Originally shared by Kam-Yung Soh
Interesting to see what happens in two years time. “On Monday, the XPrize organization announced that it had selected 10 finalists for its NRG COSIA Carbon Competition. These finalists will be given space near a power plant and pipes that will deliver some of the plant’s carbon-dioxide-rich exhaust. It’s up to the competitors to turn that carbon dioxide into marketable products.
[…]
The projects will be judged based on three sets of criteria. One is related to the goal’s primary task: what percentage of the carbon dioxide that’s sent through the system ends up in some form of product. Related to that, the processes should use more carbon than ends up released from powering them, resulting in a net reduction in emissions. Another set of criteria focus on energy and material efficiency. “How expensive are your catalysts? How much electricity does it cost? How much heat do you need?” Extavour asked. “The teams are competing to minimize the cost and use of materials and energy.”
Also in this category are any land use and resource issues, like water. Both of these, Extavour suggested, may be why there’s only one team that is focused on feeding the carbon dioxide to an organism that would incorporate it into useful molecules. While things like that can be done with photosynthetic algae, it requires a lot of space for growth ponds, as well as significant amounts of water.
The final set of criteria are economic. “It’s about transforming the carbon molecule into something useful,” Extavour told Ars. “Another way of describing useful is valuable or revenue generating.”
But there’s not one path to success on economic terms. One of the teams hopes to produce carbon nanotubes; although their market is small, they command a high price premium. At the other end, a couple of teams are focusing on concrete, where low prices are traded off against an enormous market.
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Beyond those practical concerns, Extavour sounded a bit like the Solar Impulse team in talking about their round-the-world trip in a solar-powered aircraft—terms like “moonshot” and “inspirational” peppered the conversation. Rather than having people listen to news about carbon capture plans that never get off the ground, “we’re trying to orient people’s minds to think ‘hey, this is possible,'” he told Ars. Two years from now, when the data is collected and analyzed, we’ll have a much better sense of what’s possible.”
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/04/putting-co₂-to-use-10-finalists-named-for-carbon-xprize/
