Carbon dioxide capture company AirCapture, Berkeley, Calif., and carbon dioxide conversion company OCOchem, Richland, Wash., along with other partners, have won a $2.93 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to design and engineer an integrated carbon dioxide capture and conversion plant co-located at Nutrien Ltd.’s Kennewick Fertilizer Operations plant in Kennewick, Wash.
AirCapture develops on-site, modular technology that captures CO2 from the air using waste heat from manufacturing plants, enabling customer operations to go carbon neutral and even negative. OCOchem transforms recycled CO2, water, and zero-carbon electricity to produce formic acid, a globally traded commodity chemical and emerging electro-fuel.
The goal is to use both companies’ technologies to design an integrated carbon capture and conversion plant that uses waste steam from Nutrien’s fertilizer facility to extract CO2 from the air and then convert it, with water and electricity, to make formic acid.
The formic acid can then be stored, transported, and used directly in many industrial, consumer, transportation, and agricultural industries. Additionally, it can be used to transport green hydrogen safely and cost-effectively in an energy-dense liquid carrier form to a customer site where the hydrogen can be released for industrial use or as a transportation fuel, replacing fossil fuels.
Nutrien has committed to achieve at least a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per ton of Nutrien’s products by 2030. It has committed to being carbon-neutral by 2050.
Additional partners participating in the project include the Benton Public Utility District, the University of Alabama, Sacre-Davey Engineering, and TRI-DEC (Tri-Cities Development Council).