Switzerland operates CO2 capture plant to generate energy

The world's first CO2 capture plant in Switzerland can capture 900 tons of CO2 per year for vegetable growing.

The world's first factory to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air and resell it on a commercial scale has opened in Switzerland, according to Live Science. The technology could help reduce global fossil fuel emissions by 1% by 2025.

Climeworks, a spin-off company of ETH Zurich University, is building the plant near the village of Hinwil, in an area between a waste incinerator and a large greenhouse.

The greenhouse, operated by agricultural company Gebrüder Meier Primanatura, will use CO2 from the air to promote lettuce growth. A waste incinerator will provide heat and renewable electricity to run the plant.

“The plant will capture 900 tons of CO2 per year,” says Valentin Gutknecht, business development manager at Climeworks. “It consists of several CO2 collectors, large canisters with filters inside. We blow air through these canisters for several hours. Once the filters are full, we heat the canisters to 100 degrees Celsius to extract the pure CO2 and regenerate the filters.”

Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher, co-founders of Climeworks, first developed Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology while working at ETH Zurich in the late 2000s. At the time, the team could only filter small amounts of CO2, and no one thought the system would be commercially viable.

“Capturing CO2 from the air has been a controversial topic in research for a long time,” Gutknecht said. “Many people thought that the cost could not be brought below $600 per ton of CO2, even at scale. But we have successfully broken that barrier.”

Gebrüder Meier Primanatura estimates that the CO2 from the Hinwil plant will increase lettuce production by 20-30%. Climeworks has previously partnered with carmaker Audi to investigate whether the technology could be used to produce synthetic fuels from CO2 captured from the air.

Climeworks hopes to build 250,000 similar plants by 2025, helping to reduce global fossil fuel emissions by 1%.

According to VNE