Silver, sleek and sporty, Zem wouldn't look out of place at a supercar championship. But Zem isn't like other sports cars -- or any car, for that matter. The one-of-a-kind prototype cleans carbon from the air while driving. Using a carbon capture device fitted to its underside, the solar-powered electric-battery vehicle absorbs and stores more CO2 than it emits. To cut waste and production emissions, the body and frame are 3D-printed using recycled plastic, and the interior is fitted out in vegan leather made from pineapples.
This sci-fi creation was devised and built by a team of 35 students at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, as part of its ongoing TU/ecomotive project, which sees students create concept cars based on innovative technologies. "We have implemented so many technologies into one car to really show what it can all do together," says Louise de Laat, team manager of the project. In the future, the students hope their carbon capture technology could be retrofitted onto existing vehicles, and help combat some of the emissions from the one billion passenger cars currently on the world's roads.
Since 2013, TU/ecomotive has invited students from different disciplines to collaborate on year-long innovation projects to build sustainable vehicles. The 2021 team's goal was "zero emissions mobility," which gave the car its name: Zem. Incorporating multiple technologies from partner sponsors -- such as lithium-ion batteries from Dutch company Cleantron and solar panels from Watllab that provide up to 15% of the car's charge -- the student team is conducting a lifecycle analysis with SimaPro software to calculate the carbon emissions for construction, use, and afterlife of the car.
Realizing carbon neutrality was impossible to achieve, the team set out to find a way to remove carbon from the air instead. Zem has two filters beneath the car, beside each of the front wheels. Air passes through the filter while the car is driving, and CO2 sticks to a special grain inside the filter. The filter needs to be emptied every 200 miles, so the students designed a custom EV charging station where the CO2 can be extracted from it. It can then be reused in the production of other fuels, such as clean hydrogen, or stored underground in geological formations to keep the CO2 out of the atmosphere. While the device helps to offset some of Zem's production emissions, it's still small scale. Currently, the filters only capture 2 kilograms (4.41 lb) of CO2 every 20,000 miles -- that's less than a tenth of the CO2 the average tree absorbs annually, and 0.04% of a typical vehicle's yearly emissions. However, the team's device demonstrates a proof of concept. The students are currently applying for a patent, and Laat is planning to develop and improve the carbon capture technology in a spin-off startup.
'Moonshot thinking'
While carbon capture technology is vital to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, its development has been slow. In 2020, 44 million tons of CO2 were captured -- just 13% of the target, according to the International Energy Agency.
But there's growing interest in this space. Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk are investing heavily in carbon capture innovation prizes, and carbon capture and storage is projected to be a $7 billion industry by 2028.
The amount of CO2 the student's device captures may be limited -- but this prototype is an important first step, says Carlo van de Weijer, a research fellow at Eindhoven University of Technology.
