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Written by Daniel Graeber for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--A shipping container in a national lab in Washington state may represent the next wave of carbon sequestration as a federally backed startup examines how seawater can play a role in storage.
Ebb Carbon (San Carlos, California), a startup founded by former brass at Google X, Tesla Incorporated (NASDAQ:TSLA) (Austin, Texas) and SolarCity, said it started operating a carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration and ocean deacidification system at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
"Given the realities of climate change, we must act quickly to deploy solutions to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere," said Ben Tarbell, the chief executive of Ebb Carbon and former vice president of products at Tesla Energy Operations.
Taking what it said was a "measured, science-based approach," and with federal backing from the likes of the Department of Energy, Ebb is filtering seawater through a series of membranes as part of a deacidification process.
"Once the acid is removed, the seawater can absorb additional carbon dioxide from the air and store it as bicarbonate in the water," the company explained. "Bicarbonate is a durable and naturally abundant form of carbon storage in the ocean."
Starting with a system that's about the size of a shipping container, Ebb said it could pull as much as 100 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually. That's paltry compared to Occidental Petroleum Corporation (NYSE:OXY) (Houston, Texas) Occidental Petroleum's planned direct-air capture (DAC) facility in Texas, which could capture as much as 500,000 tons of CO2 annually once operations begin next year. Subscribers to Industrial Info's Global Market Intelligence (GM) Production Project Database can click here for related reports.
Ebb's system is still at the laboratory scale, though it believes it could play a meaningful role in sequestration at scale, and eventually power the facility in part using marine energy. It would also help with stabilizing aquatic chemistry.
Technology meant to draw CO2 out of the atmosphere is evolving. At its mid-year conference in Texas, Industrial Info identified an estimated $37 billion worth of sequestration projects in the planning stages across North America, with the bulk of the efforts concentrated along the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Led by the U.S. majors, nearly a dozen energy companies have already expressed interest in developing large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the Houston area. That facility could capture as much as 50 million tons of CO2, and the Energy Department estimates the entire Gulf Coast region could store as much as 500 billion tons of CO2, the equivalent of 130 years of industrial- and power-based emissions.
Already this month, the Department of Energy said $1.2 billion in funding was available for DAC. Facilities in Texas and Louisiana could extract more than 2 million tons of CO2 per year, the equivalent of pulling 450,000 gas-powered vehicles off the road.
President Joe Biden has a lofty ambition of cutting as much as 1.8 billion tons of CO2 emissions by 2050 annually using sequestration technology, and the administration is backing that with incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act.
While the effort has been on sequestration, a report last year from the Congressional Research Service suggested it would be better to actually remove those 450,000 gas-powered vehicles from the road than pursue technology to remove the subsequent emissions.
"While some policymakers and other stakeholders support CCS as one option for mitigating CO2 emissions, others raise concerns that CCS may encourage continued fossil fuel use and that CO2 could leak from underground reservoirs into the air or other reservoirs, thereby negating climate benefits of CCS," the report read.
Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking over 200,000 current and future projects worth $17.8 Trillion (USD).
Ebb Carbon (San Carlos, California), a startup founded by former brass at Google X, Tesla Incorporated (NASDAQ:TSLA) (Austin, Texas) and SolarCity, said it started operating a carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration and ocean deacidification system at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
"Given the realities of climate change, we must act quickly to deploy solutions to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere," said Ben Tarbell, the chief executive of Ebb Carbon and former vice president of products at Tesla Energy Operations.
Taking what it said was a "measured, science-based approach," and with federal backing from the likes of the Department of Energy, Ebb is filtering seawater through a series of membranes as part of a deacidification process.
"Once the acid is removed, the seawater can absorb additional carbon dioxide from the air and store it as bicarbonate in the water," the company explained. "Bicarbonate is a durable and naturally abundant form of carbon storage in the ocean."
Starting with a system that's about the size of a shipping container, Ebb said it could pull as much as 100 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually. That's paltry compared to Occidental Petroleum Corporation (NYSE:OXY) (Houston, Texas) Occidental Petroleum's planned direct-air capture (DAC) facility in Texas, which could capture as much as 500,000 tons of CO2 annually once operations begin next year. Subscribers to Industrial Info's Global Market Intelligence (GM) Production Project Database can click here for related reports.
Ebb's system is still at the laboratory scale, though it believes it could play a meaningful role in sequestration at scale, and eventually power the facility in part using marine energy. It would also help with stabilizing aquatic chemistry.
Technology meant to draw CO2 out of the atmosphere is evolving. At its mid-year conference in Texas, Industrial Info identified an estimated $37 billion worth of sequestration projects in the planning stages across North America, with the bulk of the efforts concentrated along the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Led by the U.S. majors, nearly a dozen energy companies have already expressed interest in developing large-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) in the Houston area. That facility could capture as much as 50 million tons of CO2, and the Energy Department estimates the entire Gulf Coast region could store as much as 500 billion tons of CO2, the equivalent of 130 years of industrial- and power-based emissions.
Already this month, the Department of Energy said $1.2 billion in funding was available for DAC. Facilities in Texas and Louisiana could extract more than 2 million tons of CO2 per year, the equivalent of pulling 450,000 gas-powered vehicles off the road.
President Joe Biden has a lofty ambition of cutting as much as 1.8 billion tons of CO2 emissions by 2050 annually using sequestration technology, and the administration is backing that with incentives from the Inflation Reduction Act.
While the effort has been on sequestration, a report last year from the Congressional Research Service suggested it would be better to actually remove those 450,000 gas-powered vehicles from the road than pursue technology to remove the subsequent emissions.
"While some policymakers and other stakeholders support CCS as one option for mitigating CO2 emissions, others raise concerns that CCS may encourage continued fossil fuel use and that CO2 could leak from underground reservoirs into the air or other reservoirs, thereby negating climate benefits of CCS," the report read.
Industrial Info Resources (IIR) is the leading provider of industrial market intelligence. Since 1983, IIR has provided comprehensive research, news and analysis on the industrial process, manufacturing and energy related industries. IIR's Global Market Intelligence (GMI) helps companies identify and pursue trends across multiple markets with access to real, qualified and validated plant and project opportunities. Across the world, IIR is tracking over 200,000 current and future projects worth $17.8 Trillion (USD).
