Carbon capture (and release) success in Wisconsin

May 20, 2009 04:20 PM in Energy

Carbon capture success in Wisconsin

By David Biello in 60-Second Science Blog

http://www.scientificamerican.com/report.cfm?id=carbon-capture-storage-ccs">Capturing the carbon dioxide that wafts up the smokestack after burning coal (or any other fossil fuel) has been identified by everyone from President Obama to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as a critical technology to help keep the lights on while combating climate change. And now there has been yet another successful demonstration that the technology to capture that CO₂ from flue gas might actually work: chilled ammonia can capture more than 88 percent of the greenhouse gas before it goes up the smokestack.

Alstom Power and We Energies have http://www.we-energies.com/home/carboncapture_constupdte_winter08.htm">released preliminary data on their carbon capture pilot project at Pleasant Prairie, Wisc. The pilot plant, set up to siphon the CO₂ from a small stream of the total flue gas using chilled ammonia, not only captured most of the CO₂, it captured it in a more than 99 percent pure form, according to Robert Hilton, vice president of power technologies and government affairs at Alstom, which is important for any future http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=storing-fossil-fuel-carbon-deep-underground">storage or http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=enhanced-oil-recovery">industrial reuse. "We can (capture) 90 percent (of the CO₂) and do it consistently," he notes. "We've done over 90 percent at times."

So far the project has run some 4,600 hours continuously without issue and captured some 18,000 tons of CO₂ over the last year.

Because this was just a demonstration project, Alstom didn’t do anything with the CO₂, which in the future would either be sold to industrial users for carbonated beverages or http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=enhanced-oil-recovery">oil recovery or http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=storing-fossil-fuel-carbon-deep-underground">pumped deep underground for permanent storage. Alstom just re-released the CO₂ right back up the smokestack with the other flue gas.

…