Open-Source Hardware Direct Air Capture

Current technological solutions for carbon capture already in operation are very expensive – with design and construction costs running in tens of billions of dollars – and provide minimal reduction in the overall carbon footprint. To have a meaningful impact in the trajectory of climate change, we will need to rapidly deploy tens of thousands of these multi billion dollar facilities. At DAC Engineering, we aim to deploy thousands (and millions in the future) of cost-friendly and modular DAC units, which address the current restrictions of the large scale model of CCSU technologies.

One of the innovative aspects of our design is that we utilize the air flow as one of our main heat exchange mechanisms. Our process intakes a massive amount of air that goes through the air contactors and as carbon-free air exits these contactors, we utilize the existing air stream to operate our three air-cooled heat exchangers, saving close to $700,000 in energy costs.

Close to 230 million tons of CO₂ is used every year, mainly in the fertilizer industry and in the oil and gas industry for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) applications. Placing our unit around chemical plants will enable the production companies to use the captured CO₂ in their oil recovery process, exhibiting one of the best examples of circular economy.

Furthermore, CO₂ is widely used in commercial applications including food and beverage production and building materials. Our sponsor, Carbon Upcycling Technologies has a consumer goods eCommerce site called Expedition Air, which utilizes their carbon do create products that incorporate CO₂. Making low-carbon materials accessible to all supply chains, which allows and empowers consumers to use their buying power to enforce the need for products made from CO₂ help rather than hinder our planet.

Since our process intakes air as an input feed from the atmosphere, variation in the feed parameters is expected. Our DAC unit incorporates the fluctuations and variation aspects of temperature, pressure, moisture content, and CO₂ and water concentrations in air. In order to ensure a year-round successful operation, our process has been designed to encompass two average seasonal cases (summer and winter) for our pilot location basis, Calgary, Alberta. To ensure an effective design, we utilized the two seasonal cases results to size our DAC unit. Additionally, we have completed sensitivity analysis on extreme weather conditions to study how our process would respond to these fluctuating weather conditions.

Our units are capable of producing close to 500 tCO₂/year, which can be utilized in various ways as mentioned. However, what makes our design effective is the high degree of purity that CO₂ is produced at. With a purity greater than 96%, our product is suitable for all various inputs for downstream processes such as EOR.

One of the main issues that is faced by industry is the requirement of a large capital expenditure to set up new carbon capture plants. For instance, in November 2015, Shell and CNRL began operating Quest, a carbon capture project from point source emissions that costs more than $1.35 billion CAD with more than 64% of that capital cost coming from the government and subsequently taxpayers. High initial cost and feasibility associated with these projects may hinder market growth and is perhaps one of the biggest restraining factors to CCSU.

Rejecting the big-is-better ground rule of industrial production has profound implications for production strategy decisions in the future. Leaders must now consider some of the advantages of small scale models such as reduced risk, financial flexibility, and geographic compatibility as they plan the future infrastructure of their companies.