A new carbon capture plant will pull 36k tons of CO2 from the air each year

I have no faith in machines that suck the atmosphere through a straw. The thermodynamics and fluid dynamics just don&#x27;t pencil out. We need to remove something like 3.5 Tt of CO2, so 3.5 Kt is nothing. Our only hope in this regard is solar&#x2F;uv-powered systems, mainly biological, for example algaes in pelagic waters (that grow and then die and sink to the bottom of the ocean). These systems aren&#x27;t trivial to build either.<p>For other GHG and pollutants there are uv-powered systems like TiO2, olivine etc, though there are also limits to how much they can do.<p>Basically we have to &quot;mash our hand on the keyboard&quot;, i.e. try to do them all, but I can&#x27;t see machines like these making any meaningful contribution.<p>Note: I&#x27;m working on methane destruction straight in the atmosphere, so I&#x27;m putting my money (and my time) where my commenting is.

&quot;Orca can capture about 4,000 tons of carbon per year (for scale, that’s equal to the annual emissions of 790 cars).<p>Now Climeworks is building another facility that makes Orca seem tiny by comparison. The company broke ground on its Mammoth plant this week. With a CO₂ capture capacity of 36,000 tons per year, Mammoth will be almost 10 times larger than Orca.&quot;<p>A lot of negativity in this thread, oddly. This is a 10X improvement over a previous version. Another magnitude or two and this becomes incredible for the environment. Other solutions should also happen, but a problem as big as climate change should have many parallel solutions. We don&#x27;t have time to put all our eggs in one basket.

Most comments are missing the point of Direct Air Capture (at least the point the people working on this are making): In no economic way can DAC compete with <i>not putting CO2</i> in the atmosphere in the first place. It is vital that we do our very best to first reduce and then eliminate our emissions. But even with this very best, there is still going to be lots of CO2 we&#x27;ve blasted into the atmosphere on the way to zero emissions that we will want to get back. And sure hundreds of dollars per ton of CO2 is extremely expensive, but by then removing it out of the air is our only option, and it is (probably - if the economy of scale works out) still cheaper than the damage climate change inflicts. Still, why do DAC now, when there currently are better options available (preventing emissions)? The reason is that we need to give those economics of scale a chance, and the prices can&#x27;t come down without incremental improvements and real world experiments that will take some time.<p>For everyone who likes podcasts as a medium, here is an in-depth interview with Peter Psarras who&#x27;s researching DAC:<p>omega tau science &amp; engineering podcast: 387 - Direct Air Capture<p>Episode webpage: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;omegataupodcast.net&#x2F;387-direct-air-capture&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;omegataupodcast.net&#x2F;387-direct-air-capture&#x2F;</a><p>Media file: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;omegataupodcast.net&#x2F;podlove&#x2F;file&#x2F;394&#x2F;s&#x2F;feed&#x2F;c&#x2F;mp3&#x2F;omegatau-387-directAirCapture.mp3" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;omegataupodcast.net&#x2F;podlove&#x2F;file&#x2F;394&#x2F;s&#x2F;feed&#x2F;c&#x2F;mp3&#x2F;ome...</a>

DAC is nowhere near the scale needed to make even a tiny dent in our carbon emissions, and it&#x27;s easy to be cynical looking at this (this plant can capture about 2000 American&#x27;s carbon emissions).<p>One thing I do like about this is that we get an actual, concrete, and correct &quot;cost of carbon&quot; from it. Sure, there are caveats (i.e. you can&#x27;t just build 5MM of these in Iceland), but having a real number that doesn&#x27;t include hand-waving around whether the Brazilian farmer would have cut down those trees or not is a good thing for offsets, future planning, markets, etc.

There are already self replicating carbon drawing machines. They are called trees.

I imagine we&#x27;re going to need a number of different technologies in order to make a real dent? What about biochar? That seems like an obvious choice, too. Easy, can make syngas, makes its own energy, enriches soil, etc. No panaceas, but we&#x27;re going to need a lot more than one magic bullet.

650M$ in funding and they will remove emissions from about 10 000 cars! You could just spend 32 500$ per each car to replace it with an EV and the second 32 500 on renewable energy and storage. We would need 100 000 of these plants to get back to equilibrium.

Just to put some numbers to this for anyone unfamiliar.<p>Climeworks currently estimates 2.5MWhr &#x2F; tonnes of carbon (1000kg) (heat energy). That&#x27;s an hours worth of energy for 2500 homes, PER 1000 kg.<p>Mammoth sounds like it&#x27;ll capture (36000 ton per year &#x2F; 365 days &#x2F; 24 hr) ~4 tonnes an hour = 10MWhr.<p>Most solar farms in the US are currently less than 5MW and thus ALL of their energy couldn&#x27;t support a single one of these capture facilities.<p>Two Comments:<p>1) All that energy for 36000 tonnes &#x2F; year just doesn&#x27;t seem like it is viable.<p>2) I don&#x27;t really think we should be prioritizing using clean energy to recapture carbon over replacing other sources.

