Model-based thermodynamic analysis of direct air capture units in repurposed power plant cooling towers

Robert Sager, Lukas Pehle, Nils Hendrik Petersen, Manfred Wirsum and Jens Hannes

Applied Energy, 2025, vol. 378, issue PA, No S0306261924020518

Abstract: To achieve the climate goals, the energy supply system must be sourced by renewable energy instead of fossil fuels. Nevertheless, hard-to-abate sectors require negative emission technologies (NETs) to counteract their emissions. Thus, NETs play a significant role across all future scenarios considered. Since natural NETs, such as afforestation, exhibit lower scaling potential, technological approaches like Direct Air Capture (DAC) represent promising alternatives. However, DAC faces major drawbacks in terms of high energy demands and high required air mass flows due to the low CO2 concentration in ambient air (∼400 ppm). This results in elevated costs per captured tonne of CO2. Interestingly, the infrastructure of thermal power plants shares similarities with components of DAC units, in particular the cooling tower due to its handling of high air mass flows. As countries progressively shut down their coal-fired power plants, there is an opportunity to repurpose existing power plant infrastructure into DAC units.

Keywords: Direct air capture; Cooling tower; Repurpose (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2024.124668

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