Scientists Develop Air "Scrubber" Capable of Sucking Up One Ton of CO2 a Day
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles 
on 05.31.08
This sounds too good to be true: a machine that can vacuum the equivalent of a ton of atmospheric carbon dioxide a day in a cost-effective way. We've seen our fair share of CO2 "sucking" devices in the past -- everything from modified plastic membranes to industrial-scale paper mill "scrubbers" -- but they've typically tended toward the expensive or unwieldy. So how does this particular device stand out?
Well, for one thing, its inventors, a team of U.S. scientists led by Columbia University's Klaus Lackner, say they'll be able to get a prototype up and running within the next 2 years. Secondly, they claim that the device, which is small enough to fit inside a shipping container, will be able to capture a ton of CO2 a day from the air -- at a fraction of the cost of similar technologies. The initial cost of the device, roughly $200,000, would be more than offset by the amount of carbon each would trap, they assert.
"Our project has reached the stage where it is quite clear we can do it. We need to start dealing with all these emissions. I'd rather have a technology that allows us to use fossil fuels without destroying the planet, because people are going to use them anyway," Lackner told The Guardian's David Adam.
He doesn't expect the device to be the be all end all solution to global warming, of course. As he acknowledges, it would take upwards of hundreds of millions of them to suck up all the planet's excess carbon emissions.
The device's great strength, he says, is its low energy consumption (and, thus, lower cost). Other air capture devices had failed to make headway in the past because they often required large amounts of energy. Lackner's machine, which traps atmospheric CO2 on ion exchange membranes, takes advantage of small changes in humidity to lower its energy use tenfold.
The question then is how to dispose of all that trapped CO2. Lackner and his colleagues have a few ideas, which they outlined in their patent application: use the gas in greenhouses to increase plant growth; or use it to grow algae, which could be used for fertilizer, food or fuel. It looks like we may finally have a serious contender for Richard Branson's $25 million prize.
Image courtesy of The Guardian
Via ::The Guardian: Could US scientist's 'CO2 catcher' help to slow warming? (news website)
See also: ::Suck on this, CO2, ::Micro-Algae In CARS Will Clean Up Tar Sands, Suck CO2, Make Biofuel, Save World
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First, let's acknowledge that this will be most useful for scrubbing powerplants, not transportation sources.
OK a little math is in order:
Electrical production produces 2.5 Billion tons/year of CO2 in the U.S. alone. That's 1/3rd of total CO2 production.
2.5B divided by 365 days = daily output of approx. 7 million tons/day, requiring 7 million scrubbers.
At $200,000 per scrubber, that comes out to 1.4 QUADRILLION DOLLARS to sequester, (not dispose of...just sequester) 1/3 of our CO2 output!
Does anybody else see a problem with this?
Is this technology something that can be placed into the tailpipe of a car or the smokestack of factories?
Just install it on top of smoke stacks.
Scott...
First off its 7,000,000 * 200,000 is 1.4Trillion NOT quadrillion...now realize if there are any economies of scale in the scrubber that means they only need to get them down to 1-2 orders of magnitude cheaper to make it feasible. $2000*7,000,000 is a mere 14billion which is a drop in the bucket in the greater scheme of things.
Adding to what Scott wrote about the cost (1.4 quadrillion dollars), thats for building the 7 million scrubbers...What would they cost to operate? How much power would they need to run?....And they propose doing what with the collected seven million tons a day of carbon dioxide?...I think the Branson prize won't go to this proposal....Keep trying...
umm....I think someone already invented a CO2 scrubber...
it's called a tree.
No disrespect to Klaus Lackner, clearly he means well, but we need to look at what already works, and just try to make less CO2.
"Does anybody else see a problem with this?"
Yep, for one thing, your math is off by a factor of 1000. It's 1.4 trillion dollars. Still a huge number, but the Iraq war is expected to end up costing over $2 trillion when it finally ends, and we've somehow managed to pay for that (sort of) so it's clearly not an absurdly unreachable number. The other thing to consider is that if it costs $200k to build one now, it most likely won't cost that much if you're building a million of them. It may also be more cost effective to build bigger versions.
