World’s First CO₂ Filter Gigafactory Opens in British Columbia

Svante Technologies Inc., a Canadian technology company specializing in carbon capture and removal, has opened the world's first commercial-scale gigafactory producing carbon capture and removal filters. Located in Burnaby, British Columbia, the 141,000-square-foot Redwood Facility is an engineering milestone in industrial-scale carbon management.

The plant will manufacture bespoke filters that can capture as much as 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) annually. The filters are constructed from solid sorbents coated with metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), far better materials that have a vast ability to attract and hold CO₂. That is as much as the exhaust of over 27 million cars annually, and it has a very impressive scope for emission reductions in many industrial processes.

Svante's technology is targeting those sectors that are currently equipped with the most financially viable conditions for carbon capture with respect to cost and infrastructure. These industries involve the pulp and paper sector, ethanol production, and waste-to-energy plants. The company also anticipates expanding its attention on worse-hit industries such as cement and steelmaking in the future, broadening the scope of the technology.

The firm has $145 million in capital behind it from leading corporate investors such as Chevron, United Airlines Ventures, Samsung, and GE Vernova. That funding has helped develop the gigafactories and will be used to scale up in the future as demand for carbon capture technology explodes. Increasing with more such factories will be required to meet increasing global demand for CO₂ removal technology, says the firm.

Svante filters are being used in pilot operations, such as Chevron and Lafarge in California and British Columbia. The technology is also being piloted with direct air capture systems, where CO₂ is being captured directly from the air, providing an alternate pathway to reducing carbon in the air to supplement industrial capture.

The factory represents an important milestone on the journey to global emission savings and heavy industry decarbonization. It is a precursor to large-scale commercialization of carbon capture technology and should facilitate the potential for rapid growth in the carbon management market. Factory development meets both the demand for low-cost CO₂ capture technologies and the need to scale up these technologies cost-effectively and reproducibly.

By producing filters on this scale, Svante aims to reduce the cost per tonne of CO₂ that is captured and make it cost-effective for additional industries. The overall objective of the company is to allow industrial emitters to install carbon capture facilities in-house that can be customized into existing processes, paving the way for industrial decarbonization without blanket infrastructure overhauls.

Redwood Facility's opening is a testament to the wider global move towards investing in technologies that enable emissions reduction at source. It is also reacting to growing pressure on business and government to act in accordance with net-zero aspirations. Svante's gigafactory is proof that carbon capture technologies can be scaled up and a model for further innovation in this field.

The Burnaby filter gigafactory puts Canada at the forefront of global leadership in the value chain of carbon management. With funding in combination with technological innovation worldwide, it contributes industrial capacity to global efforts at controlling climate change through aimed reductions of emissions.

Source/Credits:
Original Source: Svante