Carbon Engineering starts FEED for second DAC facility

Vancouver’s Carbon Engineering said October 31 it had been selected by 1Point5, its US development partner, to begin front end engineering and design (FEED) work on a second direct air capture (DAC) facility in Texas that will be capable of capturing 1mn mt/yr of CO₂ from the atmosphere.

The facility, on a 106,000-acre site in Kleberg County, Texas, would be the first installment of what could ultimately be scaled up to a development that could capture 30mn mt/yr of CO₂, permanently sequestering the carbon in a geological formation capable of storing 3bn mt of CO₂.

Carbon Engineering and 1Point5 are currently constructing their first facility in Texas, intended to capture 500,000 mt/yr of CO₂ that will be used by Occidental Petroleum at its Permian basin enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations.

“This work brings together all our progress from the past months to get us ready for major deployment in the US,” Carbon Engineering CEO Daniel Friedmann said. “Working hand in hand with our partners at Occidental and 1PointFive, we’ve been focused on building an accelerated deployment approach, while simultaneously beginning construction of the first, large-scale commercial facility in Texas.”

This “copy and paste” approach, he said, will be used for the widespread deployment of DAC facilities across the US, all capable of capturing at least 1mn mt/yr of CO₂. And it will take advantage of improved incentives for DAC under the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides tax incentives of up to US$180/mt of CO₂ captured for permanent sequestration and $135/mt for carbon used in EOR operations.

At its technology development and innovation centre in Squamish, north of Vancouver, Carbon Engineering is also working to improve its DAC technology, and is currently testing an improved capture material that could improve capture efficiency by 20%.

The new sequestration site in Texas, owned by privately-held agricultural production and resource management company King Ranch, is located on the US Gulf Close and close to several large industrial emitters.

“We are excited to work with King Ranch on what will be the largest DAC deployment project in the world, as we continue our plans to provide affordable and practical industrial-scale decarbonisation solutions,” Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub said. “We believe large-scale DAC, which is an innovative engineered CO₂ removal solution, will play an important role in helping organisations and nations reduce their net CO₂ emissions and provide the scale necessary to make a difference in addressing climate change globally.”