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Company That Sucks CO2 From Air Announces a New Methane-Producing Plant (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Swiss company Climeworks has announced the opening of a new plant in Italy that will collect carbon dioxide (CO2) from ambient air and pair it with renewably-made hydrogen (H2) to make methane fuel that would add little or no CO2 to the atmosphere. The plant in Troia, Italy, was completed in July and went into operation this week as part of a research program funded by the European Union. The new Italian plant will be run for more than 4,000 hours over the next 17 months (that's just under eight hours a day) in order to demonstrate the viability of fuel production as a potential revenue source for carbon capture. Gebald said that pure, captured CO2 could even be processed into jet fuel. When that fuel is burned, he said, it would again create CO2 that could be captured at an arbitrary Direct Air Capture plant and turned back into jet fuel.
The plant consists of three air collectors that are more energy efficient than Climeworks' first ambient air collector. "The plant will filter up to 150 tons of CO2 from ambient air per year," Climeworks said in a press statement. "Simultaneously, an alkaline electrolyser (1.2 MW) locally generates 240 cubic meters of renewable hydrogen per hour by making use of excess on-site photovoltaic energy." A catalyst then combines the CO2 and the hydrogen into methane gas in a reactor built by a French company called Atmostat. The methane "is then liquified and used to fuel natural gas lorries," Climeworks says. As Ars notes, Climeworks' previous carbon-capture plant "captured carbon out of ambient air using a filter of base amines that would bind with more acidic CO2." The carbon that was captured was then sent to a greenhouse to speed plant growth.
"The second was based in Iceland at a geothermal plant that released some volcanic CO2," reports Ars. "Climeworks' small plant captures that carbon and injects it back into the ground, where mineral reactions help the CO2 bind with basalt, essentially storing the gas as a rock."
The plant consists of three air collectors that are more energy efficient than Climeworks' first ambient air collector. "The plant will filter up to 150 tons of CO2 from ambient air per year," Climeworks said in a press statement. "Simultaneously, an alkaline electrolyser (1.2 MW) locally generates 240 cubic meters of renewable hydrogen per hour by making use of excess on-site photovoltaic energy." A catalyst then combines the CO2 and the hydrogen into methane gas in a reactor built by a French company called Atmostat. The methane "is then liquified and used to fuel natural gas lorries," Climeworks says. As Ars notes, Climeworks' previous carbon-capture plant "captured carbon out of ambient air using a filter of base amines that would bind with more acidic CO2." The carbon that was captured was then sent to a greenhouse to speed plant growth.
"The second was based in Iceland at a geothermal plant that released some volcanic CO2," reports Ars. "Climeworks' small plant captures that carbon and injects it back into the ground, where mineral reactions help the CO2 bind with basalt, essentially storing the gas as a rock."
If they then make methane out of the carbon, which is burned...
CO2 capture is taking carbon permanently out of the air - unburning the carbon that was burned in the first place. This scheme should be called RECYCLING carbon - which isn't nearly as bad as digging up coal, but it isn't "cleaning" the air if it is sold as methane. It should be buried as rock or coal to be environmentally friendly instead of environmentally neutral.
This is a research project. You shouldn't nitpick irrelevant details.
The point is to make CH4 from captured CO2. What they do with the CH4 after that is immaterial.
No, I'm not involved in the project. This is the first time I hear about it.
As for the rest, I have no idea why you think that pure methane is not a wanted raw material in Europe. Availability of affordable natgas is one of the greatest geopolitical threats to European powers in next few decades, as many of European majors either have switched or are in process of switching their electricity generation to CCGTs. Guess what they overwhelmingly burn?
So yeah, if these things actually become cost effective, "who will buy the natgas" is going to be literally the last of the relevant questions on the list, because there will be a long queue of buyers, salivating at the potential of reliable source of methane sourced in Europe.
I think he means turning CO2 into methane and then releasing the methane.
Did we get this energy from solar panel or wind turbine excess energy, where we turn on the devices only when the price of energy craters due to oversupply, or is this intended to run 24/7/365? Or do they (as many processes do) use electricity generated from fossil fuels to run the machines?
They currently use renewable energy.
But the point you're making here is irrelevant; If this moves from the current experimental/proof-of-concept to commercial production, you'd still use renewable energy to run it 24/7 because the product itself has value as a fuel and chemical feedstock that displaces fossil fuel.
Pulling CO2 from the air is not a solution, but producing hydrocarbons that are carbon neutral and renewable is a very, very important piece of the puzzle.
=Smidge=