CEEC hits carbon capture milestone

Asia's largest CO2 direct air capture (DAC) device by capacity, "CarbonBox", has successfully completed reliability testing, said major developer China Energy Engineering Corp Ltd, marking a further advance of China's development of carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technologies.

"DAC is an emerging CCUS technology that can use low-carbon energy sources such as wind, solar and geothermal to directly capture carbon dioxide from the air and achieve net or negative carbon emissions," said Zhu Lijun, a member of the device's research and development team.

Adopting the DAC technology, CarbonBox was co-developed by a CEEC subsidiary and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, holding complete proprietary intellectual property rights. It can efficiently capture CO2 directly from the air or from different concentrations of emission sources and directly output different concentrations of CO2 according to downstream application needs.

Zhu said that a single module of the device can capture more than 100 metric tons of high-concentration CO2 annually from the air with a purity of 99 percent. Altogether the device can absorb around 600 tons of CO2 per year, offering massive carbon resources for the generation of green methanol and green aviation fuel.

To tackle the problem of high energy consumption and high costs of DAC devices, Zhu said the development team innovated the capture device structure and core support components.

Lin Boqiang, head of the China Institute for Studies in Energy Policy at Xiamen University, said CCUS is a crucial technological choice for balancing energy security and carbon reduction. With increasing global energy market volatility, heightened post-COVID development pressures, and challenges posed by the limited share and intermittency of renewable energy sources, many countries, especially developing ones, approach energy restructuring cautiously. Against this backdrop, ensuring stable energy supplies while promoting carbon reductions has become equally imperative.

Lin said CCUS technology, primarily applied in high-emission sectors such as coal-fired power generation, petrochemicals and steel production, facilitates large-scale low-carbon utilization of fossil fuels. It plays a pivotal role in global energy and green security transformation and serves as a significant technical means for countries to reduce carbon emissions while maintaining stable fossil fuel consumption.

A report jointly commissioned by the Administrative Center for China's Agenda 21 and two other institutes revealed that China has nearly 100 planned and operational CCUS demonstration projects, spanning industries such as electricity, oil and gas, chemicals, cement and steel. More than half of these projects have been completed and are operational, with a CO2 capture capacity exceeding 4 million tons per year and injection capacity surpassing 2 million tons per year.

liuyukun@chinadaily.com.cn