To limit global warming, some mitigation operations involve capturing the CO2 present in industrial fumes. To go much further and repair the climate in a curative way, we need to remove at least 1 gigaton of CO2 a year from the atmosphere. To achieve this objective, it would be faster and more efficient to extract the CO2 present in high concentrations in the biosphere, such as the CO2 contained in the oceans.
Current processes appear to be energy-intensive and costly. Determined to follow this path, the French company is looking for a partner to carry out an experiment aimed at improving the performance of CO2 extraction in a wet environment. The technical solution chosen could be electrochemical or other.
The improvement of the whole system will also concern the overall cost of the process, including inlet filtration, pumping and gas separation. The possibility of using renewable energy sources will be studied in order to improve the performance of the process. The extraction of CO2 from seawater is a new area of climate remediation, and its exploration is very rewarding.
Aiming at proof of concept TRL4
- simplified seawater model in the lab,
- technology fed on electricity at the outlet,
- efficient and scalable,
- incrementally improvable.
This TRL 4 step will potentially showcase a host of useful features. Seawater does capture CO2 from air, which avoids the costly CO2 capture step necessary for Direct Air Capture. CO2 concentration is one hundred times more important in seawater than in thin air. In the lab it will be very informative to use seawater models, gradually more and more realistic.
This project, deemed Indirect Air Capture, not only helps mitigating climate pollution but brings a biodiversity benefit: it reverses the acidification occurring during CO2 dissolution in seawater. Electrolysis could provide the first step of seawater acidification that is requested to speciate bicarbonates and carbonates into carbonic acid and CO2. Membranes processes with reverse osmosis are currently used for desalination purpose, and breaking improvement could be sought to adapt them for seawater CO2 filtering. Catalysis could be used for instance to enhance CO2 extraction and its evolution toward CH4. The idea is to extract CO2 (possibly in the form of CO or CH4 or CH5OH) and store it before using as a plastic monomer.
If cooperation proves fluent, then further co-development can be considered:
Setting industrial demonstrator TRL 7
- installation shielded in harbour,
- containerised and established on a barge,
- relying on sustainable local marine energy (for instance wave energy to electricity).
The project should preferably use non-proprietary equipement and processes.
Finally, the project expects New transformational business models
-Voluntary compensation through offsetting
-Buildings thermal rehabilitation
-New transformational business models
-Jobs shifts towards sustainable activities
-CO2 capture and climatically neutralisation
-CO2 emissions avoided by substituting petroleum plastics making
The French start-up seeks a partner with the skills needed to demonstrate the technical feasibility of extracting CO2 from seawater in economically viable conditions.
Advantages and innovation
Indirect greenhouse effect mitigation, resulting in climate runaway control - Long lasting CO2 sequestration - Ocean deacidification.
Financial innovation: call for Carbon credits rewarding technical climate innovation, voluntary offset as cash provider to turnover.
Societal improvement through fostering jobs shifts so as to preserve employment.
Technical Specification or Expertise Sought
Electrochemistry skills and other technical resources such as membranes and catalysis can deliver excellent results, combined or not. Whatever technical process to extract CO2 from seawater is sought, except biological ones.
Examples of convenient skills and abilities sought:
- landscaping State of the Art (mostly US, where ocean CO2 capture is a real bull market) so as to avoid any patent conflict with in force competing process,
- creating a convenient and acceptable simplified model of seawater for lab use, gradually mimicking seawater up to real ocean solution,
- from a small fraction of modelled seawater intake, producing H3O+ ions by electrolysis and using these H3O+ to acidify the bulk of modelled seawater intake,
- catching, some way or else, the CO2 speciated from bicarbonates and carbonates, e.g extracting gaseous CO2 by vacuum pump…