The future of clean energy is taking shape at a cement plant in Texas.
Construction will begin this fall on a $115 million project billed as the world’s first for-profit carbon capture plant, which will convert carbon dioxide emissions into usable, sellable baking soda. The Capitol-SkyMine project will be built at Capitol Aggregates Ltd.’s cement plant in San Antonio. Zachry Corp. of San Antonio owns Capitol Aggregates.
The project—expected to be finished in 2012—will feature new methods for removing carbon dioxide and heavy metals from the smoke stacks of power plants and other industrial sources.
This summer, Austin, Texas-based Skyonic Corp. received a $25 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for construction of the Capitol-SkyMine plant.
Skyonic, which develops carbon capture technology, said the grant is enabling it to capitalize on more than five years of laboratory and field work in Texas, and will support creation of more than 200 clean energy jobs.
The Capitol-SkyMine plant is expected to capture 75,000 metric tons of CO2 emitted by Capitol Aggregates’ cement plant and mineralize the carbon dioxide emissions as high-purity baking soda. An additional 150,000 metric tons of CO2 will be offset in the manufacture of chemical byproducts.
In June, Skyonic announced it was granted a U.S. patent for its SkyMine technology, an environmentally safe designed to capture and mineralize carbon into marketable byproducts.
The biggest private financial backer of Skyonic, founded in 2005, is Silicon Valley investor and entrepreneur Carl Berg. In February, Skyonic received a $3 million federal grant for the Capitol-SkyMine project.
“Skyonic’s approach to carbon capture and storage has the potential to radically change how we view CO2,” Berg said.
“Providing companies a viable means to both green its production operations and turn a profit in the process is a compelling prospect for companies when evaluating how they will meet stricter emissions mandates.”
Comments