新型碳去除裝置吸收二氧化碳的速度比地球海洋快 99,000 倍

Recently Business Insider reported the following:

A new carbon removal plant will absorb carbon dioxide 99,000 times faster than Earth's oceans

Business Insider - Ellyn Lapointe, Jessica Orwig

Wed, June 26, 2024 at 8:54 a.m. PDT·5 min read

The oceans are our planet's largest carbon sink, naturally absorbing about 25% of the carbon dioxide that humans emit. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) companies like Equatic are trying to harness that natural process to absorb even more.

"We take what the ocean does already and amplify that," Edward Sanders, COO at Equatic, told Business Insider.

 On June 18, Equatic announced it started engineering designs for the world's first commercial-scale, ocean-based CDR plant, Sanders said. The plant could remove carbon dioxide at a rate that's 99,000 times as fast as the oceans.

Equatic is one of about a dozen marine CDR companies that have sprouted in recent years in an effort to accelerate the ocean's natural capacity to absorb more CO2. A report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine estimates that marine CDR could remove billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.

The technology is still in its infancy and it's unclear what the environmental impacts will be — especially at a large scale. But CDR is a necessary step in mitigating climate change; reducing greenhouse gas emissions is no longer enough to limit global warming to 1.5 °C to 2 °C by the end of the century, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

How Equatic is sucking CO2 from the air

There are a lot of different ways to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Equatic's technology, for example, uses something called seawater electrolysis. It takes seawater and runs an electric current through it, which splits the water into hydrogen, oxygen, and two separate fluids: one acid and a base.

"The process stores carbon that was dissolved in the water as a solid, similar to the material that makes up seashells, and creates an alkaline slurry that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via a cooling tower," Sanders told BI over email.

As an added bonus, the hydrogen can be converted into clean hydrogen fuel, which Equatic can either reuse to power its CDR plants or sell. Companies including Boeing and payment service provider Stripe have signed contracts with Equatic for its hydrogen.

Equatic already has two small pilot plants to validate its technology — one in LA and a second in Singapore.

The company is also building a larger plant scheduled to go online in Singapore later in 2024, which will absorb about 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually and lay the groundwork for the company's first commercial-scale plant. That plant will launch in 2026 or 2027 in partnership with Canadian carbon removal project developer Deep Sky.

Researchers estimate that by 2050, it will cost between $230 and $540 to remove one ton of CO2 from the atmosphere. But Equatic offsets the cost of CDR by producing and selling green hydrogen. The company predicts the new plant could achieve CDR at less than $100 per ton by 2030.

Ultimately, Sanders envisions a global fleet of these CDR plants.

"Once we get to that point, we're not talking about a hundred thousand tons, we're not talking about millions of tons, we're talking about hundreds of millions of tons because this technology can be replicated in many countries," Sanders said.

Questions remain about CDR's economic and environmental impact

Since there are no commercial-scale, ocean-based CDR plants online yet, practically nothing is known about their impact on the environment and local economies.

In general, ocean-based CDR techniques manipulate seawater in ways that could potentially disrupt sea life.

"You're going to be pulling in phytoplankton and bugs and other potential living creatures from the ocean and filtering those out can have some environmental impacts," Jessica Cross, an earth scientist with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory who specializes in CDR for the oceans, told BI.

Exactly what those impacts are depends on where a CDR operation is and what organisms are involved.

Sanders told BI that Equatic closely monitors discharge from its CDR plants to ensure they comply with legal pollution standards. Its upcoming plant in Singapore will also filter seawater to remove sea life before water enters the plant.

We can't fully rely on CDR to mitigate climate change

Because CDR is expensive and limited in scale, we can't abandon decarbonization and emissions reduction efforts, Cross said.

The benefits of this technology are "far in the future, whereas the risks of initiating this industry and this infrastructure development are local, short-term, and much more immediate," Cross said.

"Figuring out how to balance, again, this sort of diffuse global benefit with this local risk that happens, it is something that responsible researchers should be grappling with," she said.

