[aerohead]

The October 2018 Motor Trend,page 24,offered a 1-page article,by Frank Marcus,about a three-year-old Stacked direct air capture (DAC),CO2-to-gasoline pilot plant in British Columbia.
Harvard Professor,David Keith is the founder of Carbon Engineering's plant,and Bill Gates has been underwriting the venture.
The facility pulls carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and converts it to liquid fuel.
Dr. Keith has incorporated elements from cooling towers,pulp/paper mills,water treatment,gold extraction,and the Fischer-Tropsch gas-to-liquid technology.
*30% of energy is used to scrub the carbon from the air,and the other 70% is to produce hydrogen to combine into the long chain hydrocarbon.
*When scaled for commercial production,the facility is targeting 300,000 metric tonnes per year scrubbing and 2,000-barrels gasoline per day.
*4,195,205 CFM of air will flow through the tower.
*They'll harvest 300-ppmv of the 400 ppmv carbon at about zero% efficiency of the air stream,as we're talking about 300ppmv out of 1-million ppmv.
*Total energy for the entire process is about 6.5-MWh/metric tonne.
*They'll use wind and solar for the electricity to run the plant.
*It would take 4,909 of these plants to cover carbon emissions for America's light vehicle fleet,and 31.912 GWh/year.
*The thermal efficiency of the plant is around 45%.
*every 100 units of energy out requires 55 units of energy in.
*The feedstock is free.
*The Earth boundary layer is free.
*After 5-10-years the input energy will be free.
*There won't be any grid losses,as power is generated onsite.
*Potassium and calcium used in carbon capture the will be perpetually recycled.
*Before breakeven,the renewable power will be 3.569-cents per kWh.
*After breakeven,this power will cost them 1.446-cents per kWh.
*For what they can sell the fuel for,it will be competitive on a carbon-intensity basis,as defined under California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard,as compared to corn ethanol.
*If it weren't for the renewable power,they probably couldn't pull this off.
*This technology appears to be the most impressive and doable,as Frank Marcus has seen so far.
*Carbon Engineering's cost projections are listed in the Joule energy journal.