Could The Use of Fuel Cell for Carbon Capture Be The Solution to a Cleaner Environment?

This a controversial way of fighting greenhouse gas emission in order to reduce global warming.

The concept is the use of a fuel cell to pull CO₂ out of the air.

The modern world could not sustain its lifestyle without tremendous amounts of energy being consumed. The production creates a serious damage to the environment leading to all sort of ailments that end up lowering the quality of life.

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There had been renewed efforts on the use of renewable energy or energy with less negative impact on the environment. But in the end, the world still relies heavily on the fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas.

^{World Resource Simulation Center: World's Energy Consumption by Source}

Fossil fuels made up more than 80% of the world's source of energy. This simply because they are better established, cheap and do not have the problem of intermittency (stopping or ceasing). The only problem they have is the harmful pollution and their negative contribution to the environment and global warming.

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A Fix?

These harmful gases escape and degrade the environment. What if these harmful gases are captured and put into the ground? That sounds like a fix.

The idea of carbon capture is born. The older method requires the use of steam from plants to capture and store the compressed CO₂.
This steam is also used to drive a turbine to generate electricity. This makes coal plants burn 25% to 40% more fuel. This makes for a high cost of fuel and an economically unfeasible venture.

The FuelCell Energy Inc have come up with a solution. This entails the use of carbonate fuel cell. The CO₂ from the plant's exhaust is converted ions, then transferred via an electrolyte layer and converted back into CO₂.

^{FuelCell Energy Inc; Carbon Capture}

The FuelCell Energy Inc have come up with a solution. This entails the use of carbonate fuel cell. The CO₂ from the plant's exhaust is converted ions, then transferred via an electrolyte layer and converted back into CO₂

This generates electricity and increases the CO₂ from 13% to 70%. The more concentrated it is, the more it could be better condensed. The CO₂ is chilled to -40°C and channeled to the underground storage system.

Some added advantage

This process helps remove up to 60% of nitrous oxide that is present on smog. This procedure from FuelCell Energy Inc had only being tested on a small scale. There are still some questions whether it could work on a large scale project. The growing concern is some of the pollutants in exhaust plants include sulfur which may affect the fuel cell operation. This makes the technology more compatible with natural gas plant because of its cleaner exhaust as compared to the coal plants.

Captured carbon dioxide may be sold for use in greenhouses and forcing oil out of the reservoirs.

This fuel cell technology could also be applied to oil wells where gas flaring is illegal. So CO₂is pumped into the ground where it forces oil out of the ground increasing the well's efficiency.

This has the potential of cleaning up fossil fuel plants.

Ref: 1,2,3.

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