ECO₂™ Technology Overview

Powerspan Corp.’s CO2 capture process, called “ECO2™,” can be applied to both existing and new coal-fueled power plants.   The process is being designed as an add-on system that could be deployed when needed and is particularly advantageous for sites where ammonia-based scrubbing of power plant emissions, such as Powerspan’s ECO multi-pollutant control technology, is employed.  ECO2 is a scrubbing process that uses an ammonia-based (not amine) solution to capture CO2 from the flue gas.  The CO2 capture takes place after the nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), mercury and fine particulate matter capture in Powerspan’s ECO technology or other air pollution control system.  Once CO2 is captured, the resulting solution is regenerated to release CO2 and ammonia.  The ammonia is recovered and returned to the scrubbing process, and the CO2 is processed into a form that is sequestration ready.  Ammonia is not consumed in the scrubbing process, and no separate by-product is created.

Powerspan has been developing the ECO2 technology since 2004 in conjunction with U.S. Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory (DOE-NETL) under a cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA).  Both DOE-NETL and Powerspan have research teams assigned to conduct bench-scale testing of the ECO2 process.  Initial laboratory testing conducted by Powerspan of the CO2 absorption process demonstrated 90 percent CO2 removal under conditions comparable to a commercial-scale absorber.

More information on ECO₂™ can be found here.