Short Summary
(Download the Whitepaper) New carbon capture and storage technology uses biomimicry of lichen-imitating nature to remove CO2 that causes climate change from the atmosphere. This environment-friendly technology uses microalgae embedded in a coating and solar energy to convert CO2 into cellulose, providing significant advantages over the existing carbon capture methods. This technology is easy to set up and maintain and creates minimal adverse environmental effects.
It is estimated that this technology has a carbon removal efficiency of 50% at the cost of $629 per tonne of CO2 net sequestered.[2] This is already economically competitive with existing direct air carbon capture and storage technologies, although further improvements should reduce the cost. Because it is based upon in-coating exponential growth of algae, self-inoculation, and self-sequestration, the overall system has the potential to exponentially scale up, allowing us to rapidly begin giga-tonne carbon capture and sequestration. Carbon Capture Coatings technology can also be used to capture and sequester point-source emissions from industrial slipstreams.
Advantages include:
- Modularity and scalability (allowing rapid deployment and expansion)
- Locational flexibility (utilizes non-arable land and solar radiation for energy)
- Re-usable coating formula (recyclable ingredients)
- Potential for high water retention rates (for operation in arid climates)
- Long periods of operation with minimal maintenance and management
Highlights
- Durable and reliable environmentally-friendly carbon sequestration
- Rapid deployment and scale-up
- Utilizes non-arable land and solar energy
- Carbon removal cost comparable with existing technology with room for improvement
Carbon Capture Coatings are a new biomimetic carbon capture technology, which has the potential to significantly alleviate the effects of climate change. The technology can be rapidly deployed in a variety of embodiments, and scaled up to meet the enormous size of the problem, has a minimal adverse environmental impact, and is cost-effective. With future improvements, this can become one of the front-line carbon capture technologies in the ongoing effort to minimize the effects of climate change prize Team Lichen by Envirotech Pre-Accelerator.
[1] Sustainability Science llc (susscience.com)
[2] All costs stated herein are those as estimated for submission of the technology in the 2021 XPrize Carbon Capture competition, and per the rules of that competition may be updated prior to the selection of the winners on Earth Day (4-24-25) 2025.