Mitsubishi Electric and VTT are celebrating a milestone in the development of their joint direct ocean capture (DOC) solution, marking progress from early-stage research toward technology validation and future demonstration planning.
The collaborative project is an electrochemical DOC solution developed under a partnership kicked off by the two companies back in 2024.
Antti Arasto, project lead of the collaboration and vice president of VTT, commented, “This is exactly the type of long-term, high-impact challenge that can translate research into real-world breakthroughs.“
“Through strong commitment and focused development efforts, we have achieved significant technological progress in a short time. Our collaboration with Mitsubishi Electric has now advanced DOC to a stage where further technology validation can be pursued, supporting future scale-up and field implementation activities,” he added.
Seiji Oguro, executive officer and vice president of Sustainability Innovation Group at Mitsubishi Electric, stated, “Moving forward, we will further strengthen our strategic partnership and welcome new collaboration partners to accelerate our commercialization initiatives. In doing so, we are committed to realizing “Trade-On (mutual benefit)” business to address societal challenges and drive sustainable business growth.”
The joint DOC project is centered around an acidification-based approach in which seawater is temporarily acidified to release dissolved CO2 in gaseous form for capture.
Unlike the alkalinization route (base-DOC), in which CO2 is stored as solid carbonates, the DOC approach used by VTT and Mitsubishi Electric enables the recovered CO2 to be either permanently stored (CCS) or used as feedstock in industrial processes (CCU).
DOC as a carbon removal pathway is designed for deployment at coastal industrial facilities, such as desalination and power plants, where seawater is already processed at large volumes.
Relevant: Equinor And Captura Validate DOC System For Commercial Deployment
These solutions help tackle the excessive CO2 pollution by removing dissolved inorganic carbon from seawater and catalyzing a renewed uptake of atmospheric CO2 by the ocean.
By utilizing existing intake, pre-treatment, and auxiliary systems, DOC has access to scaling opportunities, and it reduces the infrastructure-related investment typical for conventional solutions.
According to expert studies, in a long-term perspective, DOC has the potential to reach carbon removal volumes of several gigatonnes per year.
Read more: Isometric Officially Certifies Protocol For Direct Ocean Capture & Storage (DOCS)
