Climate change is undeniably one of the complex issues faced by humanity today. It has affected our lives differently and calls for immediate and long-term solutions. One of the approaches to responding to climate change is the reduction of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Carbon dioxide is naturally added to the Earth's atmosphere during the respiration and decomposition of organisms. Natural sources also include weathering of carbonate rocks, forest fires, and volcanic eruption, according to NASA's Climate Science Investigation. Human activities like burning fossil fuels also contribute to carbon dioxide emissions.
First-of-Its-Kind Carbon Removal System
Caltech-based carbon removal company Captura and AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles announced their collaboration to solve climate change's effects on our oceans. The project targets capturing 100 tons of carbon dioxide in the ocean annually.
Captura started in 2021 and received a $1 million award from Elon Musk's XPrize contest in 2022. The project involves a scale-up of its first pilot trial that currently operates in Newport Beach, California. It is now preparing to start its biggest project at AltaSea's blue economy campus to start its ocean field trails. This new system is funded by Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas), the biggest gas utility in the US.
In this scale-up technology, the researchers plan to filter out carbon dioxide from the oceans to allow them to absorb more of this greenhouse gas. It relies on the principle of Henry's Law, which states that at a constant temperature, the amount of gas that can dissolve in a liquid is directly proportional to the partial pressure of that gas. It is normally observed when a drink tastes flat when the soda can is opened.
Captura's technology involves drawing carbon dioxide from the ocean into the DOC plant. Then, the molecules will be rearranged into an acid and a base using the electrodialysis process. After returning to the seawater, the acid will react with the carbon to release carbon dioxide. That gas will be captured and stored elsewhere or sold as a product.
Considering the amount of carbon dioxide that can be captured in this technology and the scale of our oceans, this technology still has a long way to go. Conservation groups also express concern about this technology being a climate change solution as it might add more industrial activity and noise pollution to marine ecosystems.
The Role of the Oceans in Fighting Climate Change
Climate change is caused by the increase in the amount of man-made carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In mitigating climate change, oceans serve as the largest heat sink on Earth by absorbing 90% of the excess heat. Since the Industrial Revolution, the world's oceans have absorbed almost one-third of the greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. Without them, climate change would be much worse than we already experience today.
The role of oceans in fighting climate change is not limited to the depths of the water. Ecosystems along the coastal areas, such as mangroves, coral reefs, and seagrass beds, also contribute to sequestering and storing more carbon per unit area than the forests.
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