DOE awards $29M to 12 projects to develop carbon management technologies

Through its Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM), the U.S. Department of Energy is awarding $29 million for 12 carbon management research projects.

The 12 projects will be focused on two carbon management priorities—the conversion of carbon dioxide (CO2) into environmentally responsible products and the development of lower-cost, efficient technologies to capture CO2 from industrial sources and power plants for permanent storage or conversion.

“The deployment of carbon capture and storage creates an opportunity to reduce emissions of additional pollutants beyond carbon dioxide, as well as to convert captured carbon emissions into environmentally beneficial products,” Brad Crabtree, assistant secretary of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, said. “The projects announced today leverage university and industry expertise to help advance the commercialization of transformational carbon capture and conversion technologies that have the potential to deliver cleaner and more sustainable energy and products.”

Of the 12 projects, seven will focus on technologies that utilize CO2 from sources such as industrial and power generation facilities. They include:

• Air Protein in San Leandro, Calif., which will develop a low-carbon footprint protein ingredient to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture industry.
• Kiverdi in Pleasanton, Calif., which will advance technology to transform waste carbon from a variety of abundant, low-cost CO2 feedstocks into industrially important fatty acids.
• LanzaTech in Skokie, Ill., which will advance a new process to convert industrial waste CO2 into isopropanol, a precursor to the propylene value chain of chemicals.
• Auburn University in Auburn, Ala., which will develop a process to convert CO2 to polyethylene plastic using flue gas from the pulp and paper industry.
• Quasar Energy Group in Independence, Ohio, which will develop a technology to produce a type of polyurethane plastic from algae that are grown on an industrial waste stream of CO2.
• TDA Research in Golden, Colo., which will develop an efficient process to produce graphitic carbon compounds from CO2 captured from industrial/power sources or directly from ambient air.
• Washington University in St. Louis, which will develop a low-carbon process to convert CO2 to high-quality carbon nanotubes, which will be tested for use as anodes for lithium-ion batteries.

The other five projects will focus on development and testing of enabling technologies such as engineering and advanced process control approaches to address non-greenhouse gas emissions in the context of carbon capture. They include:

• American Air Liquide in Newark, Del., which will develop a technology to reduce nitrogen oxides to enable cold membrane CO2 capture from flue gases.
• InnoSepra in Middlesex, N.J., which will demonstrate a flue gas purification process for the removal of acids, acid gases, and acid aerosols responsible for emissions.
• RTI International in Research Triangle Park, N.C., which will test an acid wash recovery process to reduce secondary emissions from a broad set of CO2 capture technologies.
• University of Kentucky Research Foundation in Lexington, which will add a polishing CO2 capture loop with hydrogen production to a post-combustion CO2 capture technology.
• University of Kentucky Research Foundation in Lexington, which will test approaches to remove and capture secondary emissions, including volatile compounds.

The DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), under the purview of FECM, which will manage the selected projects.

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