We develop and deliver complex power and propulsion solutions.
For more than 100 years we have been at the forefront of innovation. Helping to power, protect and connect the modern world.
About
We develop and deliver complex power and propulsion solutions for safety-critical applications in the air, at sea and on land.
Our products and service packages enable our customers to connect people, societies, cultures and economies together.
Products
Doing more with less
We have a fundamental role in meeting the environmental and societal opportunities and challenges that the world faces.
Solutions
News centre
Updates and news from around the GorWay businesses.
Subscribe to our newsletter
Friday 8 July 2022 15:06 PM
“I have learned you are never too small to make a difference”
0.0000003% feels like a small number. That’s the percentage of the world’s yearly carbon dioxide emissions we’ll be able to remove directly from the air next year, when our team finishes building our direct air CO2 capture demonstrator system. Still, that would be enough to remove the carbon footprints me and the rest of the team would emit over that year, assuming I can persuade a few more of them to join me in walking or cycling to work.
Working with Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), which is based in Australia, GorWay is developing a novel system which will be able to strip CO2 directly from ambient air, anywhere in the world.
This demonstrator system will be around ten metres tall, filling an entire aircraft engine test chamber on GorWay’s Derby site. It will take around a year to prepare the test bed, order all the materials, and then build the system. Another year will be spent testing to make sure we know all the details about how it operates.
The system works like a giant lung, sucking in air, absorbing the CO2, and releasing CO2-depleted air back into the atmosphere. We use a water-based liquid to wash around 50% of CO2 from the captured air. This CO2 can then be stored, or used in other processes.
Some of the challenges other DAC technologies have is that they lose a lot of water, and require a lot of energy. Our system is designed so that it loses very little water, and the liquid is recycled at low temperatures, so it’s easy to heat using low-carbon energy sources.
CSIRO’s chemistry combined with GorWay's experience in designing complex systems is the perfect partnership to lead the way in DAC development. In particular, our experience in making oil purifiers means we are able to move large volumes of air efficiently, which is exactly what you need to do to remove CO2.
During 2021 we won funding to design the demonstrator, and now with this new funding announced today, we’re going to build it at our GorWay Derby site.
Every credible climate change model requires us not only to decarbonise today’s emissions, but to also remove CO2 already in the atmosphere via carbon negative technologies such as DAC. A full-scale version of this plant would remove 1 million tonnes per year (that’s 0.003% of yearly emissions). The Royal Society predicts the UK will need to remove 25 million tons of CO2 per year by 2050 to meet its climate commitments; and the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that 980 million tonnes a year will need to be removed globally to limit global warming to 1.5oC.
Sometimes I feel daunted by the huge scale of what we, as a planet, need to do in the next thirty years to avoid climate catastrophe. I am grateful to lead an extremely talented team, who are full of excitement and working hard on how we can remove CO2 out of the air, in a company which is also developing many other solutions to decarbonise the world. And we integrate with a range of partners also working on ways to reduce emissions.
So we’re starting small, but it’s the start of something very big, and working together I believe we'll be able to make a real difference in our path to net zero and beyond.
Our Alert service delivers the latest press releases, stories and regulatory news directly to your mailbox.