[orthoganol]

Out of curiosity, we would need ~500 of these stations in their current form to offset a typical coal power plant (7.5 thousand tons co2/ year, a claim from Climework's about video, v. 3.5 million tons co2 / year), or about 5-6 million stations to offset global co2 yearly emission (40-45 billion tons co2/ year).

[wereHamster]

...at the current efficiency levels. Note that this is only their second installation, so don't expect any miracles. The technology will improve, I'm sure.

[gandreani]

Wow really? That seems like a small number. Given that aroun 70+ million cars were sold in 2016, we probably have the industrial capacity to offset the yearly emissions.

I wonder how cheap these will get and if they can be deployed en masse easily

[lucisferre]

They also mention that it is considerably more efficient to capture carbon at the source. The CO2 concentration is about 200 times higher at the plant (10% vs 0.04%). They state that it costs about 1/10 as much to capture at the source.

So extrapolating from that, then the the plant they built in Switzerland, which 900 tonnes/yr directly from the air, could potentially capture 9000 tonnes/yr and would handily manage a coal power plant.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/switzerland-giant-new...