The Power Generation Blog: Flue Symptoms: Separating Carbon Dioxide from Flue Gasses

Image Source: netl.doe.gov

A recent article from Power Online discusses a recent advancement of a research team at the Georgia Institute of Technology that could potentially usher in a new era of clean burning flue systems. As we’re all aware, in the United States, coal-burning power plants are responsible for roughly 33% of the country’s total carbon output. By using hollow fibers, the researchers have discovered a way to remove large volumes of carbon dioxide from flue emissions. The article from Power Online discusses some of the applications as well as its potential effect on the industrial power generation community:

“’The challenge with this [process] is to have a technology that not only physically works, but that can be built on a large scale and operated inexpensively,’ says David Sholl, who leads the membrane project as a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering…

… Membranes could theoretically separate the carbon dioxide from other gasses with less energy input. But no existing membrane materials can do the job while being robust enough to operate in the hostile flue-gas environment – and inexpensive enough for the large areas needed.'”

At The Power Generation Blog, we are always excited about potential new technologies in our field, but beyond that, we like to concern ourselves (whenever possible) with new energy producing processes that help out the environment. By reducing carbon emissions in coal plants, we can help our ecosystem while not having to move to alternative forms of power production. Coal won’t be as available as it is today for forever, but in the interim we might as well use what he have while finding more efficient and more environmentally-friendly ways to implement it.

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www.pactinc.com

To read the article from Power Online, follow this link:

http://www.poweronline.com/article.mvc/Hollow-Fibers-ARPA-E-Funding-Supports-0001