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43 min ago 2 min read
Direct air capture (DAC) firm Climeworks Solutions claims to have more than doubled carbon dioxide (CO2) capture performance at its Icelandic DAC and storage facility over the past 18 months.
The company said it reached the targeted peak daily run rate across two upgraded collector containers, achieving the expected design performance, and reducing operating costs by over 50%.
Following new sorbent and mechanical upgrades, net CO2 removal (CDR) has reached 675 tonnes in the first half of 2026, up from 119 tonnes in H1 2025, representing a more than five-fold increase.
However, the increased rates still fall far short of the initial 36,000 tonnes per year capture rate by the Mammoth plant when it launched in May 2024.
In an update shared by Climeworks’ co-founder and co-CEO Jan Warzbacher, he said the originally deployed collector containers were operating at around half of the intended peak daily run rate of 1.37 tonnes of captured CO2.
The peak daily run rate represents the amount of CO2 a collector container is capturing per day before accounting for real-world factors, such as maintenance, weather and grey emissions associated with removing and permanently storing CO2.
Now the upgraded containers have reached the original peak daily run rate of 1.37 tonnes of CO2 capture per day. Climeworks believes this shows its upgraded collector container technology is capable of achieving the intended design operating performance under real-world conditions.
The company now aims to introduce the new sorbent and mechanical upgrades across all 12 collector containers in one plant module at Mammoth. The plant is made up of 72 collector containers organised in six modules.
It will begin testing its next-generation DAC technology at Mammoth at the start of 2027.
In June, Climeworks announced it 14 new CDR deals in the previous six months, representing around 450,000 tonnes of CDR across a diversified customer base.
