Could literally pulling CO₂ from the atmosphere be one of our best weapons against climate change? Absolutely, according to Swiss company Climeworks, who have just unveiled the world’s largest direct carbon capture and storage plant.
The new plant, known as Mammoth, is based in Hellisheiði, Iceland and is nine times bigger than Orca, Climeworks’ first plant. Mammoth aims to remove 36,000 metric tons of carbon from the air each year – roughly the same as taking 8,600 cars off the road.
Running on renewable energy, Mammoth works by capturing the carbon dioxide from the air, and then moving the gas to a facility where it’s mixed with water and pumped deep underground.
Over time this carbonated water reacts with the natural porous basalt rocks, turning into solid carbonate minerals which solidify underground within the upper mantle. The rocks remain here for thousands of years, meaning that carbon is safely removed from the atmosphere.
With 12 of its eventual 72 collector containers installed, the Mammoth plant aims to be at full capacity by the end of 2024.
Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher, two Swiss mechanical engineers and the founders of Climeworks, first demonstrated their ideas for a direct air capture plant in 2015. Since then their company has grown rapidly. These two operational facilities are just the start of what they hope will be a game-changer in removing carbon from the atmosphere.
They will have their work cut out. Currently, CO2 concentration in the atmosphere is approximately 427 parts per million, according to the Keeling curve – a daily measurement taken at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. This compares to pre-industrial levels of CO2 well under 300 parts per million.
Climeworks has already started work on its third-generation direct air capture technology, which will have an even larger capacity. This larger facility will first be constructed in the USA. If it proves successful, more sites around the world will play host to new carbon capture plants.
The company hopes that by building more facilities such as Orca and Mammoth, they will be able to reach megaton carbon removal capacity by 2030 and gigaton scale by 2050.
Whether this will help to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere remains to be seen. But whatever happens to our planet over the coming decades, technology will have a big role to play.
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