David Luebke, technical director of NETL’s Direct Air Capture (DAC) Center, will discuss the Lab’s efforts to accelerate the commercialization of DAC technologies during a presentation Wednesday, Aug. 16, at the fall meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Francisco, California.

DAC is an emerging technology that works by processing air from the atmosphere rather than a point source from energy technologies, including those in the power and industrial sectors, thereby addressing both current and legacy emissions. DAC has been identified as a necessary approach to meet the Biden Administration’s goals calling for a carbon emission-free electricity sector by 2035 and economy-wide net-zero emissions by 2050.

“Although DAC technology is early in its evolution, it is needed to address global climate change. At NETL, we have taken the lead in providing resources to developers to accelerate the commercialization of these technologies,” Luebke said.  

In 2022, NETL initiated the development of the Direct Air Capture Center. The facility, in development at NETL’s research campus near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, will be specifically targeted at accelerating the commercialization of technologies beyond the conceptual stage that have not yet reached full pilot scale.

The center will be designed with substantial flexibility to accommodate the rapidly evolving technological landscape. Testing systems will be available at three scales — lab-scale systems designed to examine the long-term stability of DAC materials, bench-scale module testing systems capable of probing flow dynamics and small pilot-scale skid rooms able to test prototype DAC units.

It will also provide developers with the ability to simulate a wide range of conditions, which will enable better understanding of how various DAC technologies respond in different climates, from summer to winter and arid to tropical.

In addition, the center will provide access to dedicated process modeling and analysis to evaluate the technoeconomic aspects of new technologies. NETL’s Systems Engineering and Analysis team, the Carbon Capture Simulation Initiative and the Institute for the Design of Advanced Energy Systems are all potential collaborators with NETL’s testing partners from industry, academia and other research institutions. 

Click here for more about the American Chemical Society fall meeting.

NETL is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory that drives innovation and delivers technological solutions for an environmentally sustainable and prosperous energy future. By leveraging its world-class talent and research facilities, NETL is ensuring affordable, abundant and reliable energy that drives a robust economy and national security, while developing technologies to manage carbon across the full life cycle, enabling environmental sustainability for all Americans.