Abstract
Direct air capture (DAC) has the potential to contribute to tackling climate change. But, the costs per ton of conventional systems are too high to be economically feasible. Carbyon aims to develop a thin-film based direct air capturing system to bring the costs down by more than an order of magnitude, thereby making it feasible. Carbyon is developing a highly porous structure onto which a sorbent is chemically deposited. When air passes through the structure, CO2 is captured and, after heating it up, it releases the CO2 in a sealed-off chamber, thereby separating themolecules from the air. Carbyon uses a rotating drum in a continuous cycle between the ambient chamber and a sealed off desorption chamber, this makes it a temperature swing adsorption process (TSA).
This thesis developed a model to predict the energy consumption of the machine, since this is the biggest contribution to total costs of capturing a ton of CO2. Implementing end-capping chemistry suppressing the water uptake proved to reduce the energy consumption by 33%. Recovery and re-using of the consumed energy can further reduce the energy consumption by 9%. Methods to further reduce the consumption are proposed, having the potential to half the remaining consumption.
Lastly, this thesis takes a step back and provides an extension that allows optimization of the
energy consumption and the total costs of capturing one ton of CO2.
| Date of Award | 9 Feb 2022 |
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| Original language | English |