Thermal Removal of Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere: Energy Requirements and Scaling Issues

Authors

Ted von Hippel, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical UniversityFollow

Submitting Campus

Daytona Beach

Department

Physical Sciences

Document Type

Article

Publication/Presentation Date

5-1-2018

Abstract/Description

I conduct a systems-level study of direct air capture of CO2 using techniques from thermal physics. This system relies on a combination of an efficient heat exchanger, radiative cooling, and refrigeration, all at industrial scale and operated in environments at low ambient temperatures. While technological developments will be required for such a system to operate efficiently, those developments rest on a long history of refrigeration expertise and technology, and they can be developed and tested at modest scale. I estimate that the energy required to remove CO2 via this approach is comparable to direct air capture by other techniques. The most challenging aspect of building a system that could remove 1 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere per year is the power demand of 112 to 420 GW during the wintertime operational period.

Publication Title

Climatic Change

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-018-2208-0

Publisher

Springer

Scholarly Commons Citation

von Hippel, T. (2018). Thermal Removal of Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere: Energy Requirements and Scaling Issues. Climatic Change, 148(4). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-018-2208-0