{"id":114307,"date":"2022-08-17T07:18:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-17T05:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/?p=114307"},"modified":"2022-08-11T08:57:46","modified_gmt":"2022-08-11T06:57:46","slug":"could-modified-rail-cars-capture-co2-from-the-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/could-modified-rail-cars-capture-co2-from-the-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Could modified rail cars capture CO2 from the air?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

What if rail systems around the world could be harnessed to help mitigate climate change and clean our air of CO2<\/sub>? It is a question that the founders of a US-based startup,\u00a0CO2<\/sub>Rail Company, have been pondering for several years.\u00a0Direct Air Capture (\u201cDAC\u201d)\u00a0technology for removing carbon dioxide from the air with special machines and compressing it for utilization or permanent geological sequestration, promises to reduce overall CO2<\/sub>\u00a0concentrations in the atmosphere and help mitigate global climate change. The IPCC has reported that deep\u00a0net-negative CO2<\/sub>\u00a0mitigation\u00a0is almost certainly necessary to stay within 2\u00b0C of warming. However, despite its promise, the process of carbon removal straight from the air can be energy and land intensive and often very, very expensive.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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CO2<\/sub>Rail car in motion on a normal train in regular service, collecting mass quantities of CO2<\/sub>\u00a0from the atmosphere. The system is powered by sustainable, train-generated regenerative braking energy and requires no off-duty charging cycles. \u00a9 2022 CO2<\/sub>Rail Company<\/strong>. US and International Patents Pending, All Rights Reserved<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

