At first glance, it would go unnoticed. Erected behind a factory in Drancy, a northeastern suburb of Paris, the cooling tower looks like an ordinary industrial installation: a 3.5-meter-high metal box topped with a fan, humming like a fountain. It is actually France’s first “direct air capture” (DAC) prototype – a technology designed to extract CO2 directly from the air to help mitigate the climate crisis.
Air is drawn in through vents and filtered using a liquid chemical solvent. In a warehouse of pumps, tanks and pipes, an electric current flows through membranes to recover greenhouse gases, which are then concentrated. It is a complex process to isolate a molecule that makes up just 0.04% of the atmosphere.
Since July 2025, the machine has operated for around 1,500 hours and captured 1.3 metric tons of CO₂. “At this stage, the main goal is to demonstrate that it works safely,” explained Valentin Fougerit, cofounder and CEO of the start-up Yama, as he pointed to a dashboard displaying real-time data. For now, the recovered gas is simply released back into the air. Ultimately, the company plans to store it in concrete or use it to produce synthetic fuels for aircraft.
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