Carbon Engineering

Carbon Engineering (CE), established in 2009 by David Keith in Calgary, Canada, is the only company active in high temperature (HT) aqueous solution-based DAC. CE has fast developed its technology on an absorption process, innovating and integrating well-known pieces of equipment, widely used in large-scale industries to deliver a scaled-up technology, achieving megatons, for early deployment, in particular aiming at the direct production of synthetic fuels.

The CO2 is absorbed by a non-toxic KOH solution, pulling air through a fan into a large structure modelled off industrial cooling towers, filled of a plastic material packing. The absorbent is then regenerated in a pellet reactor, adapted

82 from water treatment technology, by exchanging carbonate ions in a K-Ca cycle.

The CO2 is released as pure gas through CaCO3 pellets calcination, at about 900°C, and the resulting CaO pellets are hydrated in a slaker and recycled to the causticizer, as depicted in Figure 18 and Figure 15 above (149, 150). CE’s technology is designed to be fed by a mixture of renewable electric energy and natural gas; while the company underlines the possibility of also avoiding hydrocarbons supply using only electricity from RES, gas feed makes the process versatile and reliable, and offers technical advantages on the high temperature heat supply for calcination.

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Figure 18: Simplified process flow diagram (PFD) of the Carbon Engineering CO2 HT-DAC commercial technology. (149)

The features of this absorption process result particularly adequate to constantly assure high production volumes for large scale synthetic fuels production, as the additional CO2 emissions can be avoided recycling products from the coupled P2X system, and even capturing the fossil CO2 in the short term. The process design has been improved on a demonstration scale facility, operating since 2015 in Squamish, British Columbia, Canada, to capture 1 tonCO2/day, which also incorporated fuel synthesis, by 2017, to offer an industrial, easy scalable AIR TO FUELS^™ process. The technology itself is ready for deployment and the company is now starting to cooperate with plant developers to deploy large-scale, commercial DAC plants globally.

The first project of this kind will the largest DAC plant in the world, operating by 2024, and is at advanced development in the Permian Basin, US, in partnership with 1PointFive, a company formed by Oxy Low Carbon Ventures.

This facility is expected to capture 1 MtCO2/year from the air to permanently stored it into deep underground geological formations. Together with a similar

83 project, in partnership with Storegga, targeted for North-East Scotland to permanently remove between 500 kt and 1 Mt of CO2 from the atmosphere annually, the Permian Basin facility would allow the company to get a complete process knowledge packet for the design of efficient large-scale HT-DAC plants, aimed both at CCS as at CCU (151).

Recently, the Norwegian company Carbon Removal, Carbon Engineering and Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, joined another partnership for deploying large-scale DAC and CO2 storage commercial projects in Norway, starting by a facility targeted for the Kollsnes area, to permanently store CO2 up to 1 MtCO2/year deep below the seabed in an offshore geological storage site. Moreover, the collaboration with BeZero Carbon, a London-based Climate Asset and Liability Management solutions provider, allow new retail offering for CO2 negative emissions customers through an integrated hub of data, products, and services for the entire climate economy, to incentivise the rising of new projects (152).

Many commercial partnerships are also establishing in the air-to fuels sector, especially for aviation, which among transports is the most critical to directly decarbonise and is also beginning to be subject to environmental policies (65).

In 2021, CE and the biotechnology company LanzaTech UK have partnered the first-of-a-kind project AtmosFUEL, that will investigate the feasibility of a large-scale, commercial air-to-jet facility in the UK, to produce more than 100 million litres of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) each year, to supply the companies British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. The project will be also funded by the UK Department for Transport’s Green Fuels Green Skies Competition, to support plant development, and the proposed facility is targeted to be operational until 2030, to deliver significant aviation emission reductions, while cascading socio-economic benefits. The CE’s DAC technology will supply the CO2 to be fed into LanzaTech’s Gas Fermentation process to produce low carbon ethanol, then converted into SAF using the LanzaJet^™ Alcohol-To-Jet technology, developed by LanzaTech and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The fuel will undergo certification by the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB), globally recognised as the most robust approach to sustainability for the bio-based and circular economy and the deployment of other plants is expected to

84 meet the UK’s 10% SAF by 2030 and up to 75% SAF by 2050 proposals (153, 154).

Moreover, the aviation company Air Canada, which already reports its carbon footprint, targets and climate protection strategy, as part of its climate targets to reach a goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, has committed to invest in a variety of alternative fuel and carbon reduction solutions. This company plans to cooperate with CE to explore the potential opportunities in how DAC technology can advance aviation decarbonization, by permanent CO2 removal and/or by purchasing SAF through the innovation of CE’s AIR TO FUELS^™ process. In 2021 also the Canadian company Huron Clean Energy announced the preliminary engineering and design on a large-scale, commercial facility in British Columbia, based on CE’s AIR TO FUELS^™ to deliver up to 100 million litres of ultra-low carbon fuel each year, in a partnership including The Upper Nicola Band and Oxy Low Carbon Ventures. The B.C. Government’s Innovative Clean Energy Fund is also funding the initial design work, as the project is also the largest green hydrogen project in the country and is expected to deliver wide economic benefits. Construction is expected to begin in 2023, on one of Upper Nicola Band’s eight reserves with operations, powered by clean hydroelectricity, targeted to commence approximately three years after that (155).