Carbon capture gets funding from U.S. DOE

The U.S. Department of Energy announced today that it will provide $36 million for 15 projects aimed at developing new and cost-effective technologies for the capture of carbon dioxide from existing coal-fired power plants.

The projects will focus on five areas of interest for carbon dioxide capture — membranes, solvents, sorbents, oxycombustion, and chemical looping.

"Currently, the existing U.S. coal fleet accounts for over half of all electricity generated in this country," said U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman.

"The projects announced today will combat climate change and help meet current and future energy needs by curbing CO2 emissions from existing coal-fired plants."

Menlo Park, Calif.-based Membrane Technology and Research is one of the companies pulling in some of the funding, with $3.4 million in DOE financing. The company plans to construct a 1 ton of CO2 per day membrane skid for use in a 6 month pilot-scale field test with real coal-fired flue gas.

In oxycombustion, Danbury, Conn.'s Praxair (NYSE: PX) will use $3.2 million in DOE funds to develop a near-zero emissions flue gas purification technology for existing pulverized-coal power plants.

Last month, the DOE released an official funding opportunity announcement to invest $1.3 billion in multiple commercial-scale carbon capture and storage projects as part of the department's restructured FutureGen program (see U.S. DOE puts out the call for new CCS projects).

Those projects will target next generation coal-fired power plants. Today's funding is for technology that can be retrofitted to existing facilities.

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