Has a solution been found for the carbon dioxide that pollutes the air? | Israel today

Is the solution to air pollution with carbon dioxide, which causes global warming, found in factories that have cleaned it out of our atmosphere?

It is difficult to answer this question, however last week the Swiss startup Climeworks AG began building in Iceland its second facility for cleaning the air from carbon dioxide.

This is a huge facility that can clean 39,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, a leap of 10 times from the current facility operated by the startup.

Of course this is a drop in the ocean because humanity puts 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year.

Despite this, it is a step forward and a milestone for the company towards the construction of units that will suck half a million tons of carbon dioxide a year from the atmosphere.

The Icelandic plant will be called Mammoth, and it will include 80 blocks of fans and large filters that will take the carbon out of the atmosphere.

The trapped carbon is then transferred to the Icelandic company Carbfix, which buries it mixed with water in the soil where the carbon is chemically turned into rock.

The cost of the current plant is $ 627 million in money the startup raised last April.

It is important to note that some of the company's profits come from the sale of air purification for polluting factories around the world when the price stands at one thousand euros per tonne of carbon dioxide.

This is a relatively expensive price, but among the startup's customers are giants such as Microsoft, Audi and large international consulting companies.

The number of air purifier plants currently in the world stands at 18, according to the International Energy Agency.

And soon a huge facility will be built by the American oil company Occidental, which will purify one million tons of carbon dioxide from the air every year.

And yet as mentioned it is a drop in the ocean when in the opinion of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a lot of such factories would have to be set up to meet the target set by humanity to prevent global warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius from their current level.

It is important to note that these projects have quite a few critics claiming that such factories will cleanse the conscience of polluting companies that will buy tons of purified carbon instead of reducing their use of fuels.

Also in order for such plants to be truly beneficial they must not themselves create other greenhouse gases instead of the purified carbon they emit from the atmosphere.

Either way it is clear that this is one of the ways to deal with air pollution and global warming due to emissions of polluting gases.

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