A growing roster of technology companies from around the globe are partnering with NETL to unleash direct air capture (DAC) as a powerful tool in the fight to mitigate the climate crisis.

“As the need to address carbon emissions becomes ever more urgent, more and more companies are partnering with the NETL Direct Air Capture Center to accelerate the development of technically and economically viable DAC solutions,” said Dave Luebke, the center’s technical director.

DAC is an emerging technology that works by processing air from the atmosphere rather than from point sources, such as fossil energy power plants and industrial processes, thereby addressing both current and legacy emissions. It is also a critical tool in counterbalancing industries — such as agriculture, shipping and aviation that will be difficult to decarbonize — and has been identified as a necessary approach to meet U.S. goals calling for economy-wide net-zero emissions by 2050.

“At NETL, we have established a world-class testbed facility where our partners can leverage the Lab’s expertise to advance innovative DAC technologies and drive them forward into the marketplace where they can make a real impact,” Luebke said.

The NETL DAC Center’s mission is to advance technologies from across the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management’s Carbon Dioxide Removal program and the industry as a whole. Some of its partnerships are funded by the U.S. Department of Energy through vehicles like the American-Made Direct Air Capture Prize program, which provides support to help de-risk and demonstrate the commercial viability of DAC technology with the ultimate goal of commercial deployment. Others are funded by the industry partners themselves.

Companies currently partnering with NETL under the Direct Air Capture Pre-Commercial Technology Prize include:

• Climate-tech developer Nūxsen, based in New York, New York, is working with NETL to test a novel sorbent. The material being tested is intended to be used in Nūxsen’s recently announced DAC reactor designs, Nūxsen CarbonJet and Nūxsen SlipStream. According to the company, the technology maximizes CO₂ exposure to the sorbent.
• Rhoic, a materials-based DAC startup, is testing its innovations in materials science and nano-scale architectures at NETL. These innovations are intended to reduce the cost of DAC materials while increasing their operational lifetime and efficiency, decreasing capture cost.

In projects carried out under Contributed Funds Agreements (CFAs), the NETL DAC Center performs work for outside parties, for which NETL is fully reimbursed.

The center is currently working on a CFA project with Octavia Carbon, based in Kenya. At the core of Octavia’s DAC approach is a patent-pending sorbent with low regeneration temperature allowing Octavia to more easily integrate the DAC technology with Kenya’s inexpensive, abundant geothermal heat that would otherwise remain untapped.

Testing at the NETL DAC Center is helping to facilitate scale-up of the technology. Further contributing to the promise of DAC in the region, Kenya’s geological formations in the Rift Valley could provide an ideal location for safe and secure permanent storage of captured CO₂.

NETL is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory that drives innovation and delivers solutions for a clean and secure energy future. By leveraging its highly skilled innovators and state-of-the-art research facilities, NETL is advancing carbon management and resource sustainability technologies to enable environmental sustainability for all Americans.