Innovation & Infrastructure

General Electric said Tuesday it has committed $7.5 million to becoming a sustaining member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Initiative (MITEI). “The world will need 50 percent more power in the next 20 years,” Steve Bolze, president and CEO of GE Power, said in a press release. “GE and MITEI are proud to […]

The National Coal Council voted Tuesday to accept a draft white paper on carbon dioxide utilization drafted by its Coal Policy Committee. Committee members are now invited to provide supplemental comments on the report by Sept. 9. The comments will then be considered and any needed updates to the draft made before it is sent […]

While there are many novel methods being developed to use captured carbon, the most promising is in enhanced oil recovery, according to a draft white paper released Friday by the National Coal Council. “Carbon dioxide enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) represents the most immediate, highest value opportunity to utilize the greatest volumes of anthropogenic CO2, thereby […]

Local and federal officials were on hand Thursday at the official groundbreaking of the Construction Support Building for the Uranium Processing Facility (UPF) project at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee. The three-story building will be the project’s first permanent structure and will provide office space, a warehouse, and craft break areas to house […]

Approximately $6.7 million in federal funding is available for cost-shared projects to develop carbon utilization technologies for coal-fired power plants, the Department of Energy announced Thursday. “DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy is seeking these projects as part of the Department’s Carbon Storage program, which has the goal of developing and advancing technologies to improve the […]

The Department of Energy on Wednesday said it has awarded $28 million in research funding to 14 advanced fossil fuel combustion systems projects. The recipients will spend $8.4 million on the projects, bring total spending to more than $36 million. “The new projects, which span 11 states, will accelerate the scale-up of coal-based advanced combustion […]

The University of North Dakota Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC), Minnkota Power Cooperative, Allete Clean Energy, and BNI Energy on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on a new carbon capture utilization and storage project dubbed “Project Tundra.” Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.), a vocal supporter of clean coal technologies, attended the […]

The National Coal Council, an advisory board to the secretary of energy, is scheduled to host a webcast meeting Aug. 30 to accept a report from its Coal Policy Committee on CO2 utilization options. “As requested by Secretary [Ernest] Moniz, the NCC report is focused on profit-generating opportunities for CO2 utilization, both for geologic applications, […]

The Beijing-based Huaneng Clean Energy Research Institute has become the 10th member of the Carbon Capture International Test Center Network, current network chair Southern Co. announced Monday. Through the 4-year-old network, carbon capture test facilities share knowledge to accelerate commercial deployment of CCS technology. The Department of Energy’s National Carbon Capture Center, which Southern operates, […]

Researchers at Rice University in Texas have set out to map out exactly how temperature, pressure, surface area, pore size, and the presence of additional elements impact the efficiency of natural gas “sweetening,” removing carbon dioxide. “What we’ve done is provide a recipe to make carbon capture materials the best they can be,” Rice chemist […]

Two new studentships funded by the United Kingdom’s Imperial College London and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) will support the investigation of carbon storage in depleted oil and gas reservoirs, the organizations announced Monday. The first of the two projects will focus on monitoring the behavior of such reservoirs, while the second […]

With the finalization of a lease and operating agreement, the Wyoming Integrated Test Center is one step closer to becoming a reality, the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority announced Monday. The test center, a state government-sponsored endeavor supporting research into carbon utilization, will be built and operated by the WIA at Basin Electric’s Dry Fork Station power […]

Construction of the Pantex Plant’s new Administrative Support Complex is underway, Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS) announced Thursday. The 343,000-square-foot complex will relocate employees from aging facilities and into new office space for approximately 1,100 employees – one-third of the workforce – at the nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly facility, CNS said. The three-story complex will […]

The Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) said this week that its High Performance Computing facilities team has performed a redesign for its Trinity supercomputer that saved the Department of Energy facility approximately $2.6 million in material and labor costs. In 2014 supercomputer company Cray Inc. received a $174 million, multiyear, multiphase contract to provide the […]

Quebec-based carbon capture technology developer CO2 Solutions has reached an agreement with Fibrek General Partnership, a subsidiary of Resolute Forest Products Inc., and Serres Toundra Inc. to deploy a carbon capture unit on a pulp mill in the Saint-Félicien region of the Canadian province. “We are very proud to achieve the significant milestone of a […]

The Kemper Counter Energy Facility will not reach full operation by the end of September, as had been reported by the project owner Mississippi Power just two weeks ago. The project is now expected to hit that milestone by the end of October, a delay that will cost the company $43 million, Mississippi Power spokesman […]

Toshiba announced Wednesday that it has installed the world’s first commercial-use carbon capture and utilization (CCU) system on a municipal waste incineration plant in Saga, Japan. “I am delighted that we have successfully completed this advanced, first-of-a-kind CCU plant. Toshiba provides the world with technologies and services for making, transmitting and storing clean energy, all […]

The Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory has $6.7 million in federal funds available for carbon utilization research projects. “The [funding opportunity announcement] objective is to secure applications that will support the Carbon Storage program’s efforts to develop technologies that utilize CO2 from coal-fired power plants as a reactant to produce useful products without […]

Storing CO2 underground may appear risky to many communities around the world, making it extremely important that governments develop effective regulatory enforcement regimes to address such concerns, according to a report issued Monday by the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute. “Communities around the world want assurances from governments that CCS is safe and reliable,” […]

Scientists at Cornell University have developed an oxygen-assisted aluminum/carbon dioxide power cell that can sequester carbon dioxide while producing electricity, the university announced Thursday. “The group’s proposed cell would use aluminum as the anode and mixed streams of carbon dioxide and oxygen as the active ingredients of the cathode. The electrochemical reactions between the anode […]

The Boundary Dam Unit 3 carbon capture and storage project in Saskatchewan, Canada, captured 488,300 metric tons of carbon in the first half of 2016, 62,200 more than captured in all of 2015, project owner SaskPower announced Thursday. “This means the carbon capture unit has surpassed the capture of a million tonnes of carbon dioxide […]

ExxonMobil will invest $15 million in the University of Texas at Austin Energy Institute, a national leader in carbon capture and storage research and development, the university announced Tuesday. “The University of Texas at Austin has extensive experience and expertise in identifying innovative energy technologies,” Sara Ortwein, president of ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company, said in […]

The National Nuclear Security Administration on Tuesday said it had added 10,000 square feet of manufacturing capacity for electronic parts at its Kansas City, Mo., National Security Complex (KCNSC), under budget and ahead of schedule. The facility produces electronics and other non-nuclear parts for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The new space is converted “White Space” […]

Another month, another cost estimate increase at Mississippi Power’s Kemper County Energy Facility. The latest increase, this time $9 million, brings the project’s total estimated cost to $6.76 billion. The facility was originally billed at $2.4 billion. The newest overage, announced in the company’s monthly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, is due to […]

The importance of deploying carbon capture and storage technology worldwide is not getting the attention it needs, according to a new report from the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) Energy Center, the U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and Imperial College London. The report contains the conclusion of the CCS Forum, […]

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Chicago have developed a process to capture carbon dioxide and transform it into carbon monoxide using sunlight. The resulting carbon monoxide can be converted into fuels much easier that carbon dioxide, which is not particularly chemically reactive, according to an […]

Carbon dioxide can remain stored in underground reservoirs for at least 100,000 years without significantly corroding cap rock, according to new research from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Researchers investigated a natural CO2 storage reservoir in Utah to reach their determination, which they say increases confidence in the safety of storing anthropogenic […]

The XPRIZE Foundation on Wednesday released a list of the 47 teams that will compete in the first round of the $20 million NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE competition. The competition, which is open to the public and seeks innovative ways to use carbon dioxide, consists of two tracks: one that will test developmental technologies on […]

The Department of Energy on Wednesday announced to selection of eight projects to receive a total of $11.5 million to advance research related to geothermal energy and carbon storage technologies. “The projects selected today will advance our ability to store captured carbon pollution from the burning of fossil fuels and improve our understanding of renewable […]

The Japanese Ministry of the Environment has selected Toshiba and Mizuho to lead a group of 11 other entities in a five-year project to construct a large-scale carbon capture and storage demonstration facility at the Mikawa Power Plant in Omuta, Toshiba announced Tuesday. “Through this project in Mikawa, we aim to further increase the efficiency […]