Co-Funded by the European Union
The European Union supports the development of NeoCarbon and its technology via the project "R&D multimodulare DAC Anlage zur atmosphärischen CO₂-Emissionsabscheidung" (or "R&D multi-modular DAC system for atmospheric CO₂ emission capture"). This research could not happen without the financial support of the European Union.
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The aim of the project is to develop a solution that makes it possible to remove carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere, i.e. the ambient air, in a scalable and cost-efficient manner and to filter it out through direct air capture. The corresponding process is called "Direct Air Capture" (DAC). The way in which this is done is usually a kind of cycle. First, air is allowed to flow through the system, bringing the air into contact with a chemical, which can be either liquid or solid, as in the approach taken by NeoCarbon. The chemical used for the process must have a very high affinity for CO₂ so that it is trapped on the surface.
After blowing all the air through the system, a CO₂-laden chemical is left behind that needs to be filtered. This requires a lot of energy and in most cases heat is used to break the bonds between the chemical and the CO₂ that has just been captured. The result is pure CO₂ that can now either be stored permanently or reused and the chemical that is ready for the next cycle.
NeoCarbon plans to use the waste heat from cooling towers for the process in order to make the technology scalable. The basic idea of DAC is to remove CO₂ directly from the ambient air using an artificially generated air flow and a sorbent. Emissions are therefore not filtered at the emitter, thus preventing additional emissions, but the amount of climate-damaging CO₂ in the atmosphere is actively reduced. By using existing infrastructure in the form of cooling towers, this approach can significantly reduce investment and operating costs compared to other systems. In addition, a retrofit approach does not require the development of new roads and industrial areas, but the use of existing ones.