Direct Air Capture: Saturation Strip Chart

Plant Controls

Fan speed (airflow) 1.0x

Ambient CO₂ 420 ppm

Regeneration temp 900°C

Sorbent capacity standard

Plant Output

CO₂ captured

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Capture rate

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Energy used

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kWh / ton CO₂

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Bank A

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Bank B

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Legend

Bank A saturation Bank B saturation Capture rate (scaled) CO₂ released to storage

How it works

Same solid-sorbent DAC process as the 3D plant view, redrawn as a flat process schematic plus a scrolling strip chart — the natural 2D-native way to watch a two-bank swing-cycle over time, instead of a 3D duct/particle scene. Two contactor banks alternate: one adsorbs CO₂ from air pushed through by fans while the other is sealed and heated to desorb its CO₂ for storage, then they swap.

capture rate ∝ airflow · [CO₂]ambient · (1 − saturation)
d(saturation)/dt = k_ads·rate  (capturing)  −  k_des·f(T)  (regenerating)
energy (kWh) ≈ Σ regen_time · T · const

Fan speed — more airflow means more CO₂ molecules reach the sorbent per second, but a saturated bank still can't absorb more.
Ambient CO₂ — the real atmospheric concentration DAC fights against; a higher value models a stack-adjacent or enclosed-space application rather than open air.
Regeneration temperature — higher heat drives desorption faster but burns more energy per tonne; this is the central engineering trade-off in DAC design.
Sorbent capacity — how much CO₂ a unit of sorbent can hold before it saturates, a proxy for sorbent material quality.

The two saturation traces climb (capturing) and fall (regenerating) out of phase — while one line rises, the other falls — exactly mirroring the alternating-bank swap used by commercial solid-sorbent DAC plants like Climeworks' Orca, which never fully stops capturing.

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