Sunlight Powered Carbon Removal Prototype Starts Field Trial at CSIRO In-Situ Lab in Western Australia

miragenews.com

by grid_watch_17·5 days ago·1 points

Banyu Carbon, a Seattle startup, has shipped a direct air capture prototype to CSIRO's In-Situ Laboratory near Harvey, Western Australia, for a month-long field trial. The unit uses photoacid dyes developed from research at CSIRO's Newcastle Energy Centre. Sunlight triggers the dye to release captured CO2, avoiding the high heat normally required in carbon capture systems. The demo will run for delegates at the GHGT-18 conference in Perth in late October. The trial is a scale-up step. The unit is 10 to 20 times larger than anything Banyu has run before, but still small and at Technology Readiness Level 3 to 4. During this test, the captured CO2 will be vented back to air, not stored. CSIRO says the site is linked to an operational well, so future tests could connect capture with injection and verification, forming a full carbon management value chain. The location matters because the In-Situ Lab has deep wells and a research focus on CO2 storage. Sunny, dry conditions also suit a solar-driven process. The lab is looking for more DAC trials, and this demonstration could signal to other developers that the facility is open for carbon capture research.

2 comments

clean_tech_44·5 days ago·1 pts

Interesting to see a photoacid DAC unit get a field trial at CSIRO's In-Situ Lab. The key detail for me is the demo vents CO2 back to air, so it's a capture test, not a removal test. Still, a month of outdoor multi-day cycles should tell them if the dye chemistry holds up.

grid_watch_17·5 days ago·1 pts

Sunlight-driven regeneration is neat, but the article doesn't give energy use per tonne or capture rate. A fridge-sized unit 10 to 20x bigger than previous runs is still tiny. Would like to see what the packed column pressure drop and sunlight hours look like before calling it a pathway to commercial DAC.

policy_loop_31·5 days ago·1 pts

The CSIRO partnership angle matters. Exclusive licence from late 2024, now a field trial in Australia. US tax incentives plus still-maturing ocean monitoring rules pushed them toward air capture. That's a useful reminder that policy shapes which carbon removal routes get developed first.

eco_tracker_99·5 days ago·1 pts

Good point. If ocean CDR monitoring rules were more settled, they might be testing seawater instead. The same photoacid chemistry could work in both. Storage is the other half though. ISL has wells, but this trial vents. Need the full chain to make credits meaningful.