University of Delaware Battery-Style Room-Temperature Direct Air Capture (Ni(OH)2 Electrode)

Track; not yet

Why

The Nature Energy paper reports a measured 0.83 MWh/t at pilot-stack scale, below the roughly 1.7 MWh/t average of real-world DAC energy estimates cited by an independent Energy Analytics brief (which puts likely full-system requirements at 1.8-3.6 MWh/t), with 5,000 h lab durability and a pressure drop meeting the 300 Pa DAC requirement. However, the stack test lasted only 48 h, the sub-US$100/t cost is a learning-rate-based pathway rather than a demonstrated cost, and the commercial path runs through licensees (Versogen, RepAir) whose founders and employees are among the authors. Promising but unproven at scale and over long duration.

Next

Watch for RepAir's multi-month pilot data and first commercial or storage-linked deployments, independent replication of the 0.83 MWh/t figure, and measured cost per tonne at stack scale.