In Iceland, the world's largest carbon suction plant from the atmosphere, which works as a giant vacuum, has been commissioned.
The Swiss company CLIMEWORKS has launched a second commercial direct seizure of air, which is 10 times higher than the size of its predecessor Orca, which started operating in 2021.
Direct air supply technology (DAC) uses chemical reactions to remove carbon from the atmosphere, and then this carbon can be used for various purposes, including storage underground or transforming into useful products.
Claimeworks plans to transport harvested carbon underground, where it will naturally turn into a stone, keeping carbon forever. For this process known as sequestoration, the company cooperates with the Icelandic company Carbfix.
The uniqueness of this project is that the whole operation is ensured by the pure geothermal energy of Iceland. This means that the process of carbon collection and its subsequent conversion into a safe stone occurs without emissions from the technologies themselves, which helps to reduce carbon emissions in the process.
Although carbon removal technologies, such as DAC, remain controversy and criticism due to some significant problems, Climeworks continues to develop and improve their methods. The Mammoth project, which began construction in June 2022, is the largest in the world of its type and is already capable of removing large volumes of carbon from the atmosphere.
According to Climeworks, Mammoth will be able to remove 36,000 tons of carbon per year from the atmosphere at full power, which is an important step in reducing the impact of carbon on the climate and demonstrating the potential of carbon removal on the scale required to combat climate change.
This project is important for maintaining global efforts to reduce carbon emissions and keep climate preserving for future generations.
