Mitigating climate change requires a drastic reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to reducing emissions, historical and unavoidable emissions, e.g., from agriculture, must be compensated by so-called negative emissions technologies (NET). Negative emissions technologies actively remove CO2 from the ambient air and store the CO2 permanently or at least long-term outside the atmosphere. Various NET approaches are currently being researched, both in the oceans (e.g., carbon storage in the coastal zone, Blue Carbon) and on land using biological (e.g., bio-energy with CO2 capture and storage, BECCS), chemical (e.g., direct air carbon capture and storage, DACCS) and geochemical (e.g., accelerated weathering of rocks) extraction methods. The challenge lies in maximizing the efficiency of the intrinsically energy-intensive processes as well as rapid upscaling: estimates assume a worldwide CO2 removal demand of several billion tonnes (in Germany alone approx. 60-130 million tonnes) for the year 2050.

Goals

• Interdisciplinary research on the development, evaluation and upscaling of NETs
• Technology assessment and optimization from an ecological, economic, social and legal perspective
• Analyses of global potentials and evaluation of use cases
• Process simulation and optimization
• Design and set-up of prototypes/demonstrators
• Material classification and development

Projects

• LIFE-DACCS: Lifetime and Potential Analysis of Sorption Materials for Direct Air Capture - From Small-Scale Experiments to Optimal Process Design (RWTH ERS Seed Fund): RWTH-LTT, RWTH-ITMC
  https://www.ltt.rwth-aachen.de/go/id/bgshyb
• DACStorE: A Comprehensive Approach to Harnessing the Innovation Potential of Direct Air Capture and Storage for Reaching CO2-Neutrality: FZJ-ICE-2, FZJ-ICE-3, FZJ-IET-4, FZJ-IMD-2
  https://www.dacstore-project.com/
• DAC-TALES: Direct Air Capture - Transdisciplinary Assessment Combining Labs, the Environment, the Economy, and Society: RWTH-LTT, RWTH-AVT.CVT, RWTH-COMM, RWTH-CompEcon
  https://cdrterra.de/en/consortia/dac-tales
• ENHANCE.R: Holistic Evaluation and Advancement of Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage: RWTH-LTT, Chalmers University
  https://www.ltt.rwth-aachen.de/go/id/bfazeq