Naturally, carbon dioxide is emitted into the air from fossil fuel - coal, oil, natural gas - usage. Carbon Engineering is currently in development of plant that aims to reuse the emitted carbon dioxide.
The machine is comprised of several fans that literally suck the carbon dioxide from the air with the use of a fluid. From there, it can then be recycled as fuel. The full-scale design can actually take in the emissions from 300,000 typical cars.
Trees typically do the same thing, but these mega fan machines are built on areas where trees ideally couldn't be planted on, such as deserts.
David Keith, Carbon Engineering president, notes: "We must do something about the rising levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere."
The pilot plant was built north of Vancouver. Forbes reports that it "works like a huge air purifier for carbon dioxide: air is captured from the atmosphere, passes through a 'scrubber' and carbon dioxide, which makes up just a tiny portion of that air, is extracted via a chemical capture solution."
"Over time, growth in accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere, contributes to the climate problems we're seeing today," says Adrian Corless, Carbon Engineering CEO.
However, Carbon Engineering Business Development Manager, Geoff Holmes says, "We would never be able to remove all the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere."
He continued as per Hacked, "But we can remove a small amount, we can cut the amount of carbon dioxide we're emitting to the atmosphere each year."
"CE is currently in pilot demonstration phase, with a demo plant in Squamish BC under initial operations at current time. This plant will capture ~1 ton of CO2 per day to demonstrate and test CE's design," Holmes added.
Carbon Engineering's first carbon capture plant will begin generating recycled carbon dioxide by next month.
Watch the video below to find out more on how these carbon capture plants work.