CO2<\/sub>Rail and a world-renowned team hailing from University of Toronto, MIT, Princeton, University of Sheffield, business, and industry set their sights on designing DAC technology that used less energy, less land, and at a cost that the world could afford. Their plan was to operate DAC equipment within special rail cars placed with already running trains in regular service and take advantage of many synergies that integration within the global rail network would provide. Their effort is spotlighted on the cover and in a peer reviewed paper entitled\u00a0\u201cRail-Based Direct Air Carbon Capture\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>published in the Future Energy section of the prestigious journal\u00a0Joule\u00a0<\/strong>released on July 20, 2022.1<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These DAC rail cars work by using large intakes that extend up into the slipstream of the moving train to move ambient air into the large cylindrical CO2<\/sub>\u00a0collection chamber and eliminate the need for energy-intensive fan systems that are necessary with stationary DAC operations. The air then moves through a chemical process that separates the CO2<\/sub>\u00a0from the air and the carbon dioxide free air then travels out of the back or underside of the car and returns to the atmosphere. After a sufficient amount has been captured, the chamber is closed and the harvested CO2<\/sub>\u00a0is collected, concentrated, and stored in a liquid reservoir until it can be emptied from the train at crew change or fueling stops into normal CO2<\/sub>\u00a0rail tank cars for direct transportation into the circular carbon economy as value-added feedstock or to nearby geological sequestration sites. Notably, each of these processes are powered exclusively by on-board generated, sustainable energy sources that require no external energy input or off-duty charging cycles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When a train pumps the brakes, its energy braking system converts the entire train\u2019s forward\u00a0momentum into electrical energy in much the same way as an electric vehicle. Currently, this energy is dissipated on trains in the form of heat and discharged out of the top of the locomotive during every braking maneuver. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The energy, suggests E. Bachman<\/strong> of CO2<\/sub>Rail, should be captured, stored, and used for productive purposes.\u00a0\u201cFor many decades, this enormous amount of sustainable energy has been\u00a0completely wasted,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>says Bachman<\/em>.\u00a0\u201cOn average, each complete braking maneuver generates enough\u00a0energy to power 20 average homes for an entire day so it is not a trivial amount of energy. Multiply this by every stop or deceleration for nearly every train in the world and you have about 105 times more<\/em> energy than the Hoover Dam produces within that same period, and that was a hydro-electric construction project that took six years and\u00a0cost $760 million in today\u2019s dollars.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Besides energy, there are also land issues that surround wide-spread DAC deployment. Stationary DAC operations at any meaningful scale will require large areas of land to build their equipment and even more to construct renewable sources of energy to power them. Moreover, even with efforts to save the world, obtaining the necessary permits, conducting surveys, meeting zoning requirements, and achieving community acceptance is necessary and takes both time and money. Obtaining the proper permits to build these industrial-looking operations can be difficult and many residents would be opposed to these large facilities being built near their towns and cities or on land that is important to them.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a huge problem\u00a0because most everybody wants to fix the climate crisis, but few are happy to have it done in their\u00a0proverbial \u2018backyard\u2019.\u00a0CO2Rail does not require special zoning, surveys, or building permits and would\u00a0be transient and generally unseen by the public,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>says\u00a0Geoffrey Ozin<\/strong>, a nano and materials chemist and\u00a0Albert Einstein World Award of Science\u00a0medal recipient at The University of Toronto.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The authors argue that rail-based direct air capture becomes an even more attractive climate solution because much of the required infrastructure is already in place and the energy is there, just waiting to be utilized.\u00a0\u201cThe infrastructure and energy already exist,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>says Ozin.\u00a0\u201cThat’s the bottom line. All you need to do is take advantage of what is already available.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>With rail being\u00a03x\u00a0\u2013\u00a05x more efficient\u00a0than truck, increased rail utilization and greater CO2Rail deployments will have a positive impact beyond the carbon it removes from the atmosphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe could get a positive feedback loop where the increased\u00a0utilization of rail not only reduces transportation emissions but also increases CO2\u00a0capture potential which then encourages even more utilization of rail,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>says Bachman<\/strong>.\u00a0\u201cBy increasing rail utilization, you\u00a0increase the efficiency of the entire transportation system and, additionally, you increase CO2Rail\u2019s\u00a0ability to remove CO2\u00a0from the air because there are now more trains to which DAC cars can beattached.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The potential impact of this technology was also recently energized when European transport organizations announced earlier this month that they are committed to\u00a0tripling high-speed rail use\u00a0by 2050 to curb CO2<\/sub>-heavy air travel.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cImagine stepping onto a train each morning, seeing the CO2<\/sub>Rail cars attached, and knowing that your commute to work each day is actually helping to mitigate climate\u00a0change,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>says Bachman<\/strong>.\u00a0\u201cIt will work the same with freight, if there is a choice between rail and another mode of transportation, I think this technology will sway many shippers towards rail.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The team says that each direct air capture car can harvest about 6,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air per year and more as the technology develops. Moreover, since trains are capable of hosting multiple CO2Rail cars, each train will harvest a corresponding multiple of CO2\u00a0tonnage. With its sustainable power requirements exclusively supplied by train-generated sources that are without incremental cost, savings of 30\u00a0\u2013\u00a040% per tonne of harvested CO2\u00a0can be realized from energy inputs alone.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis,\u00a0along with other significant savings such as land, brings projected cost at scale down to less than $50 per tonne and makes the technology not only commercially viable but commercially\u00a0attractive\u201d<\/em>, Bachman says<\/strong>.\u00a0\u201cThese kinds of numbers are unheard of in direct air capture,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>continues Ozin<\/strong>.\u00a0\u201cAt these price points and with its\u00a0tremendous capabilities, CO2Rail is likely to soon become the first megaton-scale, first gigaton-scale, and overall largest provider of direct air capture deployments in\u00a0the world.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Even more, the team is also working on a similar system that can remove the CO2\u00a0emissions from the exhaust of diesel-powered locomotives as are universally common in North America and other parts of the world. With the growth of sustainably-sourced rail electrification systems, this point-source capability on diesel lines would make rail\u00a0the world\u2019s first carbon-neutral mode of large-scale transportation.\u00a0\u201cCarbon-neutral in regular transportation and then significantly carbon-negative with\u00a0ambient air DAC operations. A win, win in every respect and a \u2018save humanity\u2019 technology,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>says Ozin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About CO2<\/sub>Rail Company<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

CO2<\/sub>Rail Company\u00a0is a US-based start-up founded in 2020 that has developed rail-based, self-powered direct air\u00a0capture (\u201cDAC\u201d) technology which removes excess carbon dioxide from\u00a0the ambient air using the global rail network, purpose-built rail equipment, and sustainable, train-generated regenerative braking energy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What if rail systems around the world could be harnessed to help mitigate climate change and clean our air of CO2? It is a question that the founders of a US-based startup,\u00a0CO2Rail Company, have been pondering for several years.\u00a0Direct Air Capture (\u201cDAC\u201d)\u00a0technology for removing carbon dioxide from the air with special machines and compressing it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","nova_meta_subtitle":"This team says \u201cYes\u201d and they even have a plan to bring it to scale...","footnotes":""},"categories":[5571],"tags":[10744,14936,19644,10416,7204],"supplier":[20720,20831,1936,3322,2779,370],"class_list":["post-114307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-co2-based","tag-carboncapture","tag-carbondioxide","tag-carbonremoval","tag-circulareconomy","tag-feedstock","supplier-co2rail-company","supplier-joule-journal","supplier-massachusetts-institute-of-technology","supplier-princeton-university","supplier-university-of-sheffield","supplier-university-of-toronto-kanada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114307"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=114307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}