SPOKANE, Wash. — A Spokane-based company is helping cut down on greenhouse gasses by completely removing carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere.
Dave Curry, co-founder and chairman of CarbonQuest, explains that emissions are essentially made up of 70% nitrogen, 20% water vapor and 10% carbon dioxide. The company separates out that carbon dioxide, cools it and then liquifies it. They then inject that liquid carbon dioxide into cement where it mineralizes and solidifies.
“The vehicle will drive up to the building, plug into the wall, extract the liquid CO2... into a cryogenic tank in the back of a vehicle,” he said, describing the process.
Curry said this is an important process now while society continues to build toward more renewable sources.
“The challenge that the world is facing is that the rate at which we’re omitting CO2 into the atmosphere exceeds our ability to replace it with renewable sources. We just can’t build enough renewables fast enough,” said Curry.
He said regions in the northwest are the perfect place for this process because states like Washington have policies that favor programs like this that help cut emissions.
“In the Pacific Northwest in particular, Washington, Oregon, into Canada, it’s a goldmine of opportunities for CO2 sequestration geologically,” said Curry.
CarbonQuest started about five years ago. The company’s first client was in New York. Now, they’ve just announced their first project within Washington at Eastern Washington University.
Curry said that because this technology is so new, there are not many scientists who specialize in it, so Eastern Washington University is also in the process of developing a program to train students on it.
Curry also pointed out that with the continued focus on the digital age and online technologies, the need for energy is increasing.
“AI is having an order of magnitude, a 10-time impact on the amount of energy necessary to support computing functions,” he said.
With the increased demand for technology, he plans to be there to help support the simultaneous increased demand for energy.