ASU-led collaboration receives $11.2 million to build a Southwest Regional Direct Air Capture Hub

(Press-News.org) Arizona State University and a team of its collaborators have received $11.2 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to begin developing a regional Direct Air Capture (DAC) Hub for removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. The team will prepare to build a multi-site Direct Air Capture Hub located in the Four Corners area of the Southwestern United States. Additionally, the project will receive $11.2 million in matching funds from the project partners. 

In May of 2022, the Biden administration announced the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s $3.5 billion DOE program to establish large-scale Direct Air Capture Hubs for removing carbon pollution from the air. ASU and its collaborators are one of five Topic Area 2 - Design Hubs supported across the country.

“Direct air capture is now a necessity if we are to manage CO2 levels in the atmosphere,” said Gary Dirks, ASU principal investigator for the project and senior director with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory and director of LightWorks®. “This project lays the foundation for technologies and storage facilities to scale together. At the same time, the project lays the foundation for a new industry that can provide much needed employment and a robust tax base for rural communities.”

The ASU-led team has identified three sites in east-central Arizona, northwestern New Mexico and southeastern Utah as locations for the hub. These sites will use new technologies to capture and remove carbon from the air as well as store the carbon that is collected. Additionally, the sites will use new solar and wind power to support the DAC technology — creating a renewable energy economy in the same region of aging coal plants that are being retired. The team’s goal is to be a testbed for carbon capture, utilization and storage in the southwestern region.

In addition to ASU, key collaborators include Black & Veatch; CarbonCapture Inc..; Carbon Collect Ltd.; Carbon Solutions; Proton Green; New Mexico Tech; University of Utah; Sideporch; Tallgrass Energy; and the Arizona Geological Survey.

“The establishment of Regional DAC Hubs in the U.S. is a pivotal step forward in our nation’s and the world's efforts to scale up direct air capture of carbon dioxide,” said Peter Schlosser, vice provost and vice president of the Global Futures Laboratory at ASU. “In the Four Corners region, ASU has assembled a talented, committed, and innovative team of academic, industry and government partners to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, utilize part of it and sequester the rest into geological reservoirs. It’s going to take all of us, working together with an urgent sense of purpose, to take full advantage of this opportunity to create solutions to the rapidly accelerating climate crisis.”

Direct Air Capture is a concept pioneered by Klaus Lackner, founding director of the ASU Center for Negative Carbon Emissions in the Global Futures Laboratory, and a professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment with Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. Lackner was the first person (in 1999) to suggest artificial capture of carbon dioxide from air as a way of reducing atmospheric carbon and lessening global warming.

Additionally, ASU is a leader in research and development in DAC technology through its Center for Negative Carbon Emissions. The center is actively exploring sorbents that are commercially available for high capacity, rapid CO2 sorption and release.

In the first phase of this project, the team will develop a plan to use cutting-edge direct air capture technology to remove at least 1 million metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year. The team will complete initial engineering studies for anchoring the DAC systems, develop the infrastructure plan to transport the carbon to the sequestration sites, and develop a storage plan for the three sites that could support at least 12 years of carbon capture.

“This award will enable Arizona State University and Black & Veatch to more quickly advance decarbonization through direct air capture technology,” said Algert Prifti, carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technology manager for Black & Veatch. “The project will build upon Black & Veatch's more than 30 years of global leadership in CCUS, and it will further enable full-scale commercialization of CO2-reducing solutions around the world.”

The team has also created a “Community Benefits Plan” in which the group will be engaged with local communities, Tribes, state and local governments and other stakeholders to establish a Hub that supports economic development reflecting the cultures, values and natural environments of the region. It will also provide training, conduct STEM outreach, engage with local unions, trade schools and community colleges to develop an educational pathway for the workforce needed to help make the Southwest Regional DAC Hub successful.

“This is an important economic development opportunity for a region that has seen significant job losses due to the closure of coal-fired power plants,” said Lauren Keeler, Community Benefits Lead for the project and director of ASU’s Just Energy Transition Center in the Global Futures Laboratory. “The community benefits plan outlines how communities can be involved in hub planning and decision-making so that community values and community development are central to the hub.”

“The community benefits plan is also about sustainability,” Keeler explained. “Land, water, and energy are all required for the DAC hub. We want to make sure that those resources are used sustainably and that communities have a strong voice in resource decisions.”

The two co-anchor DAC technology companies, Carbon Collect and CarbonCapture, Inc., are bringing direct air capture expertise to the project.

Pól Ó Móráin, CEO and Co-Founder of Carbon Collect Ltd., said: “The allocation of this funding underscores the groundbreaking technology we have developed and our strong collaboration with ASU. The MechanicalTree™, which has been operational at ASU’s Tempe campus, is now advancing toward its Gen-II phase, highlighting our readiness to scale this vital technology in the fight against climate change. This government support allows us to take the next step alongside our partners, marking a key milestone in the evolution of carbon capture.”

"We're extremely excited to deploy our next-generation modular DAC systems as part of ASU's Southwest Regional DAC Hub." said Adrian Corless, CEO, CarbonCapture Inc. “The DAC Hub represents a major opportunity for Arizona to leverage its considerable business-friendly infrastructure, extensive academic research capabilities, and deep renewable energy assets to become a worldwide center of excellence for climate tech. These factors also made Arizona the perfect home for our DAC manufacturing facility, the first of its kind in the world." 

The project was awarded in October 2024. If successful, the team will seek to proceed into construction and operation of the Southwest Regional DAC Hub.

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