Facility is designed to capture CO2 directly from the atmosphere and feed it into on-site aggregate manufacturing, creating building materials that lock away carbon
Mission Zero Technologies (MZT) has opened a direct air capture (DAC) demonstration plant in Norfolk, UK, which, according to the company, is the first in the world to connect DAC technology directly to a building materials production line.
DAC is a process that uses chemical or physical methods to pull CO2 directly from the ambient air, rather than from a concentrated industrial source. According to MZT, its system captures CO2 without the high-temperature heat inputs used in many first-generation systems, running instead on electricity that can be sourced from renewables.
At the Norfolk site, the captured CO2 is piped straight into O.C.O Technology鈥檚 manufacturing process for its manufactured limestone (M-LS) aggregates. O.C.O states that the CO2 is chemically bound within the aggregate, locking it away in solid form. By having the DAC plant located next to the aggregate production line, O.C.O can use the gas immediately without the need for bulk storage, long-distance transport or reliance on external suppliers.
O.C.O says this on-site supply could help protect against fluctuations in market prices and availability of CO2, which is used in various industries from food processing to manufacturing. Supply interruptions can occur when major industrial CO2 sources go offline, while global CO2 prices can be volatile. Capturing CO2 directly on site offers a controlled and predictable source, which the partners say could support consistent production schedules and long-term planning.
The Norfolk plant is designed to capture around 250 tonnes of CO2 per year for use in aggregates. MZT has one other operational DAC facility in Sheffield, launched in late 2023, and a third is due to begin operations in Alberta, Canada, later this year.
Dr Nicholas Chadwick, co-founder and chief executive officer of MZT, said the project shows DAC being applied in a commercial setting: 鈥淲hile many direct air capture solutions are still in the lab, our technologies are being used in real-world commercial settings 鈥� giving us invaluable insights and data to scale faster.鈥�
MZT states that its process uses between three and five times less energy than conventional DAC technologies. O.C.O claims its M-LS products can store CO2 in a stable form for millennia and that each 1,000 tonnes of aggregate locks away the equivalent of the annual CO2 absorption of 3,000 trees.
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