Spiritus, an innovative direct air capture companies aiming to revolutionize the space, just announced a major milestone – its first large-scale DACCS facility to be built in Central Wyoming, the U.S. The facility, known as Orchard One, will be one of the world’s largest direct air capture plants, starting smaller but eventually expanding to up to 2 megatons of CO2 capture and storage capacity annually.
Operation is expected to begin in 2026. The captured CO2 will be sequestered permanently underground in naturally occurring rock formations. What is revolutionary about the large-scale carbon removal facility is that is looking towards reducing the cost of direct air capture and geologic sequestration under $100 a ton to achieve more carbon removal value for the investment.
Relevant: Spiritus To Tackle The CO2 From Taylor Swift Super Bowl Flight
According to the company’s announcement, Orchard One has already gained commercial interest from Frontier, Watershed, and Terraset who are among the carbon credits pre-purchase customers. Additional carbon removals from Orchard One are available directly from Spiritus, as well as through its founding partners, Watershed, Cloverly, and Terraset.
The milestone also follows an announcement from the company for an $11 million seed round raised, backed by venture firm Khosla Ventures.
“Establishing Orchard One in the state of Wyoming marks a major advancement in our global journey towards net-zero… Our approach, a first in the industry, brings high-efficiency carbon removal within the economic reach of broader markets. Leveraging our proprietary sorbent technology and achieving substantial reductions in energy consumption, we’re moving to reduce the cost of direct air capture to under $100 per ton. This tenfold reduction in cost, compared to previous methods, marks an inflection point in the field…,” commented Charles Cadieu, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Spiritus.
Relevant: Spiritus Expands Its Team With Industry’s Top Engineering Minds
Spiritus has developed a solid sorbent material shaped in the form of white round balls, described by the founder Charles Cadieu as resembling human lungs. The whole facility also looks like a carbon capture orchard rather than the traditional DAC fans. When the sorbents are collected from the orchard, they will be put in a container where heat will be applied to remove the CO2 they have captured. The desorption process is powered by clean energy. After the CO2 is collected, the sorbents can be returned to the carbon orchard and reused.
Another innovation within the technology is related to the low energy requirements of the process. The CO2 is captured and detached from the sorbent material with half of the energy needed in current methods. That is also one of the reasons why the company is able to draw the costs this low.
