In an attempt to save the planet, GE researchers have devised a way to recycle existing CO2 by capturing it in a battery-like cell. The cell makes solar power plants up to 50% more efficient, and the cell itself can reuse up to 68% of its own CO2 emissions.
There’s no denying the effects of climate change on the environment, but General Electric (GE) has decided to do something about it. The research arm of the organization – GE Global Research (GRC) – has devised a way to recycle CO2, the primary contributor to climate change, as fuel.
CO2, or carbon dioxide, is the number one cause of global warming. In an initiative to save the planet, GRC Senior Engineer and Principal Investigator Stephen Sanborn and his team found a way to capture the substance at solar power plants, store it in a battery-like cell called a sunrotor, and use it for power the grid.
Sanborn said one of the most serious concerns with solar power was getting it to the grid. According to the researcher, much of solar power collected at solar power plants is lost, offers unpredictable energy, cannot be stored in an ideally efficient manner, and as such, has little flexibility for future use. The innovation developed by Sanborn and his team may change that.
The process involves storing the energy collected at the plants in CO2. The energy is stored in both liquid molten salt and dry ice, and when needed, the hot and cold solution interacts and becomes a supercritical fluid. In this state, it maintains both liquid and gaseous properties, which allows it to flow into a new CO2 turbine designed for this specific purpose.
The turbine is based on GE’s steam turbine, and while it is compact enough to fit on a desk, it can store 100 megawatts of “fast electricity” per installed unit. This amount of energy would be enough to power 100,000 homes, and would be ideal for use during critical peaks at which energy is needed, and the sun is nowhere to be found.
The system would be the most efficient in the world, allowing as much as 68 percent of stored energy to return back to the grid – seven percent more than existing systems. The bigger win is the way in which the system could reduce greenhouse gas emissions at solar power plants. The idea of recycling CO2 is novel, and the successful demonstration of its execution is surely a success.
The system won’t be ready for real-world use for another five to ten years. Researchers want to refine the process to reduce the cost of megawatt-hour down from $250 to $100. With this, this team is also developing a full concept design that could offer a live demonstration of the procedure. In the meantime, GE researchers are looking at other eco-friendly power generation methods.
One such alternative is a new CO2 recycling method developed by Michigan State University researchers. The process focuses on capturing and recycling CO2 emissions at coal plants by trapping the substance in salt water several meters beneath rocks and dirt. The methodology could make goal plants up to 50% more efficient.
Another alternative involves capturing the waste that comes from the exhaust pipes of natural gas generators. The innovation is being developed in tandem with GRC researchers and could result in a 25-50% increase in efficiency at gas-powered plants.
Whatever the innovation, it must address the energy industry’s relentless drive for profit. GE’s solar CO2 battery would be cost-effective for plant owners, but countless other efforts to preemptively address climate change have been ignored because of the cost to the organization, instead of the cost to the planet. Thankfully things are changing. To discover more about what GE is doing to address climate change, check out the company’s new center here.
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