FORMER ENERGY SECRETARY JOINS CANADIAN CCS COMPANY

Karen Frantz
GHG Monitor
12/20/13

Former Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu is joining the Board of Directors of Inventys Thermal Technologies, a Canada-based company that said it has developed a new and less costly way to capture carbon emissions from coal and natural gas power plants. “Carbon capture is a critical technology to move us to a clean energy future and Inventys has developed a practical, compact and low cost system that allows existing fossil fuel power plants to dramatically lower their carbon emissions,” Chu said. “I look forward to serving on their board and helping guide the company forward.” Chu left office in April and is currently teaching physics at Stanford University.

The Inventys CCS technology is called VeloxoTherm, and the company said it results in a capture cost of about $15 per ton of CO2, a fifth the cost of current processes, and that it is a tenth the size of competing systems and can be used to retrofit old power plants. The technology is based on a Low Pressure Thermal Swing Method: “A slowly rotating structure holds a proprietary material that traps carbon dioxide when it is cool and releases it when it is hot,” the company said. “On half of the rotation cycle, flue gas from the power plant is passed through the material and the CO2 in the flue gas is captured. On the other half of the cycle, steam is injected into the material to release the CO2, the leftover steam is condensed out leaving pure CO2, and the material cools down to be ready for the next cycle. The CO2 is then pumped underground for CCS or EOR applications, or used as a feedstock for chemical manufacturing or other industrial applications.”