A new technique for carbon capture tested in The Dalles

Today’s air contains about 428 parts per million of CO2; from the dinosaurs on to about 1750, Gagne said, air had 280 parts per million of CO2 in it. That number gives the project its name.

The company began as “Green Machine,” a project of Alphabet’s company X, formerly Google X. After it became clear that the project would operate best as an independent company, Gagne said, it separated from Google X. Investors came on board, and Project 280 Earth, though still contracting with Google, has been a separate company with all additional funding from outside investors since October 2022.

This direct air capture facility removes CO2 from the atmosphere, using a new continuous solid sorbent approach. It’s a prototype, a new technology Gagne and his team have developed.

First, air is drawn into what looks, to unfamiliar eyes, like a big metal box lined with screens. Here, the air encounters the material that is key to Gagne’s process — sorbent. “This is the magic,” he said. “They’re like screen doors ... Here, what happens is the sorbent slowly goes between two screens.”

The sorbent is a silvery crumb made of amorphous silica, combined with a chemical “secret sauce,” which adsorbs almost all the CO2 from that air. It also collects water vapor.

Gagne chose silica, a nontoxic drying agent, to resist the abundant Pacific Northwest moisture. “I wanted to make sure that we didn’t clump. Because what I didn’t want to do is make the world’s most expensive kitty litter box,” he said. CO2 enters the pebbles of sorbent and sticks in the pores. Unlike some other air capture processes, this one doesn’t require high temperatures. About 80% of the facility’s energy can come from “waste heat,” produced by other machines and industrial processes.

This is a new development in carbon-capture facilities. Nothing exactly like Gagne’s team’s new “secret sauce” has been tried before, he said.

The air is then filtered, and ejected outside, clean. Air disperses quickly, spreading the benefits of CO2 removal all over the planet in a matter of days, Gagne said.

Airflows, sorbent speeds, and temperatures can be controlled by AI software, allowing the facility to “learn” to maximize carbon capture as air temperatures and moisture levels change, Gagne said.

Meanwhile, the CO2-rich sorbent is conveyed to an airlock, which takes it from normal atmospheric pressure of 14.7 psi to a vacuum area. In the next few stages, water vapor and CO2 are separated in a process called desorption and condensed to liquid, and piped away. The clean sorbent goes into another chute.

Then the sorbent goes through the cycle again — and again and again. And after that, sorbent can be cleaned up, remade into pellets, and recycled. “You could literally go put this thing in the middle of the Mojave Desert,” Gagne said, referring to the entire facility system. “And technically all you would need is, not even [grid connected power]. Because my vision is to have the CO2 plant, power plant, all of that in one location…”

All the equipment for this could live outside, Gagne noted. “But it’s just handy to have it in a building.”

Unlike some other CO2-capture systems, this isn’t a batch process. The prototype’s still being tested and adjusted, but in a fine-tuned facility the sorbent is intended to flow continuously. When the material gets old and it’s time for a recharge/recycle, the machine never has to stop while staff add and remove material from outside, Gagne said.

The liquid CO2, gathered in a tank outside, will be transported away and injected into a two-mile-deep well out of state. Protected under a layer of impermeable caprock, the CO2 collects in a saltwater aquifer, anticipated to contain it for “like 10,000 years.” Eventually, the CO2 solidifies into a mineral, calcium carbonate.

Other options include injecting the CO2 into concrete, within which it mineralizes, strengthening the cement and locking the carbon away.

For every ton of CO2 in that tank, the facility pulls two tons of water, collected from the air, out of that sorbent. Even in deserts there’s plenty of moisture in the air, Gagne said. “You can go put one of these in the middle of the desert, and it’ll feed itself, so you don’t have to get water from anywhere,” he stated.

Gagne said his goal is giving the water to cool Google’s adjacent data centers, instead of groundwater. The cooling services he can offer will reduce the amount of water needed to cool the computers in data centers like this.

This prototype facility can collect 500 tons of carbon per year. The team’s next project is a neighboring 5,000-ton facility that Gagne hopes will break ground this year. Later, Gagne hopes to build yet more, which will collect a total of 20,000 tons of CO2 per year.

Project 280 Earth’s water production could “change the way we do industrial cooling,” starting by reducing Google’s water usage. Gagne’s business is carbon negative.

But to keep warming under a few degrees, the sequestration of about 10 gigatons of CO2 per year is needed by 2050, he explained. Direct air capture alone will never be enough to fight climate change. 280 Earth’s 500 tons is just “a drop in the bucket” of climate change, Gagne said, though he hopes the project expands to make a significant impact.

“The more, the merrier. The more I can build, the better it’s going to be for everyone,” Gagne said. “And the reason I’m doing this is really simple.” Gagne’s great-nieces and nephews told him they feared for their future in an era of climate change. “And that was it. ... This is my retirement.”