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Technical Session 1a - Advancing Capture: Pathways to Deployment
As carbon capture and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies advance toward deployment, the key challenges are no longer purely technical but increasingly practical — involving cost, scalability, integration, and verification. This talk will explore the deployment pathway for both point-source and direct air capture systems, drawing on current experience from the ARC ReCarb Hub and Woodside Monash Energy Partnership. It will highlight lessons learned in progressing from lab to pilot and field demonstration, address barriers to scale-up and investment, and outline realistic timelines for achieving material impact through CCU and DAC deployment in Australia and beyond.
Carbon management technologies deal with the overall challenge of limiting the CO2-concentration increase in the atmosphere. They encompass CCS, CCU and CDR, and as a result a wide variety of decarbonisation routes. Nearly all have CO2-capture as the first and often most expensive step. The presentation will give an overview of carbon management technologies seen through the capture angle, providing a perspective on how cost could be reduced by integrating capture into the various decarbonisation routes. The findings from CSIRO’s work on roadmaps for CDR and CCU will also be included.
Airhive is a direct air capture company, based in London and founded in 2022. This talk will discuss the deployment of Airhive’s Storm One commercial demonstration (1,000 tonnes per annum), one of the world's largest Direct Air Capture (DAC) facilities. Located at the Deep Sky Alpha site Alberta, Canada, the system is now under commissioning and is set for full operation with CO2 transport and storage in a nearby saline aquifer in Q1 2026.
Airhive's Storm One commercial demonstration
Airhive’s DAC technology harnesses “fluidization,” an industrial process that uses gas flows to suspend solid particles in a fluid-like state. Fluidization enables faster gas-solid interface, allowing an otherwise slow-reacting mineral-based sorbent to capture CO2 from the passing air at very high velocities and capture efficiencies. The process captures close to 100% of the CO2 in the air that moves through the system in less than 1/10th of a second. The result is a low cost and energy system, void of toxic substances and powered entirely by electricity.
The UNO MK3 technology is a novel and unique capture process that KC8 has found to be an attractive offering for those looking for a non-amine capture process. The technology is applicable for all applications across the CCUS space and two major demonstrations projects (in Australia and the US) in both the energy and industrial sectors attest to that. New research is investigating opportunities in the product and DAC space.An update on the technology will be provided.
This presentation will recap the journey from the early days of development of what became the UNO MK3 process in the CO2CRC through to the latest results from commissioning the KC8 UNOGAS project at the National Carbon Capture Centre in Alabama.
From the initial learnings in the laboratory through various pilot facilities in Victoria and then commercial demonstrations there have been many technical lessons along what has been close to a twenty-year journey. Add to that the commercial realties of generating customer buy in and raising the necessary investment capital and you have a heady mix for all those involved.
Carbon Capture, Utilisation and/or Storage (CCUS) is expected to have a role in the net-zero transition of high temperature industrial processes, such as cement/lime, iron/steel and alumina/aluminium, due to the long-term need for limestone in these processes, the challenges of entirely eliminating carbon-based fuels and the potential to introduce a CO2 negative component into these processes. Mineral carbonation is among the particularly prospective re-use pathways due to its synergistic nature with the processing of ores. Nevertheless, the extent of the role of the various CCUS options in this transition will depend both on the relative cost and timelines at which they can be made available at scale relative to other options, including electrification, hydrogen and alternative fuels. The presentation will give an overview of the key opportunities, research challenges and pathways for CCUS in these industries being evaluated by the HILT CRC, including scenario analyses and mineral carbonation.
