TED演讲:从大气中移除二氧化碳的新方法(2)

（单词翻译）

So what I'm showing you here is what a system might look like to do just this.

我现在向你们展示的是一个具备这种功能的系统可能的样子。

This is called an air contactor.

它被称为空气接触器。

You can see it has to be really, really wide in order to have a high enough surface area to process all of the air required,

可以看到，它必须设计得非常非常宽，这样才能获得足够大的表面积来处理所有需要的空气，

because remember, we're trying to capture just 400 molecules¹ out of a million.

请谨记，我们要尝试在一百万个分子之中捕获仅仅四百个分子。

Using the liquid-based approach to do this, you take this high surface area packing material,

若使用液体材料来捕获二氧化碳，需要选用表面积大的填充材料，

you fill the contactor with the packing material, you use pumps to distribute liquid across the packing material,

将空气接触器装满，再使用泵驱动，并确保液体在填充材料之间充分流动，

and you can use fans, as you can see in the front, to bubble the air through the liquid.

然后你就可以使用风扇，从装置的前面将空气吹进装置，以气泡的形态穿过液体。

The CO2 in the air is separated the liquid by reacting with the really strong-binding CO2 molecules in solution.

空气中的二氧化碳与液体材料发生反应，从而将二氧化碳分子分离出来。

And in order to capture a lot of CO2, you have to make this contactor deeper.

为了能捕获更多的二氧化碳，还必须将接触器造得更深。

But there's an optimization², because the deeper you make that contactor,

但是这种提升并不是无限的，因为接触器造得越深，

the more energy you're spending on bubbling all that air through.

制造气泡所消耗的能量也越多。

So air contactors for direct air capture have this unique characteristic design,

所以直接捕捉空气的空气接触器就具备了这个独一无二的设计，

where they have this huge surface area, but a relatively³ thin thickness.

巨大的表面积和相对较薄的厚度。