CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) – Organizers of a $ 20 million tender to develop products from greenhouse gases from power plants announced two winners on Monday before launching a similar, but much larger, competition with the support from Elon Musk.
Both winners made a concrete that trapped carbon dioxide, keeping it out of the atmosphere, where it can contribute to climate change. Cement production, the key ingredient in concrete, accounts for 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions, said Marcius Extavour, XPRIZE’s vice president of climate and energy.
“It is therefore not surprising that the winning teams will focus on reducing emissions associated with concrete, which will change global decarbonisation,” it said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Musk, the electric and space vehicle entrepreneur, has promised $ 100 million to researchers who can show how to trap huge volumes of carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and store gas permanently. This competition will begin on Thursday, which is Earth Day.
“We want teams that build real systems that can have a measurable impact and scale up to a gigaton level. Whatever is needed. Time is of the essence, ”said Musk, founder and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, in February.
Both contests are organized by XPRIZE, which encourages new technologies by raising money to demonstrate success. Most famously, Mojave Aerospace Ventures earned $ 10 million from XPRIZE in 2004 by being the first to fly a privately funded reusable rocket aircraft into space several times.
The $ 20 million prize announced Monday had two parts: one at a coal-fired power plant in Wyoming and the other at a gas plant in Alberta, Canada. The competition focused on the use of carbon dioxide captured from the chimneys of the plants and the winners showed that they can trap cement emissions, making the concrete stronger in some cases.
Los Angeles-based Wyoming plant winner CarbonBuilt used carbon dioxide to cure the concrete, trapping it in a process that also emitted fewer greenhouse gases compared to traditional cement production, according to XPRIZE.
The winner in Alberta was CarbonCure Technologies, based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, which demonstrated that it can inject carbon dioxide into water used to wash trucks and cement mixers at a cement plant, resulting in a mixture that makes concrete more durable, according to XPRIZE.
The two winners will share $ 15 million. Ten finalists handed out the other $ 5 million in 2018.
The U.S. portion of the contest was held at the Wyoming Integrated Test Center, a coal-fired power plant facility near the town of Gillette that hosts research on ways to capture and use carbon dioxide in scenarios. real world.
Gov. Mark Gordon has often presented the research center as an example of Wyoming’s interest in finding solutions to climate change, which can preserve the state’s declining coal industry in the process.
U.S. coal production has halved in the last 15 years or so, as utilities get more electricity from renewable energy and cheaper natural gas. About 40% of U.S. coal comes from Wyoming, more than any other state by far.
The state covered three-quarters of the $ 20 million cost of the Wyoming Integrated Test Center, which opened in 2018.
“By managing carbon, there won’t be any kind,” said Jason Begger, the center’s general manager. “A cement plant may not make much sense at a power plant in Wyoming, but it may make a lot of sense in Japan.”
Wyoming officials have expressed interest in participating in the Musk-funded XPRIZE contest, but have had no news of it, Gordon spokesman Michael Pearlman said.
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