The company has a unique approach: a proprietary electrochemical system – running on clean electricity – first converts seawater into hydrogen gas, oxygen gas, an acid stream, and an alkaline slurry. The slurry absorbs CO2 when exposed to air. The captured CO2 is discharged back into the ocean as stable mineral compounds meant to lock it up for 10,000 years or more.
The BBC reports that a major new plant in Singapore, said to be the world’s largest ocean carbon removal facility, is currently under construction. It will have over 100 times the capacity of the prototypes, capturing an expected 4,000 tons of CO2 and churning out around 100 tons of hydrogen annually.
Then there’s a much bigger commercial plant planned for Quebec, Canada, which could start operating as soon as 2026. This will boast a capacity to remove over 100,000 tons of CO2 and generate 3,600 tons of hydrogen each year.
The controversial machine sending CO2 to the ocean and making hydrogen - BBC
Seems like a rather as ingenious way to reduce atmospheric CO2 as long as the mineral CO2 deposited in the ocean is actually inert.
I think it is becoming pretty clear that we won’t be able to achieve CO2 reduction goals, so additional approaches to reduce actual CO2 are very much needed.
Edward Sanders, the CEO of Equatic, argues scalability is key. He told the BBC that the company’s approach could theoretically remove up to 20% of current global CO2 emissions if around 1,200 large facilities were deployed by the mid-2040s.
1,200 large facilities to account for 20% of current CO2 emissions seems in the realm of viability.
