Deep Fix

The objective was to advance the systems engineering component of Solid Carbon’s feasibility study. Solid Carbon helps mitigate climate change by removing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it beneath the seafloor. The abundance of offshore renewable energy and storage capacity offers large scaling potential; however, systems must be created to tie everything together.

Goals of the systems engineering team included identifying drivers of feasibility, developing preferred architectures, and estimating performance. I was responsible for guiding graduate students as they each defined and developed their piece of the puzzle, while also contributing directly to underlying models with a focus on costing and economic analysis.

Outcomes are detailed in more than a dozen theses and research articles. Highlights include:

• Maps of global deployment potential, alongside tools to identify promising sites by synthesizing best-available data – geological, hydrographic, wind, logistics, etc..
• A Python+OpenMDAO systems model that captures energy and material flows, sizing, and costing. Its modular design allows targeted optimization studies, as well as exploration of different architectures (e.g., determining the implications of dissolved versus supercritical CO2 injection, or seawater versus direct-air CO2 capture).
• Focused models addressing a range of topics. For example: direct-air capture performance when integrated with a wind-turbine platform; mooring and stability for (networks of) integrated floating platforms; control strategies and power-to-X for managing intermittency, and more.

Overall, we can say that Solid Carbon is within the realm of technical and economic feasibility, with more precision to come in its next demonstration phase.