Littau K.
Palo Alto Research Center (Parc), US
Keywords: carbon-nuetral, CO2, fuels, solar, transportation
Although carbon capture and storage has been proposed as an effective means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, this is not a realistic solution for mobile emitters where the capture system would need to be carried with the vehicle. A viable approach is to extract post-combustion CO2 directly from the atmosphere at a storage site enabling the sequestration of vehicle-generated CO2 – the atmosphere becomes, in effect, a free CO2 transportation medium. As renewable energy for hydrogenation becomes cost-competitive, extracted CO2 would be used as the carbon source for fuel production, eliminating the need for sequestration. This presentation will: (1) describe an electrochemically driven atmospheric CO2 capture device that has been constructed for this purpose; and (2) show quantitative comparisons to existing carbon capture technology. The demonstrated method achieves the most efficient continuous CO2 extraction from the atmosphere to date. The application of this technology is evaluated against the requirements for carbon capture and synthetic fuel production including air handling, rate, cost and reliability.
Journal: TechConnect Briefs
Volume: Technical Proceedings of the 2008 Clean Technology Conference and Trade Show
Published: June 1, 2008
Pages: 144 - 147
Industry sector: Energy & Sustainability
Topic: Solar Technologies
ISBN: 1-4200-8502-0