Practice Abstract - Research and innovation
Capturing atmospheric CO2 to feed microalgae
To produce protein rich biomass from microalgae in large scale, carbon dioxide (CO2) at higher concentrations is needed as a nutrient for its accelerated growth. High concentration CO2 can be obtained from air in which it is present in low concentrations (0.04%). Under 100% removal efficiency, approximately 1320m3 of air is needed to produce 1 kg CO2.
The Direct Air Capture facility developed at University of Twente under the ProFuture project, uses low pressure drop radial flow contactor to capture CO2 from air into sorbent particles (to minimize the contacting energy). The captured CO2 is released from the sorbent particles by sequential desorption steps at elevated temperature and under vacuum. The released CO2 has purity of more than 95% is stored at high pressure and can be fed to microalgae when needed.
This system was tested at University of Twente in the month of August 2022. After which it was transported to microalgae production facility at Allmicroalgae in Pataias, Portugal. The unit was operational at Allmicroalgae from September 2022 to December 2022.
During this time, 2 testing campaigns were conducted. The CO2 produced was fed to the tubular photo bioreactors at the facility and successfully used for growth of microalgae. The unit was in operation for a total of 1620 hours of 24/7 operation. In this time a total of 247 kg CO2 was produced. The energy consumption of the whole unit was 24 kWh/kgCO2 during 1st campaign and 54 kWh/kgCO2 during 2nd campaign, due to unfavorable weather conditions. The differential specific energy consumption (energy required per additional kg of CO2 produced, on the same day) was as low as 4.0 kWh/kgCO2.
Further work is being conducted to improve the productivity, energy efficiency and robustness of the system.
Source Project
Ongoing | 2019-2023
ProFuture
Ongoing | 2019-2023
- Main funding source
- Horizon 2020 (EU Research and Innovation Programme)
- Geographical location
- Spain