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6. None. The costs of $94 to $232 per ton of CO2
Sat Jun 9, 2018, 12:34 PM
Jun 2018

removed from the atmosphere are simply the costs to produce concentrated CO2:

Depending on financial assumptions, energy costs, and the specific choice of inputs and outputs, the levelized cost per ton CO2 captured from the atmosphere ranges from 94 to 232 $/t-CO2.


The paper speculates that the concentrated CO2 could be used to produce fuels, but provides no costs for this step or even a process to do it:

CE is developing methods to integrate the DAC and fuel synthesis, but for simplicity of analysis, here we show (Table 2) the inputs for a plant that receives O2 and produces atmospheric pressure CO2.


Remember that conventional fuels (like gasoline) are "hydrocarbons" which means that they need a lot of hydrogen to add to the carbon from the CO2. That whole process of producing or providing hydrogen, and reacting it to combine with the CO2 is not shown, presumably because it is already technically feasible and understood.

EDIT: Nowhere does this paper claim that the process will be "cheap". The complete process of taking atmospheric CO2, providing a source of hydrogen, plus other necessary fuel additives, and cooking all those raw material streams into transportation fuel would require a facility that would look a lot like a modern oil refinery. The only entities with the resources and expertise to actually pull something like this off is "Big Oil".
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