Tamir Kuzurbardov, Avi Yaverboim, Tzemah Kislev, Eli Abramov
In consultation with our colleagues from:
The amorphous silica industry
Abstract
A feasibility study is presented for scaling up manufacturing of Submicronic Engineered Amorphous Silica Particles (SEASP) to industrial throughput required for Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI), with properties meeting safety and functionality requirements [1,2]. Manufacturing is based on wet-precipitation chemistry via a TEOS-based St¨ober sol-gel route. The goal of this study is to assess realistic timescale and cost of manufacturing at relevant scales for SAI, analyze the main risks and bottlenecks, and identify mitigation strategies for them. Scale-up is assessed across the components necessary to establish feasibility: process scalability, material availability, infrastructure, operations, energy consumption, waste and by-products, timeline, and cost.
Based on relevant available data on SEASP manufacturing and precipitated-silica scale-up benchmarks, it is assessed that scaling up manufacturing from the current specialty chemical scale of 0.1 kt/yr to a single module of 250 kt/yr is expected to be completed within approximately five years. No fundamental technology or process show-stopper was identified, provided that demand, logistics, financing, industrial partnering, and regional manufacturing hubs are developed in parallel.
Plant replication of the 250 kt/yr module to regional hub manufacturing at a climate-relevant scale of 1 Mt/yr, sufficient to offset a significant fraction of decadal warming, is expected to be completed within two additional years. An outlook is provided for further expansion toward climate-scale 10 Mt/yr manufacturing capacity, required for approximately 1% solar-flux modification. This climate-scale capacity is expected to be based on replicating the regional 1 Mt/yr hubs.
TEOS precursor availability is identified as the principal scale-up risk, and an integrated TEOSSEASP manufacturing concept is presented to address this risk. Unit economics of approximately USD 5/kg, dominated primarily by raw-material costs, appear plausible, with further reductions possible through process optimization, solvent recycling, continuous operation, and precursor-route improvements.