You're also kind of missing the point of the technology- these take CO2 out of air, so you can put them anywhere. They actually aren't that useful for putting on top of a coal fired power plant smoke stack, because a new power plant can essentially emit pure CO2 from the stack already. This machine is meant to filter the CO2 out of the mixture of gases present in normal air.
Of course, the real problem here isn't the cost, it's what to do with the carbon dioxide after you've captured it. The only option anyone has come up with is to stick it in the ground, and research on underground sequestration has pretty much ground to a halt lately.
Why is it that every time someone comes up with an innovative idea, it gets shot down immediately because it doesn't solve every single problem without fail. Is it so hard to accept that some solutions just simply "help" solve an issue?
"He doesn't expect the device to be the be all end all solution to global warming, of course. As he acknowledges, it would take upwards of hundreds of millions of them to suck up all the planet's excess carbon emissions". Obviously Mr. Lackner is not trying to portray this as the answer to all the carbon emission problems we have. He just wants to help.
My question for Scott (and everyone else that just wants to post a negative comment without offering a alternative) is; If you have a better idea that can be put into cost effective large scale production, then why don't you do it and save the planet all by your all-knowing self?
I've been following this since last year when the idea came up in a BCC documentary Five Ways to Save the World. This solution seemed to me the most attractive and practical of the five.
Apart from energy use, the other challenge with such "synthetic trees" is transport and storage of the captured CO2. Lackner earlier proposed storing it underground.
But using them in greenhouses to grow algae which is then used to make biofuel is a great idea. For unicellular algae growth, the optimal level of CO2 is 10,000 to 50,000 ppm.
@Shawn. This probably can't be used in tailpipes of cars because the weight of captured CO2 would be too high. A gallon of gasoline produces about 20 pounds of CO2.
I have often thought, in my daydreams, of roadside scrubbers which would suck in the exhaust of automobiles and other pollutants in the air. These would then be concentrated and sequestered.
If this device can clean NOx as well as CO2, I can see this having tremendous value in Los Angeles. It may require the air to pass through additional conditioners for other pollutants.
This is obviously not a mature product ready for market but it has tremendous potential.
How about planting some trees???? A lot cheaper.
Let me just remove your lungs. That way you can keep chain smoking and not have to worry about emphysema or lung cancer...
Though the scrubbers will "scrub" tons of CO2 from the air, they are not helping to solve the actual problem, because the actual problem(s) are all the things we do that are negative to the environment that result in an excess of CO2 remains in our atmosphere thus causing global warming.
Don't assume now that is cheaper to produce more. That was the past. With current and future resource shortages, it will likely cost more per unit to produce millions of these things. This is already happening with wind turbines.
This can't even hold a candle to biochar. Check out www.eprida.com or search it on TH (several articles on it here). There are number of other outfits working on this but I can't remember the names. That said, I do think that this system would pair well with algae biofuel bubblers that are not near a point source of concentrated CO2 (coal or NG powerplant, cement mfg, etc.). A somewhat limited application but maybe placed in median strips of intercity highways, with algae reactors right on top of the containers. Filtered and dried on-site, the algae could be collected once a week at night by an electric truck? Just throwing some ideas out there.
I stand corrected on the $1.4 Quad vs. $1.4 Trill.
Thank you.
I can see some potential for use as a source of CO2-enrichment for an algae bioreactor. Outside of that, a scale of $ trillions still puts it out of reach for generalized clearance of any significant amount of CO2 from the atmosphere.
This would be useful in conjunction with the technology to turn co2 in to baking soda, which can be buried without to much problem.
ehm... air goes in, carbon dioxide extracted, humid air goes in, humid air + carbon dioxide comes out. Then we pump it into like underground caves... Isn't it the same as just pumping air into underground caves?????????? Can somebody please explain this technology better???? Is there another stage where the CO2 is completely removed from the humid air and how much energy is required to achieve this???
This is similar to a device I saw (link below) that pulls out the CO2 from the air. It looks like a giant Ionic Breeze air purifier, and works with natural air movement through the device. A working model has been built, they're building a full size one now. The trick with the CO2 is to separate the C from the O2 (not complicated or energy intense) and sequester the carbon. Trying to sequester a gas or a liquid is asking for trouble down the line. Plenty of industries use carbon in their process(es), they could install a unit and source their carbon on-site rather than paying for it.
