SeaCURE - Capturing Carbon from the World’s Oceans

A new method of capturing carbon from seawater, pioneered by the University of Exeter’s ‘SeaCURE’ project, takes a novel approach to reducing CO2 emissions which could help us tackle climate change.

The SeaCURE project – led by the University of Exeter‘s Dr Paul Halloran in collaboration with Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Brunel University London and industrial partner tpgroup – takes advantage of the facts that the concentration of CO2 in seawater is around 150 times higher than in air, and that seawater low in carbon naturally ‘sucks’ CO2 out of the atmosphere. The SeaCURE method makes use of natural processes and renewable energy to remove carbon from seawater, before returning that seawater to the ocean, where it can take more CO2 out of the atmosphere.

After receiving a £250,000 grant from the UK Gov’s Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, the project is in the final stages of designing a demonstration plant with the capacity to remove CO2 from the atmosphere at a rate of 100 tonnes per year. This is a crucial first step in understanding how the carbon capture technology can be developed into a large-scale, commercially viable model, and realizing SeaCURE’s huge potential to support the UK’s net zero ambitions and our ability to reach ‘negative emission’ levels in the second half of this century.