Startups aim to curb climate change by pulling carbon dioxide from the ocean —not the air

Every year, hundreds of container ships slide into the Port of Los Angeles, the busiest in the Western Hemisphere. Belching carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), they deliver some $300 billion in goods to trucks and railcars that add their own pollution to our warming planet. But one long gray barge docked at the port is doing its part to combat climate change. On the barge, which belongs to Captura, a Los Angeles–based startup, is a system of pipes, pumps, and containers that ingests seawater and sucks out CO 2 , which can be used to make plastics and fuels or buried. The decarbonated seawater is returned to the ocean, where it absorbs more CO 2 from the atmosphere, in a small strike against the inexorable rise of the greenhouse gas. After a yearlong experiment with the barge, which is designed to capture 100 tons of CO 2 per year, Captura is planning to open a 1000-ton-per-year facility later this year in Norway that will bury the captured CO 2 in rock formations under the North Sea. Equatic, another Los Angeles–based startup, is launching an even larger 3650-ton-per-year ocean CO 2 capture plant this year in Singapore, and other companies are planning demos as well. Although these ocean capture ventures deploy different chemical processes, most are designed to use renewable electricity to extract CO 2 from seawater. “We’re kind of doing the rev...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news