ATK designs rockets, weapons and aerospace products that collectively emit many millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the Earth’s atmosphere. Removing carbon dioxide emissions using rocket nozzle technology would be a major redemption of its emissions, and possibly provide a novel method to capture CO2 at an affordable price.
Current carbon capture proposals are expensive, increasing power costs by around 80% but the ATK concept would see the price rise only 30%. The design concept involves pressurizing the coal power plant exhaust gas and rapidly expanding it by passing it through expansion nozzles similar to rocket engine exhausts, causing the pressure and temperature to drop, and in turn forcing the carbon dioxide to freeze into dry ice particles.
These particles can then be electrostatically charged and pulled from the exhaust gas, re-used as carbon dioxide in some industrial process or stored underground.
The project is called ICES (Inertial CO2 Extraction System) and is funded by the US Department of Energy's IMPACCT (Innovative Materials & Processes for Advanced Carbon Capture Technologies) program.
Via Discovery News & EcoGeek
Trevor Williams is a University of Victoria Mechanical Engineering PhD candidate specializing in renewable energy, power grid modeling and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. He has a bachelors in Aeronautical Engineering, a Masters in Management Science and over 23 years international experience in the space industry, having worked on Earth observation and telecommunications satellites. He is the author of the Eco-Geek blog.
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