Direct Air Carbon Capture
This post may contain affiliate links which means we may receive a commission for purchases made through links. We will only recommend products that we have personally used! Learn more on our Private Policy page.
DACC is a process by which air is sucked in by large fans and directed through filters to remove the carbon dioxide contained within it.
The removed carbon dioxide can then be stored and sold on for other purposes (e.g., to make fizzy drinks or pumped into greenhouses) or, alternatively, is pumped deep underground to be stored.
It’s a three-step process
- Air is drawn in through a fan located inside the collector. Once sucked in, it passes through a filter located inside the collector which traps the carbon dioxide particles.
- When the filter is completely full of CO₂, the collector closes, and the temperature rises to about 100°C — about the same temperature it takes to boil water for a cup of tea!
- This causes the filter to release the CO₂ in order to finally collect it.
Climeworks in Iceland has probably the most well-known DAC facilities (first Orca and now Mammoth), made up of modular “collector containers” with fans that suck in air.
Climeworks keeps the captured CO2 from escaping into the atmosphere again by locking it away in Iceland’s basalt rock formations. They mix the CO2 with water and then pump that slurry deep underground where the CO2, in a process that takes circa 2 years, becomes solid rock.
Why do we need direct air capture?
The latest IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) report clearly states that urgent climate action is needed to halve emissions by 2030. To do so, we must both drastically reduce emissions and remove legacy CO₂ emissions from the air. In order to permanently remove the CO₂ emissions we’ve captured, we combine our DAC technology with CO₂ storage and safely transport them deep underground.
Direct air capture and storage, or DAC+S, represents a permanent carbon removal solution.
The current CO2 concentration in the atmosphere stands at 425 ppm (parts per million) and rising and it has been stated that to get back to a safe climate that is habitable by human beings we need to get the concentration back down to a maximum 370 ppm(!)
Therefore the need for this technology is very real and it will need to continue to be scaled up from current levels to make a meaningful dent in CO2 levels already in the atmosphere. Efforts by companies such as Climeworks and its local storage partners are moving efforts in this activity in the right direction.