HELLISHEIDI, Iceland (AFP) — With Mammoth’s 72 industrial fans, Swiss start-up Climeworks intends to suck 36,000 tons of CO2 from the air annually to bury underground, vying to prove the technology has a place in the fight against global warming.

Mammoth, the largest carbon dioxide capture and storage facility of its kind, launched operations this week situated on a dormant volcano in Iceland.

It adds significant capacity to the Climework’s first project Orca, which also sucks the primary greenhouse gas fueling climate change from the atmosphere.

Just 50 kilometers from an active volcano, the seemingly risky site was chosen for its proximity to the Hellisheidi geothermal energy plant necessary to power the facility’s fans and heat chemical filters to extract CO2 with water vapor.

CO2 is then separated from the steam and compressed in a hangar where huge pipes crisscross.

Finally, the gas is dissolved in water and pumped underground with a “sort of giant SodaStream,” said Bergur Sigfusson, chief system development officer for Carbfix which developed the process.

A well, drilled under a futuristic-looking dome, injects the water 700 meters down into volcanic basalt that makes up 90 percent of Iceland’s subsoil where it reacts with the magnesium, calcium and iron in the rock to form crystals — solid reservoirs of CO2.