Carbon Dioxide Capture

With the gradual awareness and change toward green energy sources, and the slow process toward weening our selves of of oil. The most effective method to create energy in the world will be coal, solar, wind, and nuclear power. Nuclear power is by far the most effective but has great potential for disaster, wind is a very clean source however it takes large areas to be effective, solar also is very clean and take up a large area, coal is the most readily available and the US has an abundant supply of it.

With the amount of carbon dioxide that coal produces it is a big contributor to the green house effect. The way to solve that problem is the research of carbon dioxide capture, which has been going on now for 10 years. The Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be working together with the first large scale projects here in the U.S.

"Three projects in the United States and Canada will conduct large-volume tests for storing 1 million or more tons of CO₂ in deep saline aquifers -- porous rock formations deep in the earth whose pores contain salty water and can be filled with CO₂." USinfo.state.gov

Looking at companies that will be doing some of these testings, NRG Energy Inc. (NYSE: NRG) will build one of the largest test projects needed to capture carbon dioxide from coal in Texas.

"As part of our aggressive effort to 'get the carbon out of coal,' we are proud to help demonstrate the viability of this promising technology for post-combustion carbon capture at WA Parish," said David Crane, NRG chief executive in a statement. Reuters

Back in March 2007 American Electric Power (NYSE: AEP) announced two significant memorandums of understanding (MOU) Involving technologies that can be used to reduce CO2 emissions from coal energy plants. McDermott International, Inc (NYSE: MDR) through it's subsidiary Babcock and Wilcox Company will be the first MOU to test the viability of this by retrofitting power plants with oxy-coal combustion (oxycombustion) to existing power plants to reduce CO2 and other emissions.

The second MOU will involve Alstom's chilled ammonia process for CO2 capture to full commercial scale up to 200 MW by 2011. The technology has the great advantage versus other technologies of being fully applicable not only for new power plants, but also for the retrofit of existing coal-fired power plants.

"Global Research Technologies, LLC (GRT), a technology research and development company, and Klaus Lackner from Columbia University have achieved the successful demonstration of a bold new technology to capture carbon from the air. The "air extraction" prototype has successfully demonstrated that indeed carbon dioxide (CO₂) can be captured from the atmosphere. This is GRT’s first step toward a commercially viable air capture device." Physorg.com

Read Storage and Carbon Capture: By the Numbers