In the next 30 years, industries will also need to consider direct air capture – technology capable of pulling the greenhouse gas out of the air – as a source of CO₂, but this will come at a cost to the consumer. There are plans to install a pressure-based capture facility at Tata Steel plant in South Wales that will capture waste CO₂ and convert it into transport fuels. These are likely to be the cheapest to run and the least environmentally damaging, making them a good choice for industries to source sustainable CO₂. Some new systems use solid absorbents and high pressures rather than high temperatures to adsorb the CO₂. Solid adsorbents, like those made from silica or cellulose powders, are much more stable. Solid adsorbents combined with high pressures could be the next generation of carbon capture. Liquid adsorbents decompose at high temperatures too, leaving toxic byproducts. That’s because they use liquids to absorb and purify the greenhouse gas at high temperatures, which produces over 99% pure CO₂, but requires a lot of energy and so is expensive. Industries which use CO₂ must plan for new carbon capture technology being available many years in the future, rather than expect immediate solutions.Īnd carbon capture units currently operating at selected locations globally, such as at the Boundary Dam coal-fired power station in Canada, are unlikely to offer the solution to CO₂ supply industries need. Ten years of research and engineering are usually needed before any new carbon capture technology can be deployed at the necessary scale. This project, it’s claimed, aims to be carbon-neutral in time by transporting the CO₂ via pipeline to an offshore storage site. The Drax C-Capture project, meanwhile, extracts CO₂ from emissions at a biomass energy plant in North Yorkshire, England. Some initiatives have got off the ground though, including The Acorn Project in St Fergus, Scotland, which separates CO₂ from natural gas – which is used to make hydrogen – and injects it under the North Sea. Two UK-based competitions to drive innovation in carbon capture and storage technology have been launched and closed by successive governments since 2005, the last one ending in 2015 without much success. Technologies which can capture carbon from power station chimneys or even directly from the air are being developed, but they aren’t available at the scale needed. Here, CO₂ is emitted in the highest volumes and concentrations are thousands of times higher that those found in the atmosphere. Something called “ point-source carbon capture technology” is currently the best alternative option, and involves scrubbing CO₂ from exhaust gases in the chimneys of factories and power plants. Separating CO₂ from the air is difficult, and far more expensive. Meanwhile, CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere are about 420 ppm – 0.042% of all the gases. If that system fails, there is no ready alternative. This CO₂ generated in the process of making fertiliser is relatively cheap and easy to separate. ![]() The problem is that the CO₂ used in industry comes from sources that are a well-established part of a complex supply chain. How can there be a shortage of something we’re desperately trying to emit less of? Couldn’t we just pull it down from the atmosphere and pump it into factories where it could be put to use? ![]() It may seem surprising to read that CO₂ – the greenhouse gas heating our world – also keeps certain essential industries functioning. ![]() While the government has paid to reopen a fertiliser plant, firms buying CO₂ will have to pay five times more than usual. The scarcity of CO₂ has caused havoc in UK supply chains, threatening shortages of meat, alcohol and fizzy drinks. In its solid form, known as cardice, CO₂ can even be used to transport and store temperature-sensitive pharmaceuticals – including the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. It is this CO₂ that is then taken up and used in different industries, from carbonating soft drinks to euthanising livestock. ![]() This is because ammonia fertilisers are made from nitrogen and hydrogen, and the latter comes from breaking down natural gas – a process which gives off carbon dioxide as a byproduct. The recent spike in natural gas prices has closed many plants that make fertiliser in the UK – sending a shockwave through lots of other industries.
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