System Models of Sulfur‐, Electricity‐, and Methane‐Powered Biological Carbon Capture for Negative Emissions

Abstract

Nearly every plausible emission scenario that limits climate change to less than 2 °C includes net negative global emissions in the late 21st century. These negative emissions are achieved using negative emission technologies (NETs), a diverse class of currently theoretical technologies that use energy to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. While a number of technological options are available, many of the most promising CO2 capture systems take advantage of biological systems and are thus driven by light energy. Sulfur offers an alternative energy source for biological carbon capture. Herein, system models are presented that use reduced sulfur to power marine chemosynthetic carbon capture, with four proposed alternatives for the management of the produced biomass and sulfate. These four alternatives differ in the energy and process used to reduce the sulfate produced by the growth of the microorganisms back to sulfur or sulfide and in sum, the four systems create direct air carbon capture systems that utilize either geologic reduced sulfur, electricity, or biomass as energy sources. Thus, three new energy sources for direct air carbon capture are identified.

The Thermodynamics‐Based Benchmarking Analysis on Energy‐Efficiency Performance of CO2 Capture Technology: Temperature Swing Adsorption as Case Study

“…[ 8 ] Adsorption is considered to be a promising technology for CO 2 capture due to its low energy consumption and low operating costs. [ 9 ] The adsorption method makes full use of medium and low temperature energy, and the regeneration temperature is lower than absorption method. The adsorption method has no latent heat of evaporation and energy consumption is lower than absorption method.…”