Carbon Engineering is making gasoline out of CO2 in the air

Source: Carbon Engineering

A Canadian company called Carbon Engineering has perfected a fairly new technology known as Direct Air Capture (DAC). The company, which was founded in 2009, uses this tech to "capture, purify, and compress atmospheric CO2." Then, they use their trademark Air to Fuels process. This includes using clean electricity, such as solar power, to electrolyze water and generate hydrogen. Once this is completed, "the CO2 and hydrogen are thermo-catalytically reacted to produce syngas, and then reacted again to produce hydrocarbons." CE says that they could theoretically generate a wide range of hydrocarbons, but their focus is on diesel and jet fuel. The company hopes the outcome will replace the need for crude oil.

CE's Air Capture Process
Source: Carbon Engineering

                                                                                                                                             In an article about Carbon Engineering in June, National Geographic states that:

 "This is an engineering breakthrough on two fronts: A potentially cost-effective way to take CO2 out of the atmosphere to fight climate change and a potentially cost-competitive way to make gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel that doesn't add any additional CO2 to the atmosphere."

David Keith, a Harvard Professor of Applied Physics and founder of Carbon Engineering stated: "This isn't going to save the world from the impacts of climate change, but it's going to be a big step on the path to a low-carbon economy." In the future, as Carbon Engineering commercializes, they plan industrial scale air capture facilities stationed right outside of cities and other places which have high amounts of carbon in the air. According to CE, if they are able to achieve this large scale production, they will have the ability to lower costs to a mere $100-$150 per ton of carbon dioxide captured, purified, and compressed to 150 bar.

The image above shows Carbon Engineering's trademark Air to Fuels process
Source: Carbon Engineering

In 2015, CE built an end-to-end DAC pilot plant in Squamish, B.C.,Canada. There they demonstrated Direct Air Capture. Two years later in 2017, CE incorporated fuel synthesis capability into the plant, creating the world's first, scalable DAC/fuel synthesis plant and demonstrating their trademark Air to Fuels process for the first time.

A rendering of CE's pilot plant
Source: Carbon Engineering

CE says that once their technology is scaled up, they will be able to capture up to a million tons of CO2 a year, a quantity equivalent to the annual emissions of 250,000 average cars. You can read more about Carbon Engineering and their work on their website-carbonengineering.com

Some of Carbon Engineering's fuel
Source: Carbon Engineering