The potential of direct air capture using adsorbents in cold climates

• Published in: iScience
• Main Author: Wilson, Sean M.W.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2022
• Subjects: Article; Canada; Greenland; Antarc*; Antarctica; Alaska
• Online Access: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9720019/; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.105564

Global warming threatens the entire planet, and solutions such as direct air capture (DAC) can be used to meet net-zero goals and go beyond. This study investigates using DAC in a 5-step temperature vacuum swing adsorption (TVSA) cycle with adsorbents’ Li-X and Na-X, readily available industrial zeolites, to capture and concentrate CO(2) from air in cold climates. From this study, we report that Na-X in cold conditions has the highest known CO(2) adsorption capacity in air of 2.54 mmol/g. This combined with Na-X's low CO(2) heat of adsorption, and fast uptake-rate in comparison to other benchmark materials, allowed for Na-X operating in cold conditions to have the lowest reported DAC operating energy of 1.1 MWh/tonCO(2). These findings from this study show the promise of this process in cold climates of Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and Antarctica to be part of the solution to global warming.