West Japan Railway Company (Head Office: Osaka City, “JR West”), Carbon Xtract Corporation (Location: Fukuoka City, “Carbon Xtract”) and Spice Cube Inc. (Head Office: Osaka City, “Spice Cube”) are joining forces to conduct a demonstration at a plant factory using m-DAC® technology to capture CO₂ present from the air. This project was applied for and selected by Osaka Prefecture and will be implemented as a project of its 2024 Subsidies for Carbon Neutral Technology Development and Demonstrations program.
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Details of the demonstration
- The demonstration will combine Carbon Xtract’s m-DAC® technology with Spice Cube’s indoor plant factory to grow vegetables by promoting photosynthesis using the CO₂ captured from the air.
- The demonstration will be carried out at Osaka Loop Line’s Benten-cho Station during the Osaka and Kansai Expo.
- During the demonstration, the promotional character featured in the separate attachment will be used to promote the worldview the plant factory aims to achieve through the use of m-DAC® technology.
- This project is the first in the world to utilize the CO₂ collected on the spot from the air by small, distributed DAC (*1) systems.
Illustration: diagram of plant factory utilizing m-DAC® technology
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m-DAC® technology
- Carbon Xtract’s world-first proprietary technology for recovering airborne CO₂ through membrane separation using innovative separation nanomembrane technology (m-DAC®) with extremely high permeability to CO₂.
- While industrial-size DAC equipment is currently the norm across the world, its m-DAC® devices are small and allow the recovery of airborne CO₂ in any location.
* m-DAC is a registered trademark of Kyushu University, a national university corporation.
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Our goals
- Plant factories using m-DAC® technology will be installed in stations and various cities, and fresh vegetables will be grown while capturing CO₂ to promote the effective use and collection of CO₂ in metropolitan areas.
- Vegetables will be sold to the public through neighboring stores, restaurants and stations with the aim of introducing a new model for reducing CO₂ that the public can immediately become familiar with.
For questions, contact:
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Carbon Xtract Corporation
Mail: info[at]c-xtract.com
Character used for promotional purposes
We plan to promote the initiative using McDac™, a character that users can easily identify with, during the demonstration stage at the Osaka-Kansai Expo to create familiarity with CO₂ capture and its efficient utilization in the metropolitan areas using m-DAC technology.