I think that doing the math on whether or not such devices can mitigate global production of CO2 is moot. The solution to atmospheric remediation will not come from any single source, but many. It's more like a stew than a broth. At the end of the day CO2 is, after all, just one of the issues we have to address. Right now it's just getting all the good press.
http://www.gizmag.com/go/7341/
When this comes out, people go "hey, interesting idea", but when sequestration from power plants comes up, everybody shoots down the idea in a second.
I can´t believe it!!, this is some mayor Bull_hit!!!, are these guys serious?. Maann, this can remember you how shortsighted are some humans. How many trees can you plant with 200.000$?... Lets say each one costs 20$ allright?. That’s about 10.000 trees. Each tree can absorb around 5kilos of c02 each year. That amounts to approximately of course 125 Kilos each day for the whole bunch. AAAaa, I can hear you say!!, that´s lower than 1.000kilos. Another shortsighted appreciation; You have to account; how much energy consumes that machine?, how many years does it last?, how much energy does it takes to remove that co2?,does it improve the soil?, does it attract birds, life,? etc.... Maaannn I´m sooo mad at these people. Because they talk about earth, when they really talk
is money!!!. Come on guys!!, plant some trees and stop this Bull_hit!!
Has anyone figured out the energy consumption of this device? At a CO2 concentration of 400 ppm and 100% extraction efficiency, you need to pass 2500 tons of air through the shipping container. I believe that is the equivalent of 100,000 cubic meters/hour, or nearly 4 million cu ft/hour.
The power needed to move this volume of air depends on pressure differential - I do not know how much 'back pressure' the ion exchange resin will create. However, to reduce CO2 levels, the device needs to remove more CO2 than the CO2 released from generating the required power.
Another approach is to calculate the cost of removing that ton of CO2. As a benchmark, we might use the carbon trading exchange, which currently prices a tonne of CO2 at $21. At $0.10/kWh, the device needs to consume less than 210 kWh/day or about 9kw. That is not a lot of energy - a typical electric clothes dryer is a bit over 5kw. I am not suggesting that this device is not valuable, but am trying to put it in perspective.
Kudos to peztroleo for pointing out that although CO2 is a 'top of mind' issue, there is more value in helping to balance the larger system.
err, can't see much point to growing algae for biofuel production from the CO2 that's being captured by this system, then burning the fuel and releasing the CO2, only to have to recapture it again. isn't the idea to remove the CO2 from the atmosphere altogether? trees.
We will have to outlaw all soda pops and beer because of global warming? Why we can't have the evil CO2 tickling out tongues when the entire universe is at stake?
Rolling my eyes........LOL...? Let me fire up my charcoal grill, have a nice day!
New technologies like this are good and a necessary part of the solution, but I worry about how the media portrays them as "solving" the climate crisis. I also worry about how focused the media is on climate change instead of portraying it as just 1 of many environmental crises we have on our hands. Even as we find solutions, we need enough fear and uncertainty to get average consumers to change their behavior in significant ways.
Google ‘Ship Roll Generator’ and you’ll then know what to do with the sequestered CO2
Google ‘Ship Roll Generator’ and you’ll then know what to do with the sequestered CO2
Yes, this does sound like a tree, but a great deal faster. I have planted more trees this month than Al Gore has in his life - but I can't keep up with the amount of carbon he generates with all his airplane trips. I also do some carbon sequestration (compost leaves in the garden), cleaning up the air.
The peanut gallery (liberals with megamouths and dinky deeds) is alive and well even here at treehugger. IF you really believe what you say, don't be a hypocrite -- start doing some genuine good for the planet in your own 'backyard' and around the world.
This is what I don't understand. On one hand, we tell people by a hybrid car, use flourescent light bulbs, plant trees, conserve water, etc... On the other hand, when we see technology such as this, we say, well its too expensive to produce, it won't make a huge difference, we just need to limit CO2 production, etc... I'm beginning to think that many of you DON'T want an easy solution BECAUSE it starts to diminish your social, political ideology.
