(649f) Utilizing Direct Air Capture for Reduced Power Plant Fuel Consumption and Lower Cost Agriculture Production/ Bio-Sequestration

For forty years the USDOE, USDA, and Brookhaven National Laboratories (BNL) have researched Free Air crop Carbon dioxide Enrichment (FACE) that gave on average 40% increase to crop (cotton, citrus, grapes, rice, wheat) yield and water utilization efficiencies. The published costs to implement the BNL FACE technology is high at over $1 million/acre, mostly attributed to the expense of handling/processing nearly pure vaporized liquid CO2 supply.

In 2018, a California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) Office of Environmental Farming and Innovation (OEFI) State Water Environmental Efficiency Program (SWEEP) Grant was awarded to orchard owners Dosanjh Bros to demonstrate a recently patented FACE technology by Black sWan (BW) known as Flue Gas eXtraction and Bio-sequestration (FGXB) using a power plant located in a refinery across the street from their 50-acre almond orchard. Data presented at the national 2020 Agronomy Society of America (AGA) meeting for successful pilot runs showed costs at under $1000/acre. This was achieved by a now patented near ambient operating pressure direct contact quench water column that densifies and dewaters (through condensation) the flue gas before being sent into a dispersion system to be released at a safe but effective CO2 concentration to enhance biomass growth. The flue gas, normally hotter, denser, released at elevation, and thus buoyant in air, is now delivered cool at a higher density to grade where it effectively slumps and lingers at mildly enriched concentrations, allowing the CO2 to be more readily bio-sequestered via conversion to biomass.

This paper will show costs of FGXB are further driven down with a most recent BW patented Membrane Air Enrichment (MAE) Direct Air Capture (DAC) process using BW patent-pending WIG Membranes, thus completing the suite of Black sWan Cycle technologies. MAE is a DAC technology that produces from the atmosphere a concentrated oxygen stream with concentrated fugitive carbon dioxide (by evacuation to separate out nitrogen) that is substituted for the power plant air intake thus, based on USDOE results, providing an up to 50% reduction in power plant fuel consumption due to savings from not heating the nitrogen in conventional air. Ultimately this also reduces the capital and operating costs of the FGXB operations by concentrating sequestered CO2 and recoverable water in the flue gas.

The WIG membrane is an innovative membrane configuration using Generon's 40-year proven membrane technology. Early results based on Generon/BW prototypes and bench/ lab scale operations show a 10% increased performance, with 30 to 50% decrease in energy consumption and manufacturing costs. Results of full-scale pilot operations using WIG membranes in the MAE process in the existing FGXB demonstration scale operations will be presented.

Also, to be presented is an evaluation of the nature-based Black sWan Cycle technology's feasibility and costs to sequester 30 Gigatons of CO2 (by achieving only a 5% increase of the current global floral biomass) in a carbon/ energy neutral resource utilization manner. Lastly will be shown Black sWan Cycle technology to be a very small fraction of the conventional CCUS amine/cavern sequestration/ storage technology capital/energy/resource utilization costs at the same 30 Gigaton CO2 scale.