide by the end of the century, so we need   about 13,000 DAC plants with one-million-ton  carbon dioxide capacity. And today we have only   a very limited capacity, which is only about 19  operational DACs. So if you were to put 13,000   DAC plants with that high capacity, we  need about 1.6 to 1.7 trillion capital investments. So moving forward, DAC is still in infancy the  technology. So what we need is we need to work  

on the contactors, sorbants, and regeneration, and  mainly trying to reduce the cost of the solvents   and improve the sorbants, and at the same time  the energy requirement to run the contactors and   the regeneration steps. So that's how we can make  it economically viable to lower the cost below 200   dollars per ton of carbon dioxide. There are quite  a bit activities today, and many startup companies   are actually trying to work on this. And again  this is a slide from the California Emission   and Commission that is showing a number  of startup companies that are   working on this area to improve using electro swing, and moisture swing   and magnetic induction swing, metal organic frameworks, and so on   are some of the active research areas that  people are working today to lower the cost. And I just came to the end of the presentation. And what actually I would like you to look into   this slide, which shows the humans are the  tiny fraction of the weight of living things   and have a disproportionately large impact on our  environment. And the green shows the weight of the  

plants, which is around 450, which is the  majority, and the bacteria is the second   weight of the highest weight, and the animals is  around like two gigatons. And then if you look   at the humans weight total, it's .06 gigaton. So  even though our weight of living is smallest, and we have a disproportionate a large  impact on our environment. So we need to be   mindful about what we are doing to our environment  and care about earth. And I know that at the back  

Elizabeth keep looking at her watch and want me  to finish, so we can go to the next session. And I   really would like to thank for the opportunity to  give this presentation. And I would like to thank   for the invitation and be ready for  any questions you may have. Thank you. [Beth] Thanks Mihri very interesting  presentation, and I love the doodles.  

Let's get started with our questions. The first  one is, “which projects carbon capture and storage   at the source or direct air capture should  get more funding or priority moving forward?”  [Mihri] I think in my opinion so this is my again  the personal opinion. I love to capture the carbon   dioxide at the source. So if we can capture the  carbon dioxide at the source that's wonderful, but   as I mentioned not the 100 percent of that carbon  dioxide is being captured. So there's still about   two to ten basically a percent that is  being released unfortunately. And some  

of the sources that I mentioned difficult to  decarbonize and also the aviation transportation   and some of those are still need to be taken  care of the carbon dioxide need to be offset. And so at that point I think DAC would be coming to the picture. [Beth] The next one is, “how did you calculate  to compare the cost of materials in operation?   "Also you show the cost of captured CO2 is  200-600 dollars per metric ton, could you   "provide a reference or basis for the estimate  range? Recently, the cost of direct air capture of   new install in Iceland is about  1,200 dollars per metric ton.”  [Mihri] Yeah so if you.. It's detailed  so that's why what I will do is I will   refer you to our publication, which also gives the  main source if you are going to look into this one. So please go and look at our publication in iScience, which talks about in details where the   sources and then each number as taken. It's simply  based on one particular operational DAC plant.

And of course the case-by-case operations needs to  be different, for example, as I shown here that if   the DAC is running on geothermal, using geothermal  power, versus solar and all that which will impact   the final operational cost. And I would recommend  you to look into all these sources that   I listed in my presentation to get the true  source of where these numbers coming from. [Beth] You may have already answered this  one but if you could elaborate a little more.   “Which CO2 capture route could be practical in the  future upon your experience and knowledge among   many developed or will be developed methods?” [Mihri] Yeah. Again, I think carbon capture at the source the point source capture is I think the way to go. And there are some mature carbon   dioxide capture materials available for this. But there are some that are like a next generation one,  and why people are working on the next generation  one because they would like to increase the   capacity of the capture of carbon dioxide, and  they are trying to improve the stability of those   sorbents so that they can recycle many times, and  also production the making the sorbent they try to   make as such that the requirement for the power  will be less and at the same time they will be   cheap. So it will be coming from renewable  sources or cheaper sources. So those are some  

of the points that people trying to embed  into the better next generation approaches. [Beth] “What about the membrane technology  makes it expensive to manufacture? Is   it expensive due to the scarcity of  resource that is needed to make them?”  [Mihri] Actually the membrane technology is quite  promising, even though it is today it is quite   expensive, because of the modularity. And then  how to lower the maybe even the cost of   if you don't think about the cost of the membranes,  the plant, the DAC plant, I think the membrane   is probably the way to go. So again for the  modularity of the implementation of these plants, I think the membranes are important. This is a very  active area of research. As I mentioned people are   trying to look into the composites of membrane,  and membrane technology embedded with MOFs, metal-organic frameworks, into the system  just to make it more specific to increase   the carbon dioxide capacity and durability and  so on. So it is very active research area today. [Beth] “You listed monoethanolamine  as the liquid sorbent. There  

are more efficient advanced sorbents  for point source capture. Are they   being considered for better direct air capture?” [Mihri] Probably some startups are doing it, but  the problem is with the liquid that people  actually kind of like tending to try a way   going away from it because of the regeneration  step. It's a requirement of very high temperature   for regeneration steps. As I mentioned in  this case, it's the about 900 degrees C. And that's the more energy demanding step  that adds on to the operational cost. [Beth] “How will direct air capture locations  be limited by availability to sequestration   locations or access to those locations?” [Mihri] Yeah I think this is a good question. And again the requirement for water is one--So you don't need actually a arable land. It can be like   the top of the mountain and so on so forth. But  of course the accessibility to water and energy.

So there has to be a supporting renewable plant  either solar, nuclear, wind, or geothermal source   of power next to it. So that's one of the  I think requirements. And at the same time   when you collect and store the carbon dioxide  and you want to ship this carbon dioxide   to a port or the ground transportation  and so on, so you want to minimize   that as well. Otherwise, if you look at the  life cycle analysis overall to entire system   for DAC, then it may not be a negative emission  otherwise, because if you basically produce   more carbon dioxide by transportation of the  carbon dioxide you captured doesn't make sense. [Beth] "Membranes are usually bulk  removal. With such a small driving force,

how will membranes be competitive?” [Mihri] Yeah so, I will actually refer you... Because it is involved and because of the  shortage of time, and I will... Let's see where is that? Yeah so here, we talk in detail about the  membranes. And then we have actually quite   promising ones from Japan and like a number  of researchers are working on this from Japan and developing the membranes for both direct  air capture and other forms of carbon capture.

So they have also proposed a modular  systems where a number of membranes can be   added and then carbon dioxide is passed  through and then circulated many times. So each passes will give you a more carbon dioxide  capture opportunity. So again there are lots of   factors in the membranes. And there are like some  composite membranes as I mentioned with MOFs and  

other chemistries, amines and so on. And please go  and look into our publication in Journal Chem. [Beth] That was the last question that was asked online. So what final thoughts would you like to leave us with? [Mihri] Yeah again like going back to the   slide that I try to emphasize, really we have a  disproportionately large impact on our environment. So we need to be mindful that and take the  responsibility for the rest of the living things   on earth. So it's all in the mercy of what we do or what we don't do. So that's why just being mindful is important. Thank you.

[Beth] Great. Thank you for a wonderful presentation and thank you to our audience for attending. We'll officially close the webinar now.

2022-03-28 11:21

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