I have questions.
American Airlines is joining the race to remove carbon from the atmosphere, tapping a novel method that is much cheaper than many existing approaches and could boost the fledgling industry.
The airline company is purchasing credits from a startup that uses bricks of carbon-absorbing plant material to sharply lower costs, potentially making carbon removal a widely used climate solution earlier than anticipated. It is one of the first carbon-removal deals by an airline and shows how some of the biggest corporate emitters are trying to find new ways to cut their environmental footprint.
“We’re excited about this new technology because it is within reach for us,” Jill Blickstein, American’s vice president of sustainability, said in an interview.
Graphyte, the startup working with American, collects agricultural waste products such as sawdust or tree bark that naturally absorb carbon dioxide. It compresses that dried biomass into shoebox-size bricks and seals it using a special barrier to prevent the plant matter from decomposing and releasing carbon. The bricks are then buried and monitored using an embedded tracer substance to ensure they are locking away carbon.
Graphyte charges a fraction of the price companies pay for direct-air capture, the most heavily funded carbon-removal technology. That process—which employs giant fan-like devices to suck up air and separate the carbon—isn’t expected to be deployed at a large scale for at least a few years and costs an average of about $675 a metric ton, according to data provider CDR.fyi.
By contrast, Graphyte is charging American Airlines $100 a metric ton to remove 10,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. That is the price the U.S. Energy Department and many industry executives say is the crucial threshold for broadening access to carbon removal.
Graphyte’s first project in Pine Bluff, Ark., collects waste from two timber mills and a rice-milling operation. The company aims to start manufacturing its biomass bricks in January and burying them in July. By then, it hopes to be making roughly 140 pallets of blocks a day, enough to store 50,000 metric tons of carbon annually.
That would make Graphyte one of the biggest competitors in the industry and is enough to neutralize the annual emissions of more than 10,000 gasoline-powered passenger cars. But it is a fraction of American Airlines’ roughly 35 million metric tons of direct emissions last year.
this looks like a low energy, very safe; low cost convenient technique to remove CO2 from atms.
DOE does not need to spend billions. just put modern landfill close to tree / nursery farms- bury biomass.
With all due respect to Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull (still not in the rock-n-roll hall of fame)
So what are your questions?
It’s a pretty smart and straightforward idea. The challenge is to find enough waste biomass like sawdust and waste wood, and to set up the logistics to collect it. That’s why they’re limited to 50 kT CO2 in the relatively near-term.
It would be cool to scale up our use of wood in building materials, and then use this approach to sequester the carbon from the resulting wood waste. We’d also have to source the lumber in a sustainable way, which is a challenge. But if we could do it we’d displace a lot of carbon associated with using concrete and steel in buildings.
Great cover – Carolyn Oates does a follow-up You Tube video showing the chords she’s using. Enough to make me get my long-neglected guitar out!