World largest Carbon capture plant opens in Iceland

New Delhi: Swiss company Climeworks has opened the biggest operational direct air capture (DAC) plant in the world to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The Mammoth plant, located in is nearly ten times bigger than Orca, its second-largest plant.

“Starting operations of our Mammoth plant is another proof point in Climeworks’ scale-up journey to megaton capacity by 2030 and gigaton by 2050,” said Jan Wurzbacher, Climeworks co-founder and co-CEO, in a press release from Climeworks.

The plant is built in a modular design, with twelve of its total 72 collector containers currently installed onsite.

Climeworks’ new DAC plant has an annual carbon capture capacity of 36,000 metric tons. The Mammoth plant, begun in 2022, will be completed by the end of this year.

The company’s first commercial DAC project was also in Iceland the Orca plant and has an annual capacity of 4,000 metric tons.

“Climeworks uses renewable energy to power its direct air capture process, which requires low-temperature heat like boiling water,” it said.

The geothermal energy partner ON Power in Iceland provides the energy necessary for this process,” Climeworks said.

“Once the CO₂ is released from the filters, storage partner Carbfix transports the CO₂ underground, where it reacts with basaltic rock through a natural process, which transforms into stone and remains permanently stored.”