TY  - JOUR
AU  - Deutz, Sarah
AU  - Bardow, André
TI  - Life-cycle assessment of an industrial direct air capture process based on temperature–vacuum swing adsorption
JO  - Nature energy
VL  - 6
IS  - 2
SN  - 2058-7546
CY  - London
PB  - Nature Publishing Group
M1  - FZJ-2021-05753
SP  - 203 - 213
PY  - 2021
AB  - Current climate targets require negative carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Direct air capture is a promising negative emission technology, but energy and material demands lead to trade-offs with indirect emissions and other environmental impacts. Here, we show by life-cycle assessment that the commercial direct air capture plants in Hinwil and Hellisheiði operated by Climeworks can already achieve negative emissions today, with carbon capture efficiencies of 85.4% and 93.1%. The climate benefits of direct air capture, however, depend strongly on the energy source. When using low-carbon energy, as in Hellisheiði, adsorbent choice and plant construction become more important, inducing up to 45 and 15 gCO2e per kilogram CO2 captured, respectively. Large-scale deployment of direct air capture for 1% of the global annual CO2 emissions would not be limited by material and energy availability. However, the current small-scale production of amines for the adsorbent would need to be scaled up by more than an order of magnitude. Other environmental impacts would increase by less than 0.057% when using wind power and by up to 0.30% for the global electricity mix forecasted for 2050. Energy source and efficiency are essential for direct air capture to enable both negative emissions and low-carbon fuels.
LB  - PUB:(DE-HGF)16
UR  - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:000614670900001
DO  - DOI:10.1038/s41560-020-00771-9
UR  - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/904183
ER  -