SSEB Selected to Lead Direct Air Capture Effort

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy announced that the Southern States Energy Board will lead a direct air carbon capture recovery partnership.

This opportunity is one of 18 projects for cost-shared research and development under the funding opportunity announcement (FOA) DE-FOA-0002188, Novel Research and Development for the Direct Capture of Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere.

Over three years, SSEB will lead its partners toward scaling up and integrating solid-amine carbon dioxide (CO₂) adsorption-desorption contactor technology that has been proven in the laboratory but needs to be scaled up for commercialization.

The ultimate goal of the project is to decrease the cost of direct air capture (DAC) through the testing of existing DAC materials in integrated field units that produce a concentrated CO₂ stream of at least 95 percent purity.

The venture brings together uniquely skilled and highly specialized partners that include: AirCapture, LLC and its design and construction team at Synapse Product Development, Inc.; Crescent Resource Innovation; Ronald N. Hunsinger, Ph.D.; and Amy Landis, Ph.D. SSEB’s executive director, Ken Nemeth, serves as the project’s principal investigator, and Kimberly Sams Gray, SSEB’s managing director, serves as co-principal investigator.

The project has a stakeholder network that includes: Clean Air Task Force, Carbon Utilization Research Council, Georgia Tech Agricultural Technology Research Institute, Good People Brewing Company, Marathon Petroleum Corporation, Pilgrim’s Pride, Shell, Southern Company Services, University of Georgia College of Engineering, and Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Officially referred to as “Direct Air Capture Recovery of Energy for CCUS Partnership (DAC RECO₂UP),” the project will field test technology at the National Carbon Capture Center (NCCC) in Wilsonville, Alabama. The NCCC is a U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored research facility focused on finding breakthroughs in next generation carbon capture technologies. The project will receive $2.5 million in DOE funding and $650,000 in funding from industry partners for a total expenditure of $3.1 million.