The next time you see a GE scientist with silky smooth hair, or wearing irresistibly soft clothes, it could just be good grooming — or part of breakthrough research on capturing carbon. Today at the 239th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in San Francisco, researchers at GE Global Research – which is our technology development arm — announced that relatives of the ingredients found in hair-conditioning shampoos and fabric softeners show promise as a long-sought material to scrub carbon dioxide out of the flue gases from coal-burning electric power generating stations. Their report, the first on use of these so-called aminosilicones in carbon dioxide capture, concluded that the material has the potential to remove 90 percent of CO2 from simulated flue gas. Even better, the new scrubber material may be less expensive and more efficient than current technologies.
Beauty secrets: GE chemist Robert Perry checks a flask containing an ingredient — similar to those in shampoos — that shows promise for capturing carbon dioxide, the main “greenhouse” gas linked to global warming. He’s standing in front of the CO2 scrubber machine, which measures the absorption and desorption of CO2 .
Dr. Robert Perry, a chemist in the Chemical Technologies and Materials Characterization Laboratory at GE Global Research, has been working on the project for over a year and delivered the news today at ACS, which is the world’s largest scientific society. Describing it as “exciting,” Bob writes on the Global Research blog: “[Coal] plants not only generate hundreds of gigawatts of electricity but billions of tons of CO2 every year…Currently, there are no CO2 -capture technologies in full-scale operation at coal-fired power plants, although there are several technologies that are being tested in pilot and slip stream scale. However, these routes have been calculated to significantly increase the cost of electricity if incorporated in a traditional coal plant. Our objective was to find a solvent-based process that would be efficient in capturing CO2 but still have a minimal effect on the cost of electricity.”
He explains that a “team of chemists, chemical engineers and molecular and process modelers from GE Global Research, GE Energy and University of Pittsburgh found that certain aminosilicones — which are active ingredients in hair conditioners, fabric softeners and flexible high-temperature plastics — “have up to a 50 percent improvement in CO2 capture capacity” when combined with another solvent. The new scrubber material would meet the goal of the U.S. Department of Energy, which funded the research, to develop carbon capture technologies with at least a 90 percent CO2 capture efficiency.
In the process they are developing, a liquid aminosilicone solvent will absorb CO2 and then be transferred to a unit where CO2 would be removed and stored. The aminosilicone solvent would then be recycled to react with more CO2 -rich flue gas. As they say: Rinse, lather, repeat!
* Read the announcement from the ACS
* Read Bob’s full post on the GE Global Research blog
* Read more Global Research stories on GE Reports