Man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) is considered the main greenhouse gas causing global warming. The United States emits 20% of the world’s CO2 emissions and approximately 1/3 of these emissions are from industrial processes that are integral to the modern day economy. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), alternatively referred to as Carbon Capture and Sequestration, is a means to prevent these industrial CO2 emissions from entering the Earth’s atmosphere. CO2 is captured from industrial point sources such as oil refineries, cement, steel, chemical, and fossil fuel power plants and then permanently stored in depleted oil and gas reservoirs, saline aquifers, or other safe carbon sinks.
The carbon capture process involves separating and purifying CO2 from the emission gas streams that typically contain a large amount of nitrogen (N2), a safe non-greenhouse gas. This process is a new technical challenge that can represent 60-80% of the cost of CCS using existing technical solutions. Today, the cost of CCS using proven methods ranges from US$60 - $200 per tonne, which translates into more than a 50% increase in the cost of generating electricity or producing industrial products. The high cost of carbon capture is the key barrier to widespread implementation of CCS.
The VeloxoTherm™ process has the potential to reduce the cost of carbon capture to a manageable level of US$15 per tonne, enabling worldwide adoption of CCS. Other key attributes to the VeloxoTherm™ process source flexibility, and a small footprint. The process can capture carbon from a wide range of small to large sources, varying industrial emission streams, and from sources with space constraints such as oil refineries.
The compression, transportation, and storage of CO2 are safe, mature technologies proven by 40 years of ongoing projects in the Texas Permian basin. Natural gas was securely trapped in reservoirs for millions of years, proving that underground reservoirs are a suitable permanent storage mechanism for gases. The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) reported that North America has enough storage capacity at its current rate of production for more than 900 years of carbon dioxide (NETL 2007 Carbon Sequestration Atlas, 2007).