Mammoth will be able to pull 36,000 tons of carbon from the atmosphere a year at full capacity, according to Climeworks. That’s equivalent to taking around 7,800 gas-powered cars off the road for a year.

Climeworks did not give an exact cost for each ton of carbon removed, but said it was closer to $1,000 a ton than $100 a ton – the latter of which is widely seen as a key threshold for making the technology affordable and viable.

As the company scales up the size of its plants and bring costs down, the aim is to reach $300 to $350 a ton by 2030 before hitting $100 a ton around 2050, said Jan Wurzbacher, co-founder and co-CEO of Climeworks, on a call with reporters.

… and TIL

There are already much bigger DAC plants in the works from other companies. Stratos, currently under construction in Texas, for example, is designed to remove 500,000 tons of carbon a year, according to Occidental, the oil company behind the plant.

But there may be a catch. Occidental says the captured carbon will be stored in rock deep underground, but its website also refers to the company’s use of captured carbon in a process called “enhanced oil recovery.” This involves pushing carbon into wells to force out the hard-to-reach remnants of oil — allowing fossil fuel companies to extract even more from aging oil fields.

  • dangling_cat@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    1 month ago

    Eli5 how carbon capture works? And why is it not violating the second law of thermodynamics? With the same money and time, are they better than planting trees?

    • sushibowl@feddit.nlEnglish
      0·
      1 month ago

      A typical process passes ambient air over some liquid or solid solvent that can absorb CO2, then later inserts energy to separate the CO2 again for storage. For example, sodium hydroxide reacts with CO2 in the air to form sodium carbonate. Then later, the sodium carbonate is heated to release pure CO2, regenerating the sodium hydroxide in the process.

      This doesn’t violate any laws of thermodynamics because of the constant energy required. Compared to growing trees, direct air capture is generally much more expensive, requiring large capital investment and constant energy input. It is more space efficient though.

      • dangling_cat@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        0·
        1 month ago

        Thanks for the explanation. Second law of thermodynamics, as in, is the energy used to heat the solvent creates more CO2 than the CO2 it captured? What about algae or moss? They can be more space efficient than trees, and we can technically build a structure vertically.

        • sushibowl@feddit.nlEnglish
          0·
          1 month ago

          is the energy used to heat the solvent creates more CO2 than the CO2 it captured?

          Ah yeah, no absolutely not. In total it takes much more energy to capture the CO2 than was generated by burning the fossil fuel that emitted it.

          What about algae or moss? They can be more space efficient than trees, and we can technically build a structure vertically.

          I’m not too familiar with algea/moss CO2 absorption, but it could be better. Usually the downside of a vertical structure is you increase the capital investment again, negating the advantage of plants. And to provide lighting you’ll need energy which takes space as well (e.g. solar panel field)