I'm amazed by the comments on this board. Everytime a new device, method or plan is mentioned, that doesn't jive with the Green's litmus test, gets trashed or dismissed out-of-hand. In a quasi sort of way, the Greens have become the Holy Catholic Church (Renaissance era) while the non-Greens proposing potential solutions have become the "pagen Galileos". If they're burned at the stake, I'm sure the Greens would use "carbon-free" materials :)
All new technologies start off as "big, clunky, ineffecient and expensive, but as the idea progresses, its gets better and more feasable. Time, brain-power, and commerce can do wonders when it's unleashed and UNBIASED.
Solar is slowly getting closer to massive, industrial rollouts as newer methods of heat storage (synthetic fluds or moten salt) will make it possible to generate steam during the night time making solar a major player in the near future.
Nuclear power plants are becoming more powerful and effecient plus they are carbon free.
Newer methods of making Hydrogen on-the-spot at fuel stations (which they are testing in Iceland) are becoming closer to reality. Using electrical extraction devices produces the fuel in real time. There is also a recently discovered microbe that converts biomatter to hydrogen.
Aircars, using a small gas powerplant to continously recharge their air tanks, promises to revoluntionize the car industry. It's still a ways off, and there are some technical issues to resolve.
The name of the game is DIVERSITY. Like a good stock broker, it is best to diversify your assets in case one area falls short. Fossil fules are a proven technology and can be modified to be cleaner (scrubbers, bio fuels, hybrids, etc.,), Solar has potential, but has a few issues to resolve, wind can generate a good amount of supplemental power but is at the mercy of the wind, biofuels are renewable but can effect world food prices and have production and distribution issues, conservation and effecientcies are great, but as the rest of the world developes and GROWS (some key players are not part of the KYOTO Accords or are failing their quotas...the treaty is DOA folks) and on and on and on.
Lets do it all. Lets be prudent and try/use all methods.
Is the CO2 scrubber the "holy grail"? II don't think so. Can it be part of the equation (especially when the technology advances and gets smaller and more effecient)? Yes, I think so. Let the Columbia crew develop the technology to the next level and let the wonders begin!!!!
PS: To those griping that things would "take to long to complete" I can only say that the more the you complain the longer it will take. :)
Besides, you give people the proper economic incentives, you would be amazed on how fast things can get done. Trust me on that, I have first hand knowledge.
This particular comment made me laugh followed by similar ones baed on miss calculation: 2.5B divided by 365 days = daily output of approx. 7 million tons/day, requiring 7 million scrubbers. !!
How the heck 7 millions of tons/day require 7 million scrubbers,hellooo,if each scrubber suck 1 million tons,that mean we need only 7 scrubbers to suck the 7 million tons/day.
I see this as a big invention,hope it see the light very soon.
You people all need to forget about this CO2 Scrubber and FALL IN LINE!
We need to Cap and Trade all these carbon emitting factories and ALL of you need to buy solar panels, STOP driving your cars everywhere you damn well please, STOP running your air conditioners in the summer and your heaters during the winters, STOP polluting my environment!
Just shut up and FALL IN LINE and STOP trying to solve these problems that are putting our Earth in Peril with these inventions.
Do you want to scrub the CO2 without causing more? I have the solution. Nuclear!!! It creates vast amounts of energy and has no "carbon footprint". Now you can clean without creating more.
What if it sucks all the CO2 out of the air and all the plants die?
Manu Sharma,
Your calculation is a little off. One gallon of gasoline produces only about 18.5 lbs of CO2. Gasoline is only about 0.75 the density of water, or 6 lbs. to the gallon. Further, gasoline is about 85% by weight carbon, the rest being hydrogen or oxygen. You are right that CO2 is about 3.5 times the weight of carbon. Doing the calculation gets you to about 18.5 lbs. of carbon.
At any rate, assume electricity production can be moved toward nuclear and away from coal, Dr. Lackner's invention could go a ways towards addressing automobile CO2 emissions.
Well, in case these things come into production, I will certainly consider buying one for my flowerfarm. Here in Kenya we do not burn fossil fuels for warming our greenhouses and as a result I do not have the by-product CO2 which I could then inject for optimum photo synthesis. Not bad, with or without fishing for Branson's prize.
