The world's largest carbon-sucking plant just became operational

[Still Waters]

The world's largest plant designed to suck carbon dioxide out of the air and turn it into rock started running on Wednesday, the companies behind the plant said.

The plant, named Orca, after the Icelandic word "orka" meaning "energy", consists of four units, each made up of two metal boxes, similar in appearance to the containers used for maritime transport.

Constructed by Switzerland's Climeworks and Iceland's Carbfix, when operating at capacity the plant will draw 4,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the air every year, according to the companies.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), that equates to the emissions from about 870 cars.

https://www.sciencealert.com/world-s-largest-project-for-turning-carbon-dioxide-into-rock-has-begun

[Piney]

It's still not even close enough.  

Even town should plant a stewardship forest-park. Or more than one if they have room. 

[+OverSword]

Cool machine.  In the future they will be much larger and more powerful I'm sure

[Doug1066]

Now:  how do we pay for the number of machines we will need to bring carbon levels down to something we can live with?

Doug

[XenoFish]

That's nice and all, but how are we going to put more oxygen back into the air. I mean if this thing worked like a literal plant and converted the co2 into oxygen I'd be way more impressed. Not a rock factory.

[Doug1066]

17 hours ago, XenoFish said:

That's nice and all, but how are we going to put more oxygen back into the air. I mean if this thing worked like a literal plant and converted the co2 into oxygen I'd be way more impressed. Not a rock factory.

Oxygen levels have fallen only about 1% since pre-industrial times.  There's still plenty of it left.

Doug

[XenoFish]

1 minute ago, Doug1066 said:

Oxygen levels have fallen only about 1% since pre-industrial times.  There's still plenty of it left.

Doug

Not the point but okay. 

[Abramelin]

On 9/9/2021 at 3:08 PM, Still Waters said:

The world's largest plant designed to suck carbon dioxide out of the air and turn it into rock started running on Wednesday, the companies behind the plant said.

The plant, named Orca, after the Icelandic word "orka" meaning "energy", consists of four units, each made up of two metal boxes, similar in appearance to the containers used for maritime transport.

Constructed by Switzerland's Climeworks and Iceland's Carbfix, when operating at capacity the plant will draw 4,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the air every year, according to the companies.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), that equates to the emissions from about 870 cars.

https://www.sciencealert.com/world-s-largest-project-for-turning-carbon-dioxide-into-rock-has-begun

Plants - the green version - will adapt to higher CO2 levels:

https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2016/08/plants-adapting-to-rising-co2.page

[itsnotoutthere]

[Still Waters]

According to Sky News:

Quote

Direct air capture is still a new and expensive technology, but it's hoped the price will fall as it becomes more widespread.

There are currently 15 plants globally, capturing more than 9,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, according to the IEA.

Occidental, a US oil firm, is developing the largest facility, designed to pull one million tonnes per year from the air near its Texas oilfields.

https://news.sky.com/story/worlds-biggest-plant-for-sucking-carbon-dioxide-from-the-air-starts-operating-in-iceland-12402990

[Eldorado]

According to Icelandic folklore, the country’s other-worldly rock formations are the remnants of pesky trolls caught out by the sun and turned to stone. It is in this country, against a backdrop of lava fields and billowing hot springs, that engineers are piloting a new technique to try to petrify another great pest: CO2.

Climeworks’ “direct air capture” machine, known as Orca, works by drawing in air using giant fans and fabric tubes. This air is brought into contact with a chemical filter that can selectively capture CO2 while releasing other gases such as nitrogen and oxygen. The filter system is then heated to around 100C to obtain CO2 as a pure gas.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/the-world-first-experiment-capturing-co2-from-air-and-turning-it-to-stone/ar-AAPYh3R?ocid=msedgntp

[+Desertrat56]

The winters must be way too long up in the northern parts of the world.

[Jon the frog]

Don't know how many tons of carbon are spend to build and maintain that filter. Not sure about the real carbon footprint and how much time it take to really fix carbon in the soil. At least the energy source is plentiful but it' still a plaster solution trying to circle the problem of emission.

[DarkHunter]

Approximately there is 472.6 mg/m^3 of CO2 in the atmosphere.  So to remove one ton of CO2 from the atmosphere, about 907 kg, about 2 million cubic meters of air would be required to be filtered.  To give an idea of size, the volume of an olympic swimming poll is about 2,500 cubic meters.

The real issue is heating that amount of air as that will be insanely energy intensive.

[XenoFish]