New power source ‘could create energy while cutting carbon’
Origen Power has been awarded a £1 million government grant to develop a new technology it says is capable of removing carbon dioxide from the air while generating power.
The grant will help fund the building of a 400kW prototype plant in the UK.
The process supplies natural gas to a high-temperature fuel cell – around half is converted into electricity and the remainder is turned into heat, which is used to thermally decompose limestone into lime and carbon dioxide.
The carbon dioxide created is stored underground, making the energy generated zero-emission and the lime absorbs even more of the greenhouse gas from the air when it is later used.
The firm says the method provides cost effective (£40/MWh), carbon-negative (-600kg/MWh) baseload power.
It believes if the Paris Agreement is to be achieved, it could be necessary to remove as much as 800 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using technologies like this.
Originally published at energylivenews.com