&gt; DAC’s energy usage, particularly when it’s considered in conjunction with the (relatively minuscule) amount of CO2 it’s capturing, is its biggest drawback. Sourcing the energy from renewable sources helps, but it’s still not unlimited nor free.<p>What are the actual downsides of energy usage here given that the enterprise is strongly carbon negative? Given that it is consuming geothermal energy in Iceland, 1) wouldn&#x27;t the energy become waste heat in the environment regardless, 2) Is there a consumer of the energy that would be &quot;better&quot;?

As nice as DAC projects sound, I really cannot wrap my head around them. 36kt is not much. We’d need around 1.5m of these plants to reach carbon neutrality (without any other changes).

I’ve been sponsoring these guys for a while now. Saw it on my credit card bill last night and wondered what they were up too!

Just for reference, 36,000 tons of CO2 is like the ~950th most polluting plant in the US (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;findenergy.com&#x2F;power-plants&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;findenergy.com&#x2F;power-plants&#x2F;</a> for reference).

Fantastic, how long until it scales up I wonder and can the tech be adapted to other gases?

Direct release from Climeworks: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;climeworks.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;climeworks-announces-groundbreaking-on-mammoth" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;climeworks.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;climeworks-announces-groundbreak...</a>

I&#x27;m surprised by all the negativity here. Usually HN commenters are good at understanding exponential growth. Maybe it&#x27;s easier when talking about Active Users?<p>Climeworks (and others) are just a couple orders of magnitude away from having real impact, with a clear roadmap lying ahead. Let&#x27;s support them, along with all other potential solutions? We&#x27;re going to need more than one.

Can&#x27;t we just plant trees ?!? And take care of the oceans? Plankton and trees are the answer !<p>We are removing trees to build giant factories ?

Imo, the solution to co2 and plastic pollution won&#x27;t be a piece of high tech, it will be a form of fungi.

7.5 tons&#x2F;household&#x2F;year. This is good for 4800 households. Nice, but nothing, ultimately.

What&#x27;s wrong with carbon dioxide?<p>Why not just plant more trees?

How much power does it take to run one of these things?

Those plants already exist. They are called “forests”.

How many years before this plant becomes carbon neutral itself? I can bet that this is another waste of money and natural resources that will not help the environment.

&gt; The containers are blocks of fans and filters that suck in air and extract its CO2, which Carbfix mixes with water and injects underground, where a chemical reaction converts it to rock.<p>I&#x27;m really worried we have no idea what we&#x27;re doing, and will find out down the road things like this only made things worse, or caused other unforeseen problems.<p>I do not subscribe to the philosophy that &quot;doing something is better than nothing&quot;, particularly when we likely don&#x27;t fully understand what it is we&#x27;re doing or actually trying to achieve. Doing the wrong thing can be, and often is, worse than doing nothing.<p>&gt; Orca can capture about 4,000 tons of carbon per year (for scale, that’s equal to the annual emissions of 790 cars).<p>That&#x27;s some hand-wavy numbers there. 790 of what type of car? 1970 muscle car without a catalytic converter and modern fuel injection system? Or a 2022 Prius? One outputs a huge amount of CO2 and other gases, and the other hardly any at all.<p>Car emissions are really good on average. As technology progresses, it might be fathomable that 7,900 cars, or eventually 79,000 cars produce the same amount of emissions as today. This &quot;metric&quot; sounds impressive, but it&#x27;s useless.<p>&gt; DAC’s energy usage, particularly when it’s considered in conjunction with the (relatively minuscule) amount of CO2 it’s capturing, is its biggest drawback. Sourcing the energy from renewable sources helps, but it’s still not unlimited nor free.<p>So why are we not just using the geothermal energy powering this thing to charge electric vehicles or power homes?<p>&gt; Meanwhile, global emissions topped 36 billion tons last year. 36,000 tons (the quantity of CO2 that will be captured by the Mammoth facility) is a negligible fraction of that total. Is it even worth the energy usage, construction and maintenance costs, and frankly, the effort? Or would the geothermally-generated electricity go to better use powering electric cars?<p>Ah, they even mention this in the article. Of course the CEO hand waves this away...<p>I&#x27;m not convinced this is the future - seems more like a get rich quick scheme if anything. Sort of like those companies you can pay to &quot;offload&quot; your emission burden and supposedly they plant trees or something and you get to claim your carbon neutral. Scams... all of them.