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18 min ago 2 min read
US direct air capture (DAC) and water treatment start-up Capture6 has opened an “industrial-scale” demonstration plant in Western Australia, marking its first operational deployment.
The company confirmed that its Project Tortuga near Perth began operating as “one integrated system” to recover freshwater from industrial brine while removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air.
It comes around four months after Capture6’s eight containerised units were delivered to the project site located at the Australian Automation and Robotics Precinct’s facility.
Capture6 has not disclosed the plant’s CO₂ removal or freshwater recovery capacity.
The company uses an electrochemical process to convert salts from industrial brine into an capable of absorbing atmospheric CO2, while delivering freshwater. The captured carbon can then be converted into carbonate compounds for long-term storage.
“Australia is looking for new water supplies and new ways to remove carbon, and at Tortuga, both come from a single system,” said CEO Ethan Cohen-Cole.
The company is also developing its Project Monarch in California, US, alongside Palmdale Water District. In its second commercial phase, it could capture 25,000 tonnes of CO2 per year and recover 400,000m3 of freshwater annually.
The firm claims the full-scale Monarch plant could save the water district “up to 40%” compared with alternative brine management.
It also has planned projects in South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, and the US Midwest.
Despite its potential, DAC continues to face significant commercial hurdles, with high energy requirements, elevated costs, and limited large-scale deployments constraining its growth.
While emerging technologies such as Capture6’s aim to improve the economics by integrating it with industrial processes, questions remain over their ability to scale commercially and deliver cost-effective, verifiable permanent CO2 removal.
