Convincing investors to back embryonic green industries like ‘direct air capture’ is hard, which makes grants from the likes of Elon Musk all the more welcome.
“You can read tens of papers, and they will tell you that that’s the way to do direct air capture.
But the revelation that the conventional wisdom on MOFs was wrong also liberated D’Alessandro’s team to develop their own MOF that would capture carbon and be suited to Australian conditions.Testing to date suggests they have achieved that with a MOF based around zirconium. The grant was one of 23 handed out last year by the Musk Foundation in the first iteration of its $US100 million incentive program for carbon removal projects.D’Alessandro said the grant came with obligations to optimise the project, including to ensure many of the materials were recyclable.
The situation has convinced many observers that the best way to commercialise direct air capture would be to attach the technology to streams of air with high concentrations of carbon dioxide; such as the exhaust from factories and coal-fired power stations. That’s why Gillespie intends for Southern Green Gas’ modules to harvest ordinary air in the vast Australian outback.
On the other hand, methane extracted from under the ground results in a net addition of carbon to the atmosphere when it is burned. “It is the only direct air capture technology where the energy supply is embedded and integrated with the capture infrastructure,” he said of Southern Green Gas’ module. “That is a differentiator – everyone else in the direct air capture space has to go and buy their energy from somewhere, so they are exposed to energy prices and they are exposed to the emissions intensity of the grid.”
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