![]() The company says it is anticipating those cost increases. Biomass, which is also useful for making the e-fuels likely necessary to decarbonize sectors like shipping and air travel, is probably going to start costing more in the decades ahead as demand heats up. Rogers and Rivest say there isn’t much stopping their approach from reaching that scale. To make a real difference in the climate, however, such measures would have to be expanded to a mind-boggling scale, on the order of billions of tons. The largest carbon removal schemes have pulled on the order of a few thousand tons of carbon out of the atmosphere each. “It is a polymer barrier that has been designed to have the right durability properties diffusion properties against moisture, oxygen, methane, etc.,” says Rivest.īesides cost, the other major factor standing in the way of new carbon sequestration companies making a difference in the climate is scale. The company, however, will not reveal what its impermeable layer is actually made of. ![]() “This is effectively simulating the environmental stresses that the materials would see over 1,000 years.” “We’re able to perform what’s called accelerated aging testing,” says Rogers. The company and its backers say they have conducted extensive tests, pounding their polymer with water and UV light, for instance, to ensure it will hold up being buried for centuries. A lot hinges on how tough the polymer barrier around the biomass blocks turns out to be, and whether it will hold up underground for decades and centuries without allowing in moisture that would start to rot the stored biomass. Read more: The Ocean is the Next Frontier for the Carbon Removal IndustryĪn initial question that springs to mind upon hearing of such a method is whether the carbon will really stay where Graphyte is putting it. (Rivest is also the originator of the carbon casting idea.) “This is one of the approaches that was really purpose built to solve the long term problem of carbon capture.” “I don’t think it’s as scientific or as sexy as some of the other approaches,” says Chris Rivest, a partner at Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate-oriented venture capital firm founded by Gates, which is funding Graphyte. Less wasted carbon, means more carbon stored per ton of biomass they take in, and a lower cost overall. And unlike other processes that heat biomass to convert it into high-carbon products like charcoal, which are then stored, Graphyte doesn’t release a lot of the carbon they’re trying to store as exhaust in the processing. The first is that their process doesn’t require large amounts of energy in order to work, unlike the methods of sucking carbon right out of the air, known as direct air capture. Rogers says that the low cost is primarily due to two factors. “This isn’t Graphyte sitting around with spreadsheets dreaming what we think the cost might be,” he says. He says the $100 per ton price he’s shopping potential buyers is based on prices that equipment and biomass suppliers are offering him. “Speaking as someone that’s been in this space for close to 20 years, this is the best idea out there,” says Barclay Rogers, the company’s CEO and co-founder. Graphyte says its approach will keep that carbon securely stored for 1,000 years or longer. Then the blocks are sealed with a special polymer, stacked, and buried, with sensors to monitor the carbon blocks to make sure that the sealant is holding up (if the sealant is broken, the block of biomass would likely start to decompose, releasing CO2 back into the atmosphere). Graphyte’s approach, which it refers to as carbon casting, works by gathering crop waste or other carbon-rich biomass, drying it, and compressing it into large blocks. Read more: Silicon Valley Is Betting on Carbon Capture. (The company has not yet sold the carbon removal service to potential buyers, but it says it will be announcing offtake agreements soon.) It has not completed a pilot plant yet-that facility will come next year-but it says there’s nothing holding it back from rapidly scaling up. In an announcement this morning, Graphyte claims that its new carbon sequestration technique beats the $100 per ton bar-though it declined to specify exactly what its internal cost per ton is. Many of the largest carbon removal startups project that level of affordability is years or even decades away.Ī Bill Gates-backed startup called Graphyte, however, says it’s hit that cost benchmark. Academics and industry experts generally agree that getting costs down below $100 per ton of sequestered CO2 would be the point at which, economically, such massive carbon capture schemes become feasible. Most of the current technologies are currently extremely expensive-often costing around $600 for every ton of sequestered CO2. One of the main factors holding back these methods of capturing and removing carbon emissions is cost.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |