Eco Factor: Cost-efficient carbon capture technique uses repurposed rocket nozzles.
Aerospace firm ATK, which specializes in building the space shuttle’s booster rockets, is planning to repurpose rocket nozzle tech to capture carbon dioxide emitted by coal-fired power plants. Currently, coal burning accounts for 36 percent of the total carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. Capturing carbon dioxide using chemicals and other technologies adds 80 percent to the cost per kilowatt hours of electricity delivered.
ATK’s research, which is being funded by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, uses aerodynamic force, rather than chemicals to filter out CO2 from a power plant’s air before it is released into the atmosphere. The idea is to accelerate air to very high speed, expanding air and hence cooling it. Carbon dioxide is a gas under normal conditions, but when frozen forms into dry ice.
ATK proposes to pressurize a power plant’s exhaust gas and then put it through a rocket nozzle to expand and cool it, converting carbon dioxide into dry ice, which can be collected, stored and treated or used in other applications. The company believes that the technology should add just 30 percent to the cost per kilowatt hours of electricity.
Via: Discovery News
