Carbon capture and storage (CCS) or carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) form a major part of a lot of governments' net-zero plans and also roadmaps like the IEA's Net-Zero by 2050 roadmap that the published recently. But so far, we have had very few successful carbon capture projects, even though many smart and motivated people have been trying very hard for about 30 or 40 years.

I've been hearing contradictory things about carbon capture. It's apparently a mature technology, but on the other hand we are expecting an imminent breakthrough that will see costs drop and adoption rise. This sounded strange to me, but since I didn't actually know how carbon capture works, it was hard to get an idea about where the technology maturity is right now, and how its likely to develop. So I tracked down a chemical engineer - Marc Allen - who has been working in industrial gases and sustainability for the last 20 years. And Marc answered all my questions about what kinds of carbon capture there are, what applications they can be used for, and how carbon capture actually works.

Bookmarks:
00:00 Intro - can carbon capture possibly scale up as quickly as many project?
00:21 IEA Net-Zero by 2050 road map and Ketan Joshi's historical vs future projections
01:25 Cute infographics did not help me understand how CCS works
02:19 Post combustion carbon capture
02:44 Oxyfuel carbon capture
02:51 Blue hydrogen from natural gas or coal
03:22 Amine absorption carbon capture simple infographic
04:30 Amine absorption process diagram
05:20 How much CO2 can be captured?
07:24 Molecular sieve carbon capture
09:22 Membrane carbon capture
10:18 How much energy does carbon capture use?
11:19 CCS is good for hard-to-abate sectors
13:03 CCS needs a higher price on carbon to be economic
13:59 Summary and future video topics

A big thank you to Marc Allen from Engeco for his patient explanations!
https://www.engeco.com.au/

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Sources:
EA Net-Zero by 2050 road map https://www.iea.org/reports/net-zero-...
Quantity of carbon capture, historical and IEA, assumed in net zero scenario by Ketan Joshi   / carbon-capture-keeps-proving-its-critics-r...  
Quest, Petra Nova and Boundary Dam on MIT database:
https://sequestration.mit.edu/index.html
Chevron Australia's Gorgon project https://australia.chevron.com/our-bus...
Molecular sieve video: Video file from Wang X, Chi C, Zhang K, Qian Y, Gupta K, Kang Z, Jiang J, Zhao D (2017). "Reversed thermo-switchable molecular sieving membranes composed of two-dimensional metal-organic nanosheets for gas separation". Nature Communications. DOI:10.1038/ncomms14460. PMID 28205528. PMC: 5316892.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... via Wikimedia Commons
"Bowl of marbles" GOKLuLe 盧樂, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons
Balls in jar Smokefoot, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons
LNG processing U.S. Government Accountability Office from Washington, DC, United States, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
IEA, Levelised cost of CO2 capture by sector and initial CO2 concentration, 2019, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/data-and-statisti...

Thanks for watching the video How Does Carbon Capture Actually Work?
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