Direct Air Capture and the Circular Carbon Economy

Projections for the world's energy system and climate change mitigation scenarios that meet international agreements to limit global warming, usually assume the use of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and negative emissions technologies (NETs). Direct air capture (DAC) is a CDR technology that removes CO2 directly from the atmosphere using an engineered system. It is technically challenging chemical separation as air contains ~0.04% of CO2. This is approximately 2 – 3 orders of magnitude lower than CO2 concentrations present in other commonly targeted sources for CO2 capture, such as flue gases resulting from combustion of fuels and industrial processes. Consequently, the current state-of-the-art DAC processes result in the cost of CO2 of >£500/tCO2. In principle, DAC can be used to offset CO2 emissions from a wide variety of hard-to-abate sources, including those that are mobile and dispersed. However, the ultimate fate of the CO2, whether it is stored or utilised, along with choices related to the energy and materials inputs for a DAC process, dictates whether or not the overall DAC process results in negative emissions. In the past few years, DAC has received an increasing amount of attention from academia, policymakers and industry, as seen in development of new demonstration plants, process layouts, contactors and materials for DAC. These innovative technologies have a potential to significantly reduce the cost of CO2 removal, leading to the development of circular carbon economy.

This Special Issue of Clean Energy solicits papers on general topic of direct air capture for direct CO2 removal from the air. Papers on fundamental science, process engineering, techno-economic analysis and life-cycle environmental analysis are requested.  

Clean Energy is an international peer-reviewed, open-access journal sponsored by the National Institute of Clean and Low-Carbon Energy (NICE) and published bimonthly by Oxford University Press. All inquiries should be directed to Executive Editor-in-Chief Dr. Constance Senior ([email protected]).

The deadline for submission is April 30, 2022.