Carbon Capture and Storage Technology Explained

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Sometimes it’s easy to forget that there are more ways than just investing in renewable energy to help the environment. But everyone agrees that reducing greenhouse gases is a definite must. One cool new way to do just that is with up-and-coming carbon capture and storage technologies.

What are Carbon Capture and Storage Technology?

Often called carbon dioxide capture and sequestration (CCS) technology, CCS is a set of technologies that significantly reduces the CO2 emissions from existing plants and industrial facilities that burn fossil fuels. Once the technology is in place, a three-step process is implemented that extracts CO2 from a plant’s regular emissions and stores them off-site.

Those three steps include:

  • Capture: CO2 is separated from other gasses at the various facilities where it is produced (power plants, steel mills, factories, etc.).
  • Transport: After separation, CO2 is compressed and transported to a suitable location for storage. This transportation usually takes the form of pipelines.
  • Storage: Once the CO2 arrives at a suitable storage location, it is injected deep beneath underground rock formations, often at depths of a mile or more!

Instead of trying to counteract the adverse effects of carbon dioxide pollution, technologies like CCS stop them directly at their source. This clever change makes a big difference!

Benefits of CCS Technology

CCS technology can drastically reduce the quantity of CO2 emissions from facilities that implement the technology, often seeing emissions tests that are between 80 and 90% lower! This huge reduction in CO2 emissions would be equivalent to:

  • Planting more than 62 million trees—and waiting at least 10 years for them to grow and suck up CO2!
  • Completely ignoring the electricity-related emissions from more than 300,000 U.S. homes.

 

Curious to learn more about CCS? Click here to visit the CCSA website for further information!

 

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