The cost of sucking up carbon dioxide in the air is unexpectedly cheap

Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft who became one of the world's leading wealthians, has invested its assets in various philanthropic projects. One of them is to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to produce fuels and others, but this has the problem of "cost is too costy". However, it has been reported that carbon dioxide can be extracted considerably cheaper than the past assumption by analysis in a plant actually built in Canada.

Sucking carbon dioxide from air is cheaper than scientists thought
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05357-w

You can see how the plant built in Canada is by reading the following article.

Bill Gates also builds a huge plant for "CO2 fixation project" that aims attention and budget - GIGAZINE


In the report of the American Physical Society reported in 2011, it was said that it takes at least 600 dollars (about 66,000 yen) to extract 1 ton of carbon dioxide. However, according to a survey by carbon engineering researchers who actually operate a carbon dioxide extraction plant in Canada, the cost of drawing 1 ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is $ 232 to $ 232 (About 25,000 yen) and that it will fit. David Keith, a chief scientist at Carbon Engineering and a climate physicist at Harvard University, commented, "We are trying to commercialize carbon dioxide fixing business seriously."

In addition to carbon engineering, operators engaged in carbon dioxide fixing business have Climeworks of Switzerland. Climeworks operates plants in Zurich, Switzerland, but it currently costs about $ 600 (about 66,000 yen) to extract 1 ton of carbon dioxide. However, according to the expectations of Climeworks staff, the cost is expected to be less than 100 dollars (about 11,000 yen) after 5 to 10 years as the operation increases.

A system that captures atmospheric CO2 and turns it into a stone started operation - GIGAZINE


In a carbon engineering plant, carbon dioxide is changed to potassium carbonate by passing air through a column containing potassium hydroxide solution, and then various treatments are carried out to form a mass of calcium carbonate. Since calcium carbonate separates into calcium oxide and carbon dioxide when it overheats, only carbon dioxide is extracted and compressed, and it is buried underground through a pipeline. Carbon engineering plans to synthesize fuel using this carbon dioxide in the future and Keith said that fuel can be generated at less than 1 dollar per liter (about 110 yen). When optimizing the plant in this way it is said that the processing cost of carbon dioxide can be reduced to 94 dollars per ton (about 10,000 yen).


According to Krauss Lackner, the top of the negative emission center at Arizona State University, if it is supposed that carbon dioxide can be processed at 100 dollars per ton (about 11,000 yen), the carbon dioxide generated by the car exhaust gas will be offset It will cost 22 cents per liter of gasoline (about 24 yen) to do. "22 cents per liter (about 24 yen) is not that much too expensive," Luckner says.

After all, whether carbon dioxide fixed business produces profit depends on factors such as energy price and government subsidy, but the cost of extracting carbon is not less than the market price of carbon for a while for a while That's right. For example,Carbon creditsNow trading is done at about 16 euros (about 2000 yen) per ton. However, it is thought that technology to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere can gain a foothold to the market if it can be converted to a useful product such as fuel.

Carbon engineering plans to build facilities to produce 200 barrels of fuel every day by 2021 and plans to build a commercial plant that produces 2000 barrels of fuel each day.