BYU's cryogenic carbon capture could dramatically reduce pollution

(Jaren Wilkey/BYU)


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PROVO — A team at Brigham Young University has developed a system that could prevent harmful gases from entering the air.

The goal of the project, led by BYU professor Larry Baxter, is to curb the carbon emissions that contribute to pollution. In tests, the team's cryogenic carbon capture has regularly eliminated between 96 and 98 percent of the CO2 present in emissions from coal-powered power plants, according to researchers.

"We are essentially freezing the CO2 out the exhaust of a power plant and then separating the solid from the gas, prior to that exhaust being vented back to the atmosphere," Baxter explained in a video.

The cryogenic carbon capture system cools the CO2 down to a temperature of about -202 degrees Fahrenheit so it becomes a solid — dry ice — that can be reused for other purposes. While power plants that are retrofitted to use the technology will still have smokestacks, Baxter said their gases won't include CO2 or additional pollutants.

Larry Baxter stands in front of his cryogenic carbon capture technology. (Photo: Jaren Wilkey/BYU)
Larry Baxter stands in front of his cryogenic carbon capture technology. (Photo: Jaren Wilkey/BYU)

The system is a "technological game changer for CO2 capture," according to Carl Bauer, the former director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory.

"Cryogenic separation of gases is not a newly discovered area of science, but what Dr. Baxter has done is develop a new approach to the process that significantly improves the energy and economic performance of cryogenic gas separation," Bauer said in a news release.

Baxter founded a startup company, Sustainable Energy Solutions, in 2008 to continue work on the cryogenic carbon capture. SES is currently working to prepare the system for a pilot stage, hoping to have a working system operating in a commercial facility within the next seven years.

A paper about the technology was recently published in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control.

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