World’s First Plant That Captures CO2 From Air to Make Building Materials Opens

• Aggregates produced using CO2 captured by Mission Zero Technologies ‘Direct Air Capture’ technology (Image courtesy of Mission Zero Technologies)
• A demonstration project that uses direct air capture (DAC) technology to separate carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air for use in the production of building materials has opened in the UK, in what its backers claim is a world first.

Mission Zero Technologies (MZT) has opened the plant in Norfolk in partnership with O.C.O Technology and the UK Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).

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MZT’s DAC technology is capable of recovering around 250 tonnes of CO2 per year from the atmosphere for direct use in O.C.O’s manufactured limestone.

Every 1,000 tonnes of manufactured limestone produced is expected to capture the same volume of carbon as 3,000 trees in a year.

It is the second of MZT’s three previously announced plants to open, but the first to produce building materials. MZT opened its first commercial DAC plant in late 2023 in Sheffield, which produces sustainable aviation fuel. A third plant, in Alberta, Canada, is due to begin operations later this year and will store CO2 underground.

Dr Nicholas Chadwick, co-founder and CEO of MZT said, "Thanks to months of hard work alongside our partners in O.C.O and the UK government, we’re opening our second UK plant. While many Direct Air Capture solutions are still in the lab, our technologies are being used in real-world commercial settings — giving us invaluable insights and data to scale faster, and helping to prove critics wrong.

With the construction sector being one of the largest contributors to global carbon emissions, the industry needs to rapidly rethink its carbon backbone — and creating sustainable building materials which double as carbon sinks is a great way to do just that."

Graham Cooper, UK managing director for O.C.O said: "We’re pleased to work alongside Mission Zero in enabling this exciting technology. Direct air capture is an important part of UK and global efforts to reach Net Zero and beyond, and so working on this project fits with our core values of delivering carbon capture and sustainability."

One of the issues with DAC technology has been its intense heat requirements to separate CO2 from air. However, MZT’s technology relies on a heat-free process, using electricity instead. MZT said this means it can be integrated with local renewable energy sources, as well as absorbing excess energy from solar and wind generation that would otherwise go to waste. It claims that its process uses three to five times less energy than other DAC approaches.