The quest is on to capture carbon dioxide. And while the notion of separating such releases from other fumes before they escape the smokestack is prevalent in most minds, other ideas are also creeping into the mainstream.

Carbon capture and sequestration is one idea but so too is the taking of carbon released by industrial facilities and using it to make everything from gasoline to minerals. To some, the end goal is to be able to catch carbon and bury it deep underground in geological formations. To most, though, that possibility is too far off and with all the attention focused on limiting carbon emissions, some developers are trying to put captured carbon to more practical uses.

That’s why the U.S. Department of Energy is funding six projects that purport to convert captured carbon into useful products such as fuels, plastics, cement and fertilizers. The stimulus act is pumping in $106 million while private businesses are kicking in another $156 million. One of the recipients is Skyonic Corp., which received $28 million and which takes captured carbon and converts it to minerals such as limestone, chalk and baking soda, which allows it to sell those products into broader markets -- a tool it is trying to commercialize for all industrial sites. 

“Emitters that are up against caps can reduce their emissions and continue to expand their businesses,” says Joe Jones, chief executive of Austin, Texas-based Skyonic, in a talk with this reporter. “They are not making a dead loss investment into regulatory compliance. “They are, instead, benefiting their bottom lines. Large-scale emitters are interested because it is compliance at a profit.”

When asked just what industrial clients and specifically utilities are interested in this idea, Jones said that nine power companies have expressed an interest in working with his firm. Today, it has entered into multiple “letters of intent” whereby Skyonics will perhaps later work with big industry.

As to why those would-be clients don’t start right away, he said that Skyonics is now encumbered with a project that takes the captured carbon and makes cement. Construction on that plant will begin in September and take two years. Meantime, it has three demo plants in Texas that are  taking carbon and making minerals. The company, furthermore, is talking to Chinese enterprises. Among the private investors that Skyonics has are Conocophillips, BP and North Water Capital.

“These innovative projects convert carbon pollution from a climate threat to an economic resource,” says Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “This is part of our broad commitment to unleash the American innovation machine and build the thriving, clean energy economy of the future.”

Producing at Scale

Carbon, of course, can also be used to grow algae to produce transportation fuels, or just transformed into gasoline. The criticism with those different technologies is that it would take more energy to convert the carbon to something else than if the gasoline, or natural gas, were to be directly combusted.

Jones says that this argument does not apply to the taking of carbon and using it to produce minerals, noting that the “mathematics of the energy are more favorable.” But when asked just what the skeptics would say about his technology, he responded that the chemical markets in which the end products would be placed are now limited to about $7 billion in this country.

“But when we exhaust those markets, we will have lowered the marginal cost of capture,” he says. Chemical markets refer to those commercial possibilities that exist for the byproducts from mineralizing carbon: baking soda and hydrochloric acid, which involves food production and steel manufacturing.

For sure, those companies using carbon to make gasoline say that challenges exist but that they are well on their way. California-based Carbon Sciences, for example, spoke earlier with this writer and said that all the major oil companies are interested. It is trying to locate its facilities next to coal and natural gas plants where they would capture the carbon and use it to make gasoline.

Meantime, Arizona-based Heliae explained to this reporter that it is focusing on capturing carbon and making chemicals, cosmetics and healthy foods, all before it will use the carbon to grow algae to produce gasoline. Once it builds economies of scale, it will then graduate to making transportation fuels, admitting that the economics right now don’t calculate for such advanced applications.

And, in the utility world, Southern Co. is working on a coal gasification plant that will be able to catch and bury carbon at one of its plants in Mississippi. There, though, the carbon will be used as a way to enhance oil recovery. NRG Energy, meanwhile, is doing the same at at facility in Texas.

Capturing carbon and using it to enhance oil recovery or create practical products is coming while burying it underground is further off. In any event, it has become a joint public-private venture -- one that hopes to take such nascent ideas and make them commercial.


EnergyBiz Insider is named a 2012 Finalist for Original Web Commentary presented by the American Society of Business Press Editors. The column is also the Winner of the 2011 Online Column category awarded by Media Industry News, MIN. Ken Silverstein has been named one of the Top Economics Journalists by Wall Street Economists.

Twitter: @Ken_Silverstein

energybizinsider@energycentral.com

Copyright © 1996-2012 by CyberTech, Inc. All rights reserved.

To subscribe or visit go to:  http://www.energycentral.com

To subscribe or visit go to:  http://www.energybiz.com