BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 4. According to the main technology providers, air capture costs are expected to decrease substantially in the next five to ten years, underpinned by a major increase in direct air capture (DAC) deployment worldwide, from the thousand-tonne scale to the million-tonne scale, Trend reports with reference to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
“The anticipated fall in cost from the first large prototype (first of a kind [FOAK]) to the nth of a kind (NOAK) plant has been attributed to specific components as well as improved constructability and well-established supply chains. For L-DAC the expected cost reduction from FOAK to NOAK is 27 percent, of which 42% comes from a single key equipment: the air contactor. While this unit is based on commercial cooling-tower technology, its expected cost reduction comes from a number of modifications to the standard commercial design, including packing geometry (allowing for cross flow exchange between solvent and air) and depth (reducing pressure drop and increasing packing wetting and therefore performance). For S-DAC, technology providers are expecting a threefold to sixfold cost reduction in the short to medium term,” reads the latest IEA report.
Performance improvement is expected to come mainly from innovative solvents able to reduce DAC-specific energy consumption (“learning by researching”) and from technology spillovers from other sectors and applications. Further cost reduction can be driven by deployment (“learning by doing”) and economies of scale, according to the report.
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