An Introduction to Carbon Capture: What? Why? How? When? presented by Doug Barnes

Join a meeting of the Tuesday Science & Technology Group to hear a presentation by Doug Barnes, Head of Chemistry at C Capture, a spin-out company from the School of Chemistry at the University of Leeds. To give you a flavour of the subject matter to be covered, Doug has provided the following notes:

What?

The basic premise of carbon capture is that where we have large scale, point sources of CO₂, such as factories, power stations, chemical plants, etc., rather than allowing those carbon emissions to go into the atmosphere, we can collect them and either store the CO₂or use it as a feedstock for other processes, preventing them from joining the global carbon cycle and adding to the increasingly obvious effects of climate change.

Why?

Because we’re in really deep hole and we desperately need to stop digging! Some 85% of global primary energy needs are met by fossil fuels, causing tens of billions of tonnes of CO₂emissions each year. In addition, various key industrial processes, including but not limited to production of cement, iron & steel, ammonia, aluminium, and glass, are, with current technologies, inherently carbon intensive. Carbon capture technology offers us a means to decarbonise our industrial and energy production sectors in the short term, in doing so buying ourselves the time and breathing room we need to reimagine and rebuild our economies on a more sustainable footing over the course of this century. Certain variations of the technology, such Direct Air Capture (DAC) and BioEnergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), may even provide a route to start actively removing at least some of the trillion tonnes of CO₂ we have added to the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

How?

In essence, carbon capture is simply a problem of gas separation – something we have been doing on industrial scales for well over a hundred years. Many dozens of approaches have been developed, or are in active development, each with their own potential pros and cons. Far and away the most mature technologies are so-called amine based, post-combustion carbon capture solvents and whilst arguably the basic technology development is complete, questions remain to be answered particularly surrounding the economics of the process, and the potential environmental impact of deploying such technologies at the necessary scale. So-called third generation technologies, such as that being developed at C-Capture, will be essential in the coming decades if we are to get a handle on this situation.

When?

As soon as possible. As of 2019, there were 19 large scale facilities around the world with a total capture capacity of around 40 million tonnes of CO₂per year, roughly 0.1% of total global emissions. To avert to worst impacts of climate change, the International Energy Agency estimates this capacity will need to increase to around 2 billion tonnes per year by 2030 with a further increase to 7 billion tonnes by 2050. For comparison, total global oil consumption stands at around 4 billion tonnes per year. The scale of the challenge is enormous, even daunting, but the scale of the impact on our way of life if we fail doesn’t really bear thinking about.