The world’s first and largest factory to capture and convert carbon dioxide from the air into stone began operations in Iceland on Wednesday.
While Climeworks has built 16 installations across Europe, the Orca plant is the only one that permanently captures and stores CO2 rather than recycling it.
According to Climeworks, every year the factory has a capacity to capture 4,000 tons of CO2, which is safely and permanently stored via a chemical process developed by Carbfix, an academic-industrial partnership in Iceland.
In this process, CO2 captured from the atmosphere is mineralised underground and converted into stones.
The factory is the first direct air capture and storage service with a validated process - awarded mid-June 2021 by independent third-party DNV.
Due to its strategic location adjacent to ON Power’s Hellisheiði Geothermal Power Plant, Orca runs fully on renewable energy.
The nonprofit says its advanced technology is optimised to capture more CO2 capture capacity per module than ever before, helping the factory store unprecedented levels of the greenhouse gas. »
