The project, led by the University of Exeter, with Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Brunel University London and industrial partner tpgroup, intends to utilise the power of wind to power their process.
With funding coming from the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, Dr. Paul Halloran of the University of Exeter, hopes that the scheme will help meet the challenge of capturing carbon from the atmosphere, saying, “The challenge with capturing carbon from the atmosphere is that CO2 makes up only around half of one percent of the air.”
“So you need to push vast quantities of air through capture facilities to extract a meaningful amount of carbon.”
“Our approach sidesteps this challenge by allowing the ocean’s vast surface area to do the job for us.”
The process itself involves SeaCURE technology temporarily making seawater more acidic, causing the CO2 to ‘bubble out’. A concentrated stream of CO2 is then delivered to utilise and store the gas.
The CO2-depleted water is released back to the sea, where it can absorb further CO2 from the air. The initial pilot plant is planned to remove at least 100 tonnes of CO2 per year.
Dr. Tom Bell, of Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), said, “Combining our understanding of the ocean with a scalable engineering approach fuelled by renewable energy, SeaCURE has incredible potential to support the UK’s net zero carbon emissions.”
“PML’s research excellence and capability enables us to inform the design of the pilot plant, and we are excited to be able to apply our expertise to address the urgent issue of excess CO2 in the atmosphere.”