The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) announced $101 million in federal funding for five projects to support the development of carbon dioxide capture, removal, and conversion test centers for cement manufacturing facilities and power plants.
“Carbon management technologies such as carbon capture can significantly reduce emissions from fossil energy use and key industrial processes, like cement production,” said Brad Crabtree, assistant secretary of fossil energy and carbon management. “By investing in test centers, we are helping reduce barriers to commercial scale deployment of carbon capture, conversion, and removal technologies that will ultimately help reduce pollution and create jobs.”
Establishing test centers of various sizes that use varying feedstocks from different industries can help establish and improve the efficacy and performance of carbon capture technologies. Each of these five projects will enable economical and environmentally sustainable carbon management:
- The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois (Urbana, Ill.) plans to develop the conceptual design, business, technical and managerial structures for a test center to evaluate and accelerate carbon capture, removal, and conversion technologies in the cement industry.
- Holcim US (Chicago) plans to establish a domestic Cement Carbon Management Innovation Center at its Hagerstown (Md.) cement plant and explore the feasibility of the testing center location, ownership structure, business model and technology partners.
- Southern Company Services, Inc. (Birmingham, Ala.) intends to maintain and operate the National Carbon Capture Center, a comprehensive test facility capable of evaluating CO2 capture, removal, and conversion technologies under electric generating plant operating conditions.
- University of North Dakota Energy & Environmental Research Center (Grand Forks, N.D.) plans to enhance its existing CO2 capture, removal and conversion test center to rapidly and cost-effectively test more technologies under relevant power plant operating conditions.
- University of Wyoming (Laramie, Wyo.) plans to expand the existing Wyoming Integrated Test Center’s capabilities to accommodate a wider range of carbon management technologies, simulating emissions from natural gas and industrial facilities.
