Carbon capture mission
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Honeywell-owned Des Plaines, Illinois-based UOP has been awarded $1.5m (£1m) from the US Department of Energy for a project that aims to demonstrate technology to capture carbon dioxide and produce algae for use in biofuel and energy production.
The funding will be used for the design of a demonstration system that will capture carbon dioxide from exhaust stacks at Honeywell’s caprolactam manufacturing facility in Hopewell, Virginia and deliver the captured CO2 to a cultivation system for algae.
Algal oil can then be extracted from the algae for conversion to biofuels, and the algae residual can be converted to pyrolysis oil, which can be burned to generate renewable electricity.
The project, managed by the US Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory, will also use wastewater from the manufacturing facility in the algae cultivation system, allowing the algae to consume nitrogen in the wastewater.
At the demonstration site, UOP will design the equipment to capture CO2 from the exhaust stacks of the Hopewell caprolactam facility and deliver it to a pond near the plant, where algae will be grown using technology developed by New Zealand-based Aquaflow Bionomic under the control of automated systems from Honeywell Process Solutions.
The project will also act as a means to independently evaluate the use of RTP rapid thermal processing technology from Envergent Technologies, a joint venture between UOP and Ensyn. The RTP system can be used to convert waste biomass from the algae production into pyrolysis oil, which can be burned to generate renewable electricity.