Hey petztroleo,
Finished planting my first batch of 10,000 trees this month. They actually cost around 35$cts when you go bulk. All you need is an apetite for sweat, dirt and a fair parcel of sloping land that's not much good for anything else anyway.
Am now preparing for the next batch to be planted before this year is over. Still need CO2 in my greenhouses but at least am trying to see the bigger picture (I've got kids too you know..).
OH MY MAGIC PAPER FILTER HAS A SPECIAL RESIN THAT COLLECTS CO2....MY BUTT...I'M SICK OF SEEING ALLEGED SCIENTISTS SAYING THEY HAVE THIS OR THAT. IF THIS IS REALLY THAT GOOD AND THAT CHEAP THEN WHY DON'T WE HAVE THEM INSTALLED AT EVERY FACTORY NOW? AT SOME POINT IN TIME SCIENCE FACT WILL MEET UP WITH SCIENCE FICTION, BUT WHEN? I SEE SHOWS ON DISCOVERY CHANNELS AND THE NEW PLGN ABOUT THESE FANCY SMANCY SCIENTISTS WHO HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS...TO ALL THE WRONG QUESTIONS! THE LATEST ONE IS ON RIGHT NOW DISCOVERY RIGHT NOW ABOUT AIR SCRUBBING CO2 AND STORING IT IN THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN...LET'S KEEP ON DESTROYING OUR FOOD CHAIN AND BRING OUR DEMISE ON A LITTLE BIT QUICKER. OR HOW ABOUT WE TAKE THE CONTROLLED GAS THAT WE HAVE CAPTURED AND BREAK IT DOWN TO SOMETHING THAT CAN REALLY BENEFIT US? IF YOU BRAINIACS NEED A DOSE OF REALITY HIT ME UP...I'LL LEARN YA.
Smokestack scrubbers are already installed in a lot of factories but seirously why pay trillions to HELP fix a problem that we can fix and gain more money from? Why dont we just not drive as much? That would take some CO2 out of the air and it would save us some cash.
So stick that in your juicebox and suck it!
Plant some trees?? Think about the carbon cycle, you plant a tree, it grows, locks up carbon, then dies, rots or is burnt and releases everything it locked up during its life cycle. Unless we think we can keep enough trees growing for perpetuity that will equal all the vegetation that makes up the oil and coal, millions of years worth of growth, we are not accomplishing anything lasting by planting trees. Yes we need multiple solutions for this problem, we need to tap into the Hydrogen water cycle using nuclear as an energy source. We need to preserve our fossil fuels for those portable energy requirements that will likely be a long time finding a technical alternative. AND we have to clean the atmosphere to bring CO2 levels down to a level in an attempt to halt or possible reverse climate change. I see a lot of passionate and caring comments, however if we entrench ourselves in combative positions nothing will get done.
What have you people been smoking? Carbon dioxide, in moderation, is not a pollutant. The current atmospheric CO2 level of about 387 ppm is not anywhere close to being dangerous. Plants actually grow better with CO2 in the 500 to 1500 ppm range. Coral reefs survived quite nicely in past ages when the C02 levels were much higher than they are now, laying to rest the myth that 400 ppm or even 1000 ppm would turn the oceans into "battery acid"... pure B.S. Even the IPCC has had to reduce their sea level rise predictions in the latest report. There are plenty of good reasons to transition away from fossil fuels, but the current pseudoscience fad of AGW is not one of them. Time for you people to put down the purple Koolaid and to actually try using your critical thinking skills.
planting trees only using valuable water resource which we are quickly running low on. Build the scrubbers, create a whole industry of good paying jobs. Using the carbon gas for multiple uses. you people forget that the world is growing fast in population and planting trees takes up space for growing food and using water resource. Build the damn scrubbers and while you are at it, cut a pipeline to the grand canyon and fill it with ocean water, run a desalination plant and pump the water up to vegas. Also how about another hydro plant for electricity. The grand canyon needs to be filled with water i'm tired of you people taking a picture of a whole inthe ground.