The TU/ecomotive student team from Eindhoven University of Technology has developed a solar-powered EV that captures carbon dioxide. The concept car, called Zem, stores CO2 in specially designed filters.
Silver, sleek and sporty, Zem wouldn’t look out of place in a supercar championship. But the Zem isn’t like any other sports car or any car. The one-of-a-kind prototype removes carbon from the air while driving.
- Using a carbon capture device attached to its underside, the solar-powered electric battery vehicle absorbs and stores more CO2 than it emits. To reduce waste and production emissions, the body and frame are 3D printed using recycled plastic and the interior is fitted with vegan leather made from pineapple. This sci-fi piece was designed and built by a team of 35 at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands as part of the ongoing TU/ecomotives project that envisions students creating concept cars based on innovative technologies.
“We applied a lot of technology to one vehicle to really show what they can all do together,” says Louise de Laat, team manager of the project. Students hope that in the future, carbon capture technologies can be adapted to existing vehicles and help combat some of the emissions from the one billion passenger cars currently on the world’s roads.
Combining multiple technologies from co-sponsors, such as lithium-ion batteries from Dutch company Cleantron and Watllab’s solar panels that provide up to 15% of the car’s charge, the student team conducts a lifecycle analysis with SimaPro software to calculate carbon. emissions for the construction, use and subsequent life of the car.
Realizing that carbon neutrality was impossible to achieve, the team instead set out to find a way to remove carbon from the air. The floor has two filters under the car, next to each of the front wheels. While the car is in motion, the air passes through the filter and the CO2 adheres 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 CO2 can be removed. It can then be reused in the production of other fuels such as clean hydrogen or stored underground in geological formations to keep CO2 out of the atmosphere.
While the device helps offset some of Zem’s production emissions, it’s still small in scale. Currently, the filters capture only 2 kilograms (4.41 lb) of CO2 every 20,000 miles – that’s less than a tenth of the CO2 an average tree absorbs annually and 0.04% of a typical vehicle’s annual emissions.
However, the team’s device shows a proof of concept. The students are currently applying for a patent, and Laat plans to develop and refine the carbon capture technology in a spin-off initiative.