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Fighting back against global warming: the miracle of direct air carbon capture technology!
As global warming becomes increasingly severe, scientists and engineers are working to develop innovative solutions to meet this challenge. Among them, direct air carbon capture (DAC) technology has become a highly-watched field. By extracting carbon dioxide from the air, DAC is regarded as one of the key technologies to combat climate change. According to a 2019 report, global carbon dioxide concentrations have reached unprecedented levels, and DAC technology has the potential to reverse this trend.
Direct air carbon capture (DAC) is a chemical or physical process that extracts carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the ambient air.
The basic principle of DAC is to extract carbon dioxide through a series of capture and separation processes. First, during the contact phase, the DAC system uses large fans to move atmospheric air into the device. Next, in the CO2 capture stage, the carbon dioxide is quickly and efficiently combined with a liquid solvent or a solid adsorbent. Finally, the separation stage requires external energy to separate the CO2 from the solvent or adsorbent and produce a high-purity CO2 stream.
At the end of the process, the separated pure CO2 can be used for a variety of purposes or stored safely, while the recovered solvent or adsorbent can be recycled and reused.
Currently, there are two main mature industrial technologies for DAC technology, namely low-temperature DAC using solid adsorbents and high-temperature DAC using liquid solvents. In addition, emerging technologies such as electrokinetic oscillation adsorption, humidity oscillation adsorption and membrane-based DAC are under development.
Although DAC technology has significant carbon reduction potential, its current cost remains a major obstacle to its commercial application. By 2023, DAC's cost of capturing carbon dioxide per ton has exceeded US$1,000, far higher than the carbon price in many carbon markets, which means it has not yet been effectively included in the emissions trading system.Based on current development trends, it is expected that by the end of 2024, there will be 53 DAC plants in operation worldwide, and by 2030 this number is expected to increase to 93, with an annual capture capacity of 6.4-11.4 million tons of carbon dioxide.
In addition, the potential environmental impact of DAC technology has also been widely discussed. On the one hand, those who promote DAC believe that it is crucial to mitigating climate change and may help achieve the Paris Agreement's goal of controlling global temperature rise. Critics, on the other hand, point out that reliance on DAC technology could delay efforts to reduce emissions because people might assume that the technology can solve the problem in the future.
The potential of DAC technology cannot be underestimated for different application scenarios, from enhanced oil and gas recovery to the production of carbon-neutral synthetic fuels and plastics. As the technology matures and costs decrease, DAC may become an important tool for addressing climate change in the future.
In these applications, effective management of different concentrations of CO2 products is critical, which directly affects the efficiency and commercial viability of DAC technology.
The scientific community is still exploring DAC. With the policy support and increased scientific research investment in many countries, DAC technology is expected to be widely used in the near future. For example, the Orca plant in Iceland is the first large-scale DAC facility, which captures approximately 4,000 tons of CO2 per year and is powered by geothermal energy.
With the global emphasis on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the future of DAC technology is promising. However, while promoting this technology, how to balance cost-effectiveness and environmental impact will become a question that decision makers must ponder?
