Orca, the world’s biggest commercial direct air capture devices, pulls carbon dioxide from the air near Iceland’s capital. It resembles four massive air-conditioners, each the size of one shipping container sitting on top of another and holds 12 large round fans (powered by electricity from the geothermal plant) which suck air into steel catchment boxes where CO2 chemically bonds with a sand-like filtering substance. When heat is applied it releases the CO2, then mixed with water to create a drinkable fizzy water and injected several hundred meters down into basalt bedrock. Unfortunately, Orca’s output equals just three seconds of humanity’s annual CO2 emissions, but at least it’s shown that scrubbing the air clean and putting carbon back underground has real potential.
Orca, the world’s biggest commercial direct air capture devices, pulls carbon dioxide from the air near Iceland’s capital. It resembles four massive air-conditioners, each the size of one shipping container sitting on top of another and holds 12 large round fans (powered by electricity from the geothermal plant) which suck air into steel catchment boxes where CO2 chemically bonds with a sand-like filtering substance. When heat is applied it releases the CO2, then mixed with water to create a drinkable fizzy water and injected several hundred meters down into basalt bedrock. Unfortunately, Orca’s output equals just three seconds of humanity’s annual CO2 emissions, but at least it’s shown that scrubbing the air clean and putting carbon back underground has real potential.