Friday, March 29, 2024

New system can capture 100 tons of CO2 from Ocean annually

According to NASA, the ocean plays a vital dominant role in the Earth’s carbon cycle. The total amount of carbon in the sea is about 50 times greater than the amount in the atmosphere. It is exchanged with the atmosphere on a timescale of several hundred years.

California-based Captura is a carbon removal company that uses the ocean to extract carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere at a large scale and at an affordable cost, providing a critical capability in the fight against climate change.

Now, Captura is partnered with Los Angeles, California-based AltaSea, a leading seaport with container volume and cargo value, to accelerate technology development and industry collaboration in the ocean-climate space.

As part of the partnership, Captura will use AltaSea’s 35-acre blue economy campus as the site for technology testing, research, and analysis to validate, scale, and improve its Direct Ocean Capture (DOC) technology.

Captura’s new ocean carbon capture system can capture 100 tons of CO2 from the ocean annually. The latest ocean carbon capture system is a 100x scale-up of the company’s first pilot.

The new system is already operating successfully at the company’s laboratory in Pasadena, and Captura plans to move it to AltaSea’s 35-acre blue economy campus in the coming months to begin ocean field trials.

Captura’s novel technology makes the most of the ocean’s natural capacity as a carbon sink to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. This process is powered by renewable energy. It uses proprietary electrodialysis technology to capture CO2 directly from seawater and convert it into a stream that can be permanently separated or utilized. This process does not produce any by-products and doesn’t add anything to the ocean.

When CO2-depleted seawater returns to the ocean, it can absorb the same amount of CO2 from the air it removed initially.

“Captura’s technology is progressing rapidly through our piloting program towards large-scale commercial deployment,” said Captura CEO Steve Oldham. “Now, our work with AltaSea means we can further accelerate our technology and monitor how our system interacts with the ocean, and we couldn’t think of a better partner to help us take our progress to the next level. Alongside the support from SoCalGas, this really is a great example of California companies working together to take a leading role in the fight against climate change.”

The AltaSea-Captura partnership provides a unique opportunity for innovation and collaboration to help address the critical challenges of climate change.

The new, more extensive ocean carbon capture system was funded by another Californian company, Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas), as part of an ongoing relationship with Captura to support the demonstration and scale-up of the technology.