In the area of Houston, Texas (USA) there is a sea of refineries and oil storage tanks, power lines and smokestacks, dedicated to converting fossil fuels into dollars, hence this is the part of the United States that more carbon dioxide (CO2) emits . However, a new fossil fuel power plant shows up as a potent solution to the huge footprints of greenhouse gases. It has a turbine and a combustion engine. But there is one thing you don’t need: fireplaces.
Emission-free fossil fuels? How?
The 25 megawatt demonstration plant will burn natural gas in pure oxygen. The result: a stream of near-pure CO2, which can be channeled and stored underground or exploited in depleted oil deposits to release more oil. Be that as it may, the CO2 will not end up in the atmosphere.
Climate experts believe that a strategy like this will be necessary for the world to make progress in limiting climate change.
NET Power is the startup behind this new power plant, which hopes to produce emission-free energy for around $ 0.06 per kilowatt-hour . Almost the same cost as the energy of a state-of-the-art natural gas plant and cheaper than most renewables.
Transform coal into pure oxygen
The key to its efficiency is a new thermodynamic cycle that exchanges CO2 for the steam that drives the turbines in conventional plants. The people in charge of this innovative plant are: a retired British engineer and a couple of tech geeks who had grown tired of their regular jobs.
If the prototype goes as expected, NET Power says it will continue with a large-scale 300-megawatt plant, enough to power more than 200,000 homes.
“This is a game changer if they achieve 100% of their goals,” says John Thompson, a carbon sequestration expert at the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit environmental organization.
“It’s great on paper, we’ll see soon if it actually works, there are only a million things that can go wrong,” says Howard Herzog, a chemical engineer and carbon capture expert at MIT.
The work has been published in the journal Science.
Referencia: ‘Goodbye smokestacks: Startup invents zero-emission fossil fuel power’ . NET Power. Science Magazine. DOI: 10.1126/science.aal1228
