DOE awards $45.6M to nine carbon capture projects

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) awarded $45.6 million to nine projects that will advance carbon dioxide (CO2) capture technologies, transportation, and storage.

Large-scale deployment of carbon capture, transportation, and storage infrastructure is crucial to meeting the Biden Administration’s goal of achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

“DOE is mobilizing historic levels of private sector investment in the United States to capture, transport, and safely and permanently store hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide per year from our industrial and power sectors,” Brad Crabtree, assistant secretary of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, said. “These demonstration and pilot projects bring us one step closer to effective and responsible deployment of carbon management infrastructure necessary to achieve our climate goals, while also providing good paying and jobs and health benefits to communities in every corner of the nation.”

Some projects selected under this funding opportunity announcement will focus on capturing CO2 from power and industrial facilities for permanent geologic carbon storage or for conversion into long-lasting products. Others will focus on the deployment of multi-modal transport of CO2 through the creation of transportation hubs. The nine awards went to the following entities:

• GTI Energy, Des Plaines, Ill., to test an engineering-scale carbon capture system at U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson industrial iron and steel production facility in Braddock, Pa.;
• Membrane Technology and Research, Newark, Calif., to test an engineering-scale carbon capture system at the Argos USA cement plant in Harleyville, S.C.;
• Ohio State University to design and test an engineering-scale carbon capture system at the Holcim US cement plant in Holly Hill, S.C.;
• University of Kentucky Research Foundation to demonstrate a carbon capture system at the Vitro Flat Glass Manufacturing facility in Meadville, Pa.;
• Calpine California CCUS Holdings, Houston, to conduct a front-end engineering design (FEED) study for a carbon capture system at the Pastoria Energy Facility; the plant includes natural gas combined cycle facilities located near Bakersfield, Calif.;
• Ohio State University to will test an engineering-scale carbon capture system for natural gas flue gas at the Wyoming Integrated Test Center in Gillette, Wy.;
• Susteon Inc., Cary, N.C., to conduct an engineering-scale test under real natural gas flue gas conditions at the National Carbon Capture Center in Wilsonville, Ala.;
• Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, Ohio, to conduct a pre-FEED study to develop intermodal CO2 transport and storage networks in the Central Appalachian Region and northeastern United States; and
• Overseas Shipholding Group, Tampa, to study the development of the Tampa Regional Intermodal Carbon Hub to store captured CO2 on the west coast of Florida sited at Port Tampa Bay.

DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) will manage the selected projects.

Including these selections, FECM has announced project investments of more than $1 billion since January 2021 that advance the research, development, and deployment of carbon capture, transport, storage, and conversion technologies and infrastructure.