DOE Announces $67 Million Investment for Carbon Capture Development
The DOE today announced it would fund 10 projects aimed at developing advanced technologies for capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from coal combustion. The projects, valued at up to $67 million over three years, focus on reducing the energy and efficiency penalties associated with applying currently available carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies to existing and new power plants.
The selections will focus on improving efficiency and reducing the added costs to electricity at power plants with carbon capture systems to less than 30% for a new pulverized coal plant and 10% for a new advanced gasification plant. The DOE said they would further the Obama administration’s goal of developing cost-effective deployment of CCS technologies within 10 years, with an objective of bringing 5 to 10 commercial demonstration projects online by 2016.
Carbon dioxide power plant capture systems currently require large amounts of energy for their operation, resulting in decreased efficiency and reduced net power output when compared to plants without CCS technology. The goal of this research is to reduce the energy “penalty” with carbon capture and sequestration technologies, thereby reducing costs and helping to move the technology closer to widespread use.
Post-combustion CO2 capture technology offers great near-term potential for reducing power sector CO2 emissions because it can be retrofitted to existing plants. The selections will focus on bench-scale and slipstream-scale development (0.5 to 5 MWe) and testing of advanced post-combustion CO2 capture technologies that include membranes, solvents, and solid sorbents.
The post-combustion CO2 selections include:
• Bench-Scale Development and Testing of Post-combustion CO2 Capture. Technologies include membranes (American Air Liquide Inc. and Gas Technology Institute) and solvents (3H Company LLC, Akermin Inc., ION Engineering LLC, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and URS Group)
• Slipstream Development and Testing of Post-combustion CO2 Capture. Technologies include membranes (Membrane Technology and Research Inc.), solvents (Siemens Energy Inc.), and solid sorbents (ADA-ES Inc.)
For project details, see the full DOE press release.
Source: DOE