Blank
The same vessel, the same fan, the same three hours of the same air, with no sorbent in it. Read down the page and nothing happens, which is the point of running it.
control · in service 2025-11 · 212 cycles ·
measured heel 0.000 mmol/g
ten stations, weight 100.0 to 100.0, spread 0.0
0.00 kg CO2 recovered a cycle. This column is a control and is never counted toward a removal.
Fresh bed
t 0 min
q 0.000 mmol/g
weight 100.0
air off
An empty vessel, weighed and sealed. The rig runs the whole cycle on it, on the same clock as C-4.
Air on
t 10 min
q 0.000 mmol/g
weight 100.0
adsorption
The fan is running. The air goes in one end and out the other and there is nothing in the middle.
Adsorbing
t 25 min
q 0.000 mmol/g
weight 100.0
adsorption
Twenty-five minutes of air through an empty column. The outlet analyser matches the inlet to within its own drift.
Filling
t 45 min
q 0.000 mmol/g
weight 100.0
adsorption
Still nothing. This is the reading a capture plant has to be able to show, because it is what its instruments say when nothing is happening.
Slowing
t 75 min
q 0.000 mmol/g
weight 100.0
adsorption
The blank is what tells us a rise on a production column is CO2 and not the meter.
Breakthrough
t 120 min
q 0.000 mmol/g
weight 100.0
air off
There was never anything to break through. The step change happens anyway, because it is on a timer.
Heat on
t 132 min
q 0.000 mmol/g
weight 100.0
desorption
Heat and vacuum applied to an empty vessel, at the same duty and the same energy cost as a real regeneration.
Releasing
t 150 min
q 0.000 mmol/g
weight 100.0
desorption
The collection meter reads zero. It has never read above 0.4 kg in a month on this column.
Nearly empty
t 165 min
q 0.000 mmol/g
weight 100.0
desorption
Nothing comes off slowly either.
The heel
t 195 min
q 0.000 mmol/g
weight 100.0
vacuum closed
No heel, because there is no bed to hold one. The vessel weighs what it weighed at minute zero.