Lunch Lecture e-Refinery

Specially for long-haul transportation, whether in the air, on land or at sea, e-fuels will play an important role to reduce CO2 emissions. From 2050 on, these fuels need to be produced fully circular in order to reach our net-zero climate targets. The newly released Powerfuels study from the German Energy Agency (LUT University and dena, 2020) finds that by 2050 80% of the global CO2 demand for e-fuels production will need to be provided from direct air capture technology (DAC).

A Climeworks DAC plant captures atmospheric CO2 applying a vacuum-temperature swing adsorption process. Air is drawn into the plant using fans and the CO2 within the air is chemically bound to the sorbent material. CO2 -free air is released back into the atmosphere. Once the filter is saturated with CO2, it is heated (using low-grade heat as an energy source) to around 100°C. The CO2 is then released from the filter and collected as concentrated gas and the continuous cycle is ready to start again. The Climeworks direct air capture technology runs exclusively on clean energy, and the modular CO2 collectors can be stacked to build machines of any size.

One of two things happens to the Climeworks air-captured carbon dioxide: either it is returned to earth, stored safely and permanently away for millions of years, or it is upcycled into climate-friendly products such as carbon-neutral fuels and materials. Currently, Climeworks is working on several e-fuels projects, including Zenid, a demonstration plant that will produce jet fuel from only air, water and renewable electricity in the Rotterdam region. The project aims to kick-start the industrialization of DAC-based e-fuels in order to be able to provide the vast amounts of fuels needed by 2050.

The founders and co-CEOs Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher, direct air capture from lab scale to industrial scale. In addition to its currently running capture facilities, Climeworks has started the construction of its new large-scale direct air capture and storage plant, Orca, in Iceland making carbon dioxide removal even more attainable to the public. Climeworks’ vision is to inspire one billion people to remove carbon dioxide from the air.

If you would like to register for our monthly announcement, you can register via: e-refinery@tudelft.nl

The e-Refinery Team

Every first Tuesday of each month we will organize an e-Refinery Lunch Lecture. On May 11 we will have the ONLINE lecture:

Speaker: 
Nino Berta - Project Developer e-fuels, Climeworks
Title: 
Fully circular fuels with CO₂ from the air
Date and time: 
May 11, 2021, 12:30 – 13:30 o’clock