Proposal for direct air capture of CO during the Antarctic winter using physisorption
arXiv:2210.11308
Abstract
The possibility of direct air capture of CO in Antarctica is discussed. Because the concentration of HO in the atmosphere during the Antarctic winter is extremely low, an installation for direct air capture could employ a physisorption-based process, allowing, in principle, a very short adsorption/desorption cycle time. The lower required binding allows more options for materials for the sorbent. With a shorter cycle time, more resource could be spent on structuring the sorbent to improve energy efficiency, for example by improving its mass efficiency if desorption is driven thermally.
This paper is built around a hypothesis that a one-second adsorption/desorption cycle time is possible. A justification for this hypothesis is not provided, and without it this paper should not be used as a basis for further work. I have been working to describe how such a cycle time might be achieved, and find that it is a difficult problem. This paper was posted prematurely