Direct Air Capture

It’s called Direct Air Capturing (DAC) and it’s the focus of a technological collaboration between AUDI AG And Austria green tech outfit, Krajete. While efforts to reduce emissions across the board and across all industries are ongoing, these technologies are aimed squarely at capturing emissions already in the air.

The latest example of the two partners’ development work is a new plant in Austria, where they are using an inorganic filter material that can hold high loads of molecules and is also insensitive to the effects of moisture. This means that the previous need to ‘pre-dry’ the ambient air for maximum efficiency is no longer required , meaning more CO2 can be removed from the ambient air in a short period of time. 

The filtered air is released back into the environment after the adsorption step, leaving the recovered CO2 available in a highly concentrated form as a raw material for permanent storage or for a wide range of industrial applications. The large-scale plant, which is currently in the process of going into operation, will be able to filter 500 tons of CO2 per year, with that figure doubling by the end of the year with the addition of another module. 

On top of that, the electricity required to operate the plant comes from a photovoltaic system on the company’s roof.

Alexander Krajete, CEO of the technology development company that bears his name, says that “we started from the premise that, for reasons of efficiency, we would let the process run at ambient pressure. Then we modified the absorber materials and the physical conditions in the plant until we found the optimal flow rate, meaning we filtered the maximum amount of CO2 per unit of time.” This made it possible to significantly reduce the cost of sequestration, which is already down to the low three-digits range in euros per ton of CO2. The long-term goal is to make carbon dioxide usable for industrial purposes. In doing so, Krajete GmbH and AUDI AG want to facilitate breakthroughs in the necessary applications.
“The technology makes it possible to remove CO2 directly from the atmosphere, regardless of location, and is therefore an important decarbonising measure,” says Hagen Seifert, Head of Sustainable Product Concepts at AUDI AG. “In addition, the system technology can be expanded in a variety of ways thanks to its modular design.”

As a next step to the existing large-scale plant, AUDI AG is looking at the possibility of using sources with higher concentrations of CO2 and filtering additional emissions such as nitrogen oxides. Given that a plant with a capacity of as much as 25,000 tonnes is conceivable, the DAC technology could be implemented on a much larger scale at Audi’s site in Győr, Hungary. 

It’s another example of examining every conceivable means of reducing emissions as part of Audi’s Mission:Zero. From using only green energy to recycling materials on an industrial scale to initiating circular economies, Audi is already making tremendous strides towards a carbon-neutral future. Of course the most obvious move will see the release of only electric or hybrid-electric vehicles from 2026 withe Audi phasing out internal combustion engines by 2033.

By 2025 Audi plans to offer more than 20 fully electric, battery-driven cars while also reducing the ecological footprint of its fleet by 30 percent compared with 2015. 

Another well-publicised goal is to make production carbon neutral at all sites by 2025 – something that has already been achieved Audi Hungary and Audi Brussels.

It’s all part of the brand’s overarching plan to reduce emissions and achieving the overall result of carbon-neutrality right across the company by 2050 – and every little bit helps.