Scientists Turn Captured Carbon Emissions Into Fuel Pellets | IFLScience

14/10/2015

IFLScience

Follow @IFLScience

ENVIRONMENT

Search by keyword

find

Choose your poison

Scientists Turn Captured Carbon Emissions

Into Fuel Pellets
October 14, 2015 | by Robin Andrews

Editor's Blog
Environment

photo credit: David Sprott/Shutterstock

Technology
Space

On the eve of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, which will take place this
November, several major announcements regarding the fight against global warming have
been made. Sweden hopes to become the worlds first fossil fuel-free nation, and the
International Energy Agency has concluded that one-quarter of the world will be powered by
renewable energy by the end of the decade. In the midst of these milestones, a small Canadian
start-up has joined the fight too: it has a plan to remove carbon dioxide from the air and
turn it into pellets of fuel, as reported by MIT Technology Review.
The concept is relatively simple, but it has grand ambitions. Instead of focusing on power plant
emissions, Carbon Engineering's direct air capture plant will focus on everyday carbon
emissions from infrastructure, agriculture, transportation and buildings.

Health and Medicine

The Brain
Plants and Animals
Physics
Chemistry

Firstly, liquid hydrogen is split from water using a process known as electrolysis, wherein an
electric current generated by solar panels separates the hydrogen atoms from the oxygen
atom in each molecule of water. Separately, carbon dioxide is extracted directly from the air
using a series of fans and then combined with this liquid hydrogen to form a hydrocarbon fuel,
which can be used to power transportation.
This initiative by Carbon Engineering, partly funded by Bill Gates and founded by Harvard
climate scientist David Keith, aims to construct a $9 million (5.9 million) conversion plant that
will remove 1 million tonnes (1.1 million tons) of carbon dioxide from the air every single day:
the equivalent of taking 100 cars off the road every year. Its a small start, but its a start.
It's still a pilot-scale plant, explained Adrian Corless, Carbon Engineering's CEO, to CBC News.
But it's very important, because it's the first time that anyone's demonstrated a technology
that captures CO2 that has the potential to be scaled up to be large enough to be relevant
from an environmental or climate point of view.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is not a new idea. Several schemes have been conceived
before, most of which involve capturing carbon dioxide at its emission point at power plants
and transporting it to a deep underground geological reservoir and preventing it from reaching
the atmosphereat least for a few million years. It is kept within continental caverns, away
from oceans so the carbon cannot contribute to harmful ocean acidification.
Its a viable scheme: applying the working technology to a conventional, fossil fuel power plant
could stop up to 90% of the carbon emissions reaching the atmosphere, according to the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). There are potential issues with leakage,
however, as the captured CO2 may seep into the atmosphere faster than predicted.

POPULAR POSTS
Anti-Vaxxers Fund Study
That Finds Zero Link
Between Vaccinations And
Autism
health and medicine

Nevertheless, carbon capture remains a geoengineering scheme that aims to directly mitigate
against the effect of greenhouse gas emissions; other geoengineering schemes merely attempt
to mask it. Pumping radiation-reflecting aerosols into the atmosphere to cool the planet, for
example, would certainly reduce global temperatures, but it would produce vast amounts of
acid rain, alter the flow of our rivers, and ultimately merely covers up the effects of greenhouse
gases within the atmosphere.
Once the plant in Squamish, British Columbia is up and running by 2016 or 2017, it will
produce up to 400 liters (88 gallons) of gasoline or diesel per day, created from the very waste
product given off as its burned.

Learn Anatomy By
Dissecting Knitted Animals
health and medicine

Sweden Plans To Become

World's First Fossil FuelFree Nation
environment

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/scientists-turn-captured-carbon-emissions-fuel-pellets

1/3

Scientists Turn Captured Carbon Emissions Into Fuel Pellets | IFLScience

14/10/2015

environment

tags

carbon capture, climate change, Geoengineering, fuel

California Just Banned

SeaWorld From Breeding
Captive Orcas
plants and animals

IFLScience

WEEK
IN
SCIENCE
Newsletter
Your email address

Sign up

Get Weekly Science Coverage!

Connect with Us
Facebook

Twitter

Google Plus

MORE ENVIRONMENT ARTICLES

Indonesian Volcano
Erupts Electric-Blue Lava
environment

New Research Reveals

The US Cities That Have
Already Been Doomed
By Climate Change
environment

Climate Models Too

Complicated? Heres One
That Everyone Can Use
environment

New International
Climate Chief Faces A
Serious Communication
Challenge
environment

Check Out These Trippy

Photographs Of Australia Taken
From The International Space
Station

Why Do Capuchin Monkeys

Cover Themselves In Smelly
Substances?

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/scientists-turn-captured-carbon-emissions-fuel-pellets

2/3

Scientists Turn Captured Carbon Emissions Into Fuel Pellets | IFLScience

get the newsletter

Your email address

14/10/2015

Sign up

Like

22m

Follow @IFLScience

Like

22m

home
contact
Advertising
Privacy Policy
Terms of Use

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/scientists-turn-captured-carbon-emissions-fuel-pellets

3/3