14 DAY TRIAL // Canadian researchers from the University of Calgary have come up with a new device which captures the carbon dioxide from the surrounding atmosphere. The machine is built from materials that don't belong to the high-tech, but rather to the “near-commercial” technology.
David Keith, Canada Research Chair in Energy and Environment, together with his team from the University of Calgary, are working on the technology that would eventually change the climate, or at least have a major beneficial impact on it. Since the damaging effects of the CO2 emissions place them among the most dreaded of air pollutants, they were naturally addressed first. They believe they are very close to accomplishing their aim with the latest development of a fairly simple device that will “scrub” the CO2 in the air anywhere on Earth.
Keith reveals the details, “At first thought, capturing CO2 from the air where it’s at a concentration of 0.04 per cent seems absurd, when we are just starting to do cost-effective capture at power plants where CO2 produced is at a concentration of more than 10 per cent. But the thermodynamics suggests that air capture might only be a bit harder than capturing CO2 from power plants. We are trying to turn that theory into engineering reality”.
Keith's praised idea is different from the latest results of CO2-addressing technology because it doesn't need to be placed in the near proximity of the carbon dioxide sources, thus being suitable for remote applications, such as removing the harmful greenhouse gas produced by transportation devices like cars or airplanes. As he further explains, his technology could aid companies located anywhere in the world, “A company could, in principle, contract with an oilsands plant near Fort McMurray to remove CO2 from the air and could build its air capture plant wherever it’s cheapest - China, for example - and the same amount of CO2 would be removed”.
The recent demonstrations of the device showed that it can use less than 100 kWh of energy in order to capture the equivalent of 20 tons/year of CO2 from the atmosphere on one square meter of scrubbing material. “This means that if you used electricity from a coal-fired power plant, for every unit of electricity you used to operate the capture machine, you’d be capturing 10 times as much CO2 as the power plant emitted making that much electricity,” states the developer. “The climate problem is too big to solve easily with the tools we have,” says Keith, but it is clear that, given proper interest and accurate financial and commercial boost, the system could be adopted on a large scale.