Solar Induced Mineralisation integrated with Direct Air Capture (SIMiDAC)

Project Lead:

Overview:

This project focuses on a high-level process integration to improve the value proposition of the direct air capture (DAC) technology by closing the threesome loop of DAC-Solar-Mineral carbonation processes to tackle one of the most significant engineering and environmental challenges in Australia in a multi-disciplinary, collaborative way.

DAC is widely being recognized as the global most effective negative emission technology but requires a downstream process to permanently lock the carbon and combat the high cost of its CO₂ product. Given the energy demand for both DAC and mineral carbonation processes is excessively high, sourcing this energy from non-renewable sources would notably undermine their feasibility and sustainability.

In this context, renewable solar solutions would effectively induce and accelerate the mineralisation process in the most sustainable way. Solarising the carbonation of the abundant but undervalued mineral assets in Australia using the CO₂ product of a scalable DAC process may provide a breakthrough in the technoeconomic and life cycle analysis of this threesome loop.

This scope study evaluates the potential of this integration using multiscale modelling expertise supported by techno-economic and life-cycle analyses to address many uncertainties around this topic.

Team Members: