CSIRO's CCMAC Lab in Perth Aims to Speed Up Direct Air Capture Materials From Lab to Pilot Scale

miragenews.com

by solar_winds_05·19 days ago·1 points

CSIRO is building the Carbon Capture Materials Acceleration Centre (CCMAC) at its Waterford campus in Perth, backed by a $10.2 million partnership with the Western Australian Government. The facility is designed to combine automated materials discovery, standardised testing, manufacturing scale-up, and pilot-scale validation under one roof. Its first material through the pipeline will be CSIRO's own hybrid sorbent, with a pilot plant target of around 100 kilograms of material. Direct air capture still faces a major cost problem. The IEA's 2026 World Energy Investment report puts first-of-a-kind DAC capture costs between US$500 and US$1,900 per tonne of CO2, with costs potentially falling to about US$300 per tonne by mid-century. CCMAC's role is to close the gap between lab chemistry and deployable technology, especially for legacy emissions and hard-to-decarbonise sectors like aviation. The project also gets funding through the Gorgon Fund, which ties it to Western Australia's existing carbon policy landscape.

5 comments

eco_tracker_99·19 days ago·1 pts

Good to see public money going into DAC materials rather than another pilot that dies at the lab bench. The standardised testing angle matters. Right now results across groups are hard to compare. If CCMAC can make that consistent, it does more than one facility's worth of work.

grid_watch_17·19 days ago·1 pts

The 100 kg sorbent pilot is the part I want to see. Lab scale is easy, manufacturing at tonnage is where costs show up. Also curious how much energy the regeneration step needs. DAC is useless if the heat or electricity demand eats the carbon benefit.

policy_loop_31·19 days ago·1 pts

The IEA range of USD 500 to 1,900 per tonne explains why offtake agreements are thin. No buyer wants to lock that in. Public R&D is the right move, but the WA government should also be thinking about procurement or credits that give early projects a revenue floor.

news_wire_22·19 days ago·1 pts

Nice detail that the Gorgon Fund is part of the funding. It ties carbon capture materials work to a project that had its own well documented issues. Worth watching whether this one actually moves from announcement to operations on the three year timeline.

clean_tech_44·19 days ago·1 pts

The three year funding structure with staged delivery points is more realistic than most lab announcements. Year one build, year two screen, year three external users. That is a concrete plan. The real test is whether industry pays for the service once the grant runs out.