A Canadian start-up company is moving toward commercial development of a process to capture carbon dioxide from the air and turn it into a synthetic transportation fuel. After three years of pilot-plant testing, Carbon Engineering Ltd., Squamish, British Columbia, produced the first fuel sample in December 2017—one barrel of liquid hydrocarbon fuel from a half-tonne of atmospheric CO2.
A peer-reviewed paper in the scientific journal Joule this month describes the process and asserts it can achieve its purpose at lower cost than has been claimed before. Design and construction of a scale-up will follow, says Geoffrey Holmes, business development manager and co-author of the Joule paper.