Translation

海洋是地球上最大的碳匯，自然地吸收了人類排放的約 25% 的二氧化碳。 Equatic 等二氧化碳移除 (CDR) (Carbon dioxide removal) 公司正在嘗試利用這個自然過程來吸收更多二氧化碳。

Equatic 首席營運長 Edward Sanders 告訴《商業內幕》： “我們借鑒了海洋已經做的事情，並將其放大。”

Sanders 表示，6 月 18 日，Equatic 宣布開始為世界上第一個商業規模的碳移除工廠進行工程設計。該工廠去除二氧化碳的速度是海洋的 99,000 倍。

Equatic 是近年來興起的十幾家海洋 CDR 公司之一，其目的是提高海洋吸收更多二氧化碳的自然能力。美國國家科學、工程和醫學院的報告估計，海洋 CDR 可以消除大氣中數十億噸的二氧化碳。

該技術仍處於起步階段，目前還不清楚會對環境產生什麼影響 - 尤其是大規模的影響。但碳移除是緩解氣候變遷的必要步驟；根據政府間氣候變遷專門委員會，減少溫室氣體排放已不足以到本世紀末將全球暖化限制在 1.5°C 至 2°C 之內。

Equatic 如何從空氣中吸收二氧化碳

從大氣中吸收二氧化碳的方法有很多。例如，Equatic 的技術使用了一種稱為海水電解的技術。它吸收海水並通過電流，將水分解成氫氣、氧氣和兩種不同的液體：一種酸和一種鹼。

Sanders 透過電子郵件告訴 BI： “該過程將溶解在水中的碳以固體形式存儲，類似於構成貝殼的材料，並產生鹼性漿液，通過冷卻塔去除大氣中的二氧化碳。”

作為額外的好處，氫氣可以轉化為清潔的氫燃料，Equatic 可以重新用為它其 CDR 工廠提供動或出售它。包括波音公司以及支付服務提供商 Stripe 在內的公司已與 Equatic 簽署了提供氫氣的合約。

Equatic 已經擁有兩個小型試點工廠來驗證其技術 - 一個位於洛杉磯，另一個位於新加坡。

該公司還正在建造一座更大的工廠，計劃於 2024 年稍後在新加坡投產，每年將吸收約 4,000 噸二氧化碳，並為該公司第一座商業規模工廠奠定基礎。該工廠將與加拿大的碳移除項目開發商 Deep Sky 於2026 年或 2027 年合作啟動。

研究人員估計，到 2050 年，從大氣中去除一噸二氧化碳的成本將在 230 至 540 美元之間。但 Equatic 透過生產和銷售綠氫來抵消 CDR 的成本。該公司預計，到 2030 年，新工廠的碳移除價格將低於每噸 100 美元。

最終，Sanders 設構想了一個由這些碳移除工廠組成的全球隊伍。

Sanders說: 「一旦我們達到這一點，我們講及的不會是十萬噸，我們講及的不會是數百萬噸，我們講及的是數億噸，因為這項技術可以在許多國家複製」。

碳移除的經濟和環境影響仍有疑問

由於目前還沒有商業規模的海上碳移除工廠，因此實際上其對環境和當地經濟的影響一無所知。

一般來說，基於海洋的碳移除技術是去干擾海水, 這方式可能會擾亂海洋生態。

太平洋西北國家實驗室專門研究海洋碳移除的地球科學家 Jessica Cross 對BI表示：「你將從海洋中吸入浮游植物、蟲子和其他潛在的生物，將它們過濾掉可能會對環境產生一些影響」。

這些影響到底是什麼, 取決於碳移除操作的地點以及涉及的生物。

Sanders告訴 BI，Equatic 密切監控其碳移除工廠的排放，以確保它們符合法定污染標準。其即將在新加坡建造的工廠還將過濾海水，在水進入工廠之前濾去海洋生物。

我們不能完全依靠碳移除來緩解氣候變遷

Cross 表示，由於碳移除成本高昂且規模有限，我們不能放棄脫碳及減碳排放的努力。

Cross 說，這項技術的好處 「是在遙遠的未來，而啟動這個產業, 和其基礎設施發展的風險是局部的、短期的、更直接的」。

她說: 「再次弄清楚如何平衡這種分散的全球利益, 相對局部地區風險的發生，是負責任的研究人員應該努力解決的問題」。

              So, the designs for the world's first commercial-scale, ocean-based CDR plant has started. The plant could remove carbon dioxide at a rate that's 99,000 times as fast as the oceans. Researchers estimate that by 2050, it will cost between $230 and $540 to remove one ton of CO2 from the atmosphere, and will be less than $100 per ton by 2030. It seems that we will have another tool to reduce carbon in the air so as to fight against global warming.