Carbon capture breakthrough?

[tengen]

A privately held company called NetPower is building an NG power plant that captures carbon "at no extra cost".

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2017/02/21/revolutionary-power-plant-captures-all-its-carbon-emissions-at-no-extra-cost

 

The basic concept is quite elegant: the CO2 is used as part of the power generation process and is rendered into a form that makes it easy to capture the excess. Sounds revolutionary to me if it works.

 

[TBW]

That's awesome.  Hopefully it works.

[Pelagic]

Certainly interesting in terms of the design and story, thanks for sharing. I wonder what the market is like for CO2 used in oil field stimulation, are oil companies going to be paying power plants for their excess CO2? I know transmission over long distance will add to electricity costs and oil producing regions don't necessarily overlap with high amounts of power demand but there should be some areas where this technology is applicable. I also have to wonder how long the CO2 will stay trapped underground?

 

I've always thought of carbon sequestration as an outside the box solution, wholly different than most of the approaches to carbon emissions. If you can figure out a way to do it on the cheap, or in this case perhaps even get paid for captured CO2, it's great. Perhaps one day we'll figure out a cost effective way to use captured CO2 as a feedstock for usable fuel, like when renewables are producing excess energy.

 

 

[rogermunibond]

That's a CB&I related venture.  Exelon, CBI and an alternate asset manager.

[dwy000]

It feels like more money has been spent/lost on next generation, revolutionary Carbon Capture technologies than at Vegas.  Be really, really careful about backing any of these. Venture Capital will no longer touch the space.

[TBW]

Typically the co2 is transported in pipelines to the oil fields. KMI is big in that space.

[Liberty]

It feels like more money has been spent/lost on next generation, revolutionary Carbon Capture technologies than at Vegas.  Be really, really careful about backing any of these. Venture Capital will no longer touch the space.

 

That's what I was about to say. I've heard about so many of these breakthroughs over the years, but nothing came of it. I am extremely skeptical. They're usually good for a nice article and nice PR for the idea of carbon capture and then nothing.

[tengen]

It feels like more money has been spent/lost on next generation, revolutionary Carbon Capture technologies than at Vegas.  Be really, really careful about backing any of these. Venture Capital will no longer touch the space.

 

That's what I was about to say. I've heard about so many of these breakthroughs over the years, but nothing came of it. I am extremely skeptical. They're usually good for a nice article and nice PR for the idea of carbon capture and then nothing.

 

I'm skeptical too but, if they can finish the plant on time and on budget, I will have to revisit my beliefs.  ;-)

 

The plant is under construction with an expected completion date this year so we won't have to wait long to find out.