There are increasing efforts by the United States government and private industry to develop advanced technologies to mitigate anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that are contributing to global climate change. One very promising approach to reducing greenhouse emissions is to capture and compress CO2 at a power plant, then transport it to a storage site and inject it for long-term storage in any of a variety of suitable geologic formations. The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is investing in advanced technologies to significantly reduce the cost of capture from pulverized coal, integrated coal gasification combined-cycle, and natural gas fired power systems. The DOE is providing research and development (R&D) funding for over 60 individual projects that are investigating a wide variety of CO2 separation techniques for these systems, including various approaches utilizing advanced solvents, sorbents, and membranes. Research also includes the development of advanced processes and related components to support these new separation technologies and improve the efficiency of the capture systems. It has become clear that integrating the various advanced processes and components with the advanced separation technologies in different combinations will be necessary to reduce the costs to levels which will make power plants with carbon capture and storage (CCS) competitive with other sources of electric power generation.
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