The Swiss company Climeworks proposes a new method to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere. It can be a valid complement to reducing emissions.
Countless scientific studies have confirmed that climate change is related to high concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, emitted by the contamination of humans and livestock we raise.
Scientists have been recommending reduce CO2 emissions. Decades have also been echoing in their empty consciences the unfulfilled promises of politicians and polluting companies, because CO2 records in the atmosphere are broken year after year.
Since the reduction of emissions does not come, companies like Climeworks propose an alternative: capture CO2 from the air, and render it harmless. Is that how it works Orca, the world’s largest CO2 capture and storage plant, which has just been launched in Iceland:
Killer whale is capable of removing from the atmosphere 4,000 tons of CO2 per year.
Best of all, its modular and scalable design allows plants of this type to be built in just 15 months, which is how long Orca has taken to build, and larger or smaller complexes can be easily created.
How do plants that capture and remove CO2 from the air work?
Orca has compact fans equipped with specific filters, which absorb air. The filters trap the CO2, and let the purified air pass through.
This captured CO2 is heated to between 80 and 100 degrees Celsius, obtaining Pure CO2.
In collaboration with an Icelandic company called Carbfix, CO2 mixes with water and is carried through pipes to underground caves where CO2 reacts with basalt rocks, and in a few years it becomes a harmless mineral.
The power plant needs electricity to operate, but uses renewable energy. In fact the idea is install them next to power plants, and take advantage of the energy that is wasted at night.
With this Orca system manages to eliminate 90% of the CO2 from the air. Total, 4,000 tons per year, which is a minimum quantity worldwide, but which can be important if plants of this type are installed all over the world.
It is an emergency solution, because it is much cheaper to reduce CO2 emissions rather than having to capture them from the air. But seeing how slow the issue is, at the moment it is one of the few current solutions that they actually